Human Flourishing and Autonomy as Passive

Most prominent accounts of autonomy are active accounts, which means they hold that an agent can be autonomous with respect to a given action only if that agent has appropriately sanctioned that action. Active accounts, however, are vulnerable to the regress problem, since it seems that the required sanctioning actions are themselves just actions that must be sanctioned. Passive accounts hope to avoid the regress problem by eschewing the notion that autonomous action requires agential sanction, but face in its place what I call the incompleteness problem for passive accounts. Here, I evaluate one passive account, recently defended by Sarah Buss, and argue that it can avoid the incompleteness problem only if it is supplemented by a satisfactory account of the development of autonomy. I then suggest that one development account, offered by Ishtiyaque Haji and Stefaan Cuypers, is an especially good supplement. My conclusion is that Buss’s account, supplemented in the way I suggest, can avoid the incompleteness problem

Perception and common sense: a study of twentieth century direct realism

This thesis is a critical examination of the direct realist theory of perception. A common-sense analysis of perception is defended against arguments which are widely believed to rule out the direct realist's notion of a direct contact with external physical reality. I argue that a common-sense version of direct realism can adequately account for hallucinations, perceptual relativity, perceptual illusions, severe time-lags and the causal processes involved in perception. The views of prominent twentieth-century direct realists are critically examined, with the intention of identifying constraints on any plausible direct realist theory of perception. I maintain that there are representationalist tensions in the work of leading twentieth-century direct realists, and that a principal source of these representationalist tensions is their adherence to the common element thesis, the notion that hallucinations and genuine perceptions are the very same experience. Appealing to recent cognitive science experiments on the imagination, I defend a disjunctivist analysis of experience, one which holds that hallucinations and genuine perceptions involve fundamentally different experience-types, rather than sharing a common, world-independent experience. The analysis which emerges is nonepistemic in its denial that perceptual experiences are essentially cognitive. A nonintentional and non-propositional species of perceptual representational content is proposed, one which recognises qualia of perceptual experience. Recent attempts by direct realists to apply Russellian acquaintance to the direct perception of external physical reality are rejected as inconsistent with the central ideas in Russellian acquaintance. Traditional Humean difficulties about the elusiveness of the self in introspection, and the question of how we could know we perceive if we are never acquainted with the self, are addressed by appeal to Russell's largely overlooked notion of learning to be acquainted with objects

Fuel Saving Methods for the Commercial Fishing Fleet

The Oil Embargo of 1973 emphasized not only how oil dependent the fishing industry has become but that the days of inexpensive energy had ended. Oil prices have risen dramatically, but so have the price tags on new technologies, labor, vessel renovation, new construction and the cost of procuring capital for making improvements. However, one must focus on the long range picture versus the short term snap shot. This can be accomplished by looking at two aspects of the problem. First, as costs increase so does the price of fish in the marketplace. There is a point however where the consumer will substitute another good which is less expensive and/or perceived to be a better buy. Therefore, there is a ceiling price above which the fisherman cannot sell his product. To remain competitive in the market place he must be cost conscious. Second, dollars, though expensive today, would be well spent if used to significantly reduce the dependency upon a cost item whose price continually increases. As the price of the cost item goes up, the real dollar cost of the money borrowed goes down. Therefore it would be to the fisherman\u27s advantage to spend on innovations that will conserve on cost items providing his operation is financially sound enough to borrow the capital required

Data assimilation and the adjoint method: an example

May 1991.Includes bibliographical references.The following are copies of slides of a talk presenting a method of four dimensional data assimilation based on the adjoint method via considering a simple example.Research supported by U.S. Army Research Office under Grant no. DAAL 03-86-K-0175

Design and Analysis of a Traveling Wave Fault Locator

The accuracy of fault location is an integral part of power system operations. Improved fault location can reduce maintenance time, increase efficiency, and save money. When a fault occurs, it sends a disturbance in the current and voltage in each direction at almost the speed of light. This disturbance is called a traveling wave, and can be used to locate faults. In efforts to increase accuracy, the use of traveling wave theory to locate faults has become more popular. This thesis goes through the process of designing and testing a traveling wave fault locator. The design includes analog and digital filtering of the traveling wave signal. The signal passes through an analog high-pass filter that eliminates the fundamental frequency component, an analog low-pass filter that eliminates aliasing, a digital lowpass filter to smooth out the signal, a differentiator to determine the signal’s time of arrival, and a peak finder to detect the exact time. Using PSCAD and MATLAB, the traveling wave relay is analyzed with single line-to-ground and line-to-line faults on a power system comparable to the IEEE 9-bus system. The results show that this fault locator is accurate within ±200 feet from the fault on a 105-mile line when optimized

Data assimilation and the adjoint method: an overview

May 1991.Includes bibliographical references.In this note a general description of the application of the adjoint method for four dimensional data assimilation is given. The main focus of this discussion is that this method when applied to a discrete model is simply an application of the chair rule of multivariate calculus to compute the gradient of a real valued function of several variables. Several different time differencing schemes are considered, as well as, two examples of discrete models.Research supported by U.S. Army Research Office under Grant no. DAAL 03-86-K-0175

An economic analysis of grid-connected residential solar photovoltaic power systems

Prepared for the United States Dept. of Energy under Contract no. EX-76-A-01-2295, Task order 37.The question of the utility grid-connected residential market for photovoltaics is examined from a user-ownership perspective. The price is calculated at which the user would be economically indifferent between having a photovoltaic system and not having a system. To accomplish this, a uniform methodology is defined to determine the value to the user-owner of weather-dependent electric generation technologies. Two models are implemented for three regions of the United States, the first of which is a previously developed simulation of a photovoltaic residence. The second is an economic valuation model which is required to translate the ouputs from the simulation into breakeven array prices. Special care is taken to specify the input assumptions used in the models. The accompanying analysis includes a method for analyzing the year-to-year variation in hourly solar radiation data and a discussion of the appropriate discount rate to apply to homeowner investments in photovoltaic systems. The results of this study indicate that for the regions characterized by Boston, Omaha, and Phoenix, under the assumptions noted, photovoltaic module breakeven costs for the residential application are in the range of $.68,$.43 and $1.27 per peak system watt respectively (.42, .24, .89 per peak module watt)

Portable dynamic fundus instrument

A portable diagnostic image analysis instrument is disclosed for retinal funduscopy in which an eye fundus image is optically processed by a lens system to a charge coupled device (CCD) which produces recordable and viewable output data and is simultaneously viewable on an electronic view finder. The fundus image is processed to develop a representation of the vessel or vessels from the output data

The community economies of Esch-sur-Alzette: rereading the economy of Luxembourg

This article outlines the community economies of Esch-sur-Alzette, the ‘second city’ of Luxembourg. ‘Community economies’ – an approach outlined by J.K. Gibson-Graham – draws attention to alternative narratives of economic development and the representation of economic identity. Despite (the Grand Duchy of) Luxembourg’s reputation as a European Union centre, with substantial finance and tax activity, Esch-sur-Alzette is a post-industrial and multilingual melting pot. The alternative narrative here is of the multiple community-based organisations and movements in Esch-sur-Alzette: an energy cooperative, urban gardening, an upcycling clothing factory, a local food shop and restaurant, and vibrant civil society discussions and interventions in (inter)national politics. Civil society, while central to both understandings of grassroots environmental action and the community economies framework of Gibson-Graham, takes on quite a different flavour in Luxembourg. This article then takes the case of Luxembourg to reread the relationship of the state to the so-called third sector, in doing so defending the political possibilities of community economies