Defeating Naturalism: Defending and Reformulating Plantinga\u27s EAAN

Abstract: During the past two decades, Alvin Plantinga has formulated an argument against naturalism that focuses on naturalism’s acceptance of contemporary evolutionary theory. Plantinga argues that given naturalism and evolution, our cognitive faculties have been developed to produce beliefs that meet the Darwinian requirement of survival and reproduction. Plantinga argues that accepting this will lead a naturalist to have a defeater for all of their beliefs, including their belief in naturalism. In this paper, I survey and respond to two types of objections that have been given as a response to Plantinga’s argument. The first objection that I interact with is an objection given by Michael Bergmann. Bergmann argues that a naturalist can continue to hold on to both their naturalism and their belief that their faculties are reliable, even if the probability of their faculties being reliable is low. The second objection that I interact with is an objection that can be seen in the work of Jerry Fodor and Stephen Law. This objection argues that beliefs that enable survival and reproduction will likely be truth conducive and thus, the chance of having reliable faculties is high. I respond to this argument by first reiterating Plantinga’s traditional response to this objection. After I clarify and defend this traditional response, I then reformulate Plantinga’s argument to specifically address metaphysical beliefs. Not only does this give the non-naturalist two different responses to this objection, but I take it that the reformulation could be seen as even more persuasive than the traditional formulation

Characterizing Exoplanet Habitability

A habitable exoplanet is a world that can maintain stable liquid water on its surface. Techniques and approaches to characterizing such worlds are essential, as performing a census of Earth-like planets that may or may not have life will inform our understanding of how frequently life originates and is sustained on worlds other than our own. Observational techniques like high contrast imaging and transit spectroscopy can reveal key indicators of habitability for exoplanets. Both polarization measurements and specular reflectance from oceans (also known as "glint") can provide direct evidence for surface liquid water, while constraining surface pressure and temperature (from moderate resolution spectra) can indicate liquid water stability. Observations of variability (that indicates weather) from, as well as mapping of, exoplanets can provide indirect evidence of habitability, and measurements of water vapor or cloud profiles that indicate condensation near a surface could also provide evidence for habitability. Approaches to making the types of measurements that indicate habitability are diverse, and have different considerations for the required wavelength range, spectral resolution, maximum noise levels, stellar host temperature, and observing geometry.Comment: To be published in: Handbook of Exoplanets, 2nd Edition, Hans Deeg and Juan Antonio Belmonte (Eds. in Chief), Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Natur

The Holy Land of Matrimony: The Complex Legacy of the Broomstick Wedding in American History

Many enslaved people in North America married by jumping the broomstick, but following their emancipation in 1865 most newly freed African Americans discarded the tradition. They believed it held embarrassing reminders of a period when black relationships were widely disrespected.  By the late twentieth century, however, the custom recaptured African American interest, building on the popularity of scholarly literature and popular movements that emphasized the unique cultural traditions of enslaved Americans. This article examines the broomstick wedding’s broader appeal in American history, providing context to recent debates surrounding the custom’s pertinence to black and white Americans. I reveal that broomstick weddings were initially produced through transatlantic cultural exchanges during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Couples marrying in broomstick fashion were associated with multiple groups upon the British Isles, such as gypsies and Celtic peoples, as well as poor whites and slaves in North America. Analyzing the ritual’s importance within these various communities provides context for examining the broomstick wedding’s function for enslaved laborers in North America before and after Emancipation. This study then analyzes the custom’s lingering influence in postbellum America and moves beyond the publication of Alex Haley’s Roots as the singular event that restructured African American culture and heritage. We should more appropriately view Roots’ depiction of Kunta Kinte’s broomstick marriage as a product of a preceding literary movement in African American scholarship and folk culture. By examining the ritual’s multicultural origins, this article provides the first detailed analysis of the broomstick wedding’s unique position in American history

An existence theorem for solutions to a model problem with Yamabe-positive metric for conformal parameterizations of the Einstein constraint equations

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2016We use the conformal method to investigate solutions of the vacuum Einstein constraint equations on a manifold with a Yamabe-positive metric. To do so, we develop a model problem with symmetric data on Sn⁻¹ x S¹. We specialize the model problem to a two-parameter family of conformal data, and find that no solutions exist when the transverse-traceless tensor is identically zero. When the transverse traceless tensor is nonzero, we observe an existence theorem in both the near-constant mean curvature and far-from-constant mean curvature regimes.Chapter 1: Introduction and Background -- 1.1 Motivation -- 1.2 Overview of Relativity -- 1.3 Geometric Formulation of General Relativity -- 1.4 The Constraint Equations -- 1.5 Conformal Parameterizations -- Chapter 2: Symmetric Data on Sn⁻¹ x S¹ -- Chapter 3: Solutions of the Constraint Equations -- 3.1. Summary of Results -- 3.2. Reduction to Root Finding -- 3.3. Solutions of F(b) = 1 -- 3.3.1. Elementary Estimates for F -- 3.3.2 Proof of Theorem 1 (Near-CMC Results) -- 3.3.3 Proof of Theorem 2 (Existence) -- Chapter 4: Conclusion and Future Work -- References

Interpretation at the controller's edge: designing graphical user interfaces for the digital publication of the excavations at Gabii (Italy)

This paper discusses the authors’ approach to designing an interface for the Gabii Project’s digital volumes that attempts to fuse elements of traditional synthetic publications and site reports with rich digital datasets. Archaeology, and classical archaeology in particular, has long engaged with questions of the formation and lived experience of towns and cities. Such studies might draw on evidence of local topography, the arrangement of the built environment, and the placement of architectural details, monuments and inscriptions (e.g. Johnson and Millett 2012). Fundamental to the continued development of these studies is the growing body of evidence emerging from new excavations. Digital techniques for recording evidence “on the ground,” notably SFM (structure from motion aka close range photogrammetry) for the creation of detailed 3D models and for scene-level modeling in 3D have advanced rapidly in recent years. These parallel developments have opened the door for approaches to the study of the creation and experience of urban space driven by a combination of scene-level reconstruction models (van Roode et al. 2012, Paliou et al. 2011, Paliou 2013) explicitly combined with detailed SFM or scanning based 3D models representing stratigraphic evidence. It is essential to understand the subtle but crucial impact of the design of the user interface on the interpretation of these models. In this paper we focus on the impact of design choices for the user interface, and make connections between design choices and the broader discourse in archaeological theory surrounding the practice of the creation and consumption of archaeological knowledge. As a case in point we take the prototype interface being developed within the Gabii Project for the publication of the Tincu House. In discussing our own evolving practices in engagement with the archaeological record created at Gabii, we highlight some of the challenges of undertaking theoretically-situated user interface design, and their implications for the publication and study of archaeological materials