Thought Experiments, Epistemology & our Cognitive (In)Capacities

Does epistemology collapse for lack of resources other than logic, conceptual analysis and descriptions of one’s own apparent experiences, thoughts and beliefs? No, but understanding how and why not requires, Kant noted, a ‘changed method of thinking’ (veränderte Methode der Denkungsart; KdrV Bxvii, 704). Some of these methodological changes are summarised in §2 in order to identify a philosophical role for thought experiments to help identify logically contingent, though cognitively fundamental capacities and circumstances necessary to human thought, experience and knowledge. As Kant also noted, experiments are only informative in response to posing the right question, indeed: the right kind of question (KdrV Bxii–xiv). Accordingly, preparations for these epistemological thought experiments (§2) fill half of this chapter. The second half (§§3–5), examines three such thought experiments, variously developed by Kant, Hegel, C. I. Lewis, Austin, Wittgenstein and F. L. Will

Autonomy, Enlightenment, Justice, Peace – and the Precarities of Reasoning Publically

The First World War was supposed to end all wars, though soon followed WWII. Since 1945 wars continued to abound; now we confront a real prospect of a third world war. Many armed struggles and wars arise in attempts to end repressive government; still more are fomented by repressive governments, few of which acknowledge their repressive character. It is historically and culturally naive to suppose that peace is normal, and war an aberration; war, preparations for war and threats of war belong to ‘normal’ human life. Our tolerance, acceptance or fostering of such repeated injustices and atrocities indicate pervasive failures to understand fundamentals of justice, and what we owe morally to ourselves and to all others, together with our responsibilities to preserve the biosphere, not merely our own store(s) of reserves. As matters both of justice and prudence we must re-orient ourselves, individually and collectively, to promote justice, peace and ecological responsibilities by identifying and instituting just forms of social cooperation, domestically and internationally. All of these are our problems, whether we recognize them or continue our pervasive negligence. We urgently require cogent understanding of the social dimensions of human judgment, rational assessment, right action, and public reason. This requires understanding (inter alia) how Kant’s explication of rational judgment and justification is fundamentally social, how these features of rational judgment and justification are constitutive of Kant’s account of individual autonomy, and how they are central to Kant’s account of proper public use of reason. Reasoning publically remains precarious, not because – as often alleged – the ‘Enlightenment project’ has failed. It has not failed, it has been thwarted, and in our public responsibilities we have too often failed it

Thought Experiments, Epistemology & our Cognitive (In)Capacities

Does epistemology collapse for lack of resources other than logic, conceptual analysis and descriptions of one’s own apparent experiences, thoughts and beliefs? No, but understanding how and why not requires, Kant noted, a ‘changed method of thinking’ (veränderte Methode der Denkungsart; KdrV Bxvii, 704). Some of these methodological changes are summarised in §2 in order to identify a philosophical role for thought experiments to help identify logically contingent, though cognitively fundamental capacities and circumstances necessary to human thought, experience and knowledge. As Kant also noted, experiments are only informative in response to posing the right question, indeed: the right kind of question (KdrV Bxii–xiv). Accordingly, preparations for these epistemological thought experiments (§2) fill half of this chapter. The second half (§§3–5), examines three such thought experiments, variously developed by Kant, Hegel, C. I. Lewis, Austin, Wittgenstein and F. L. Will

SECOND GENERATION EXPERIMENTAL EQUIPMENT DESIGN TO SUPPORT VOLOXIDATION TESTING AT INL

Voloxidation is a potential head-end process used prior to aqueous or pyrochemical spent-oxide-fuel treatment. The spent oxide fuel is heated to an elevated temperature in oxygen or air to promote separation of the fuel from the cladding as well as volatize the fission products. The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) have been collaborating on voloxidation research through a joint International Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (I-NERI). A new furnace and off-gas trapping system (OTS) with enhanced capability was necessary to perform further testing. The design criteria for the OTS were jointly agreed upon by INL and KAERI. First, the equipment must accommodate the use of spent nuclear fuel and be capable of operating in the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF) at the INL. This primarily means the furnace and OTS must be remotely operational and maintainable. The system requires special filters and distinctive temperature zones so that the fission products can be uniquely captured. The OTS must be sealed to maximize the amount of fission products captured. Finally, to accommodate the largest range of operating conditions, the OTS must be capable of handling high temperatures and various oxidizing environments. The constructed system utilizes a vertical split-tube furnace with four independently controlled zones. One zone is capable of reaching 1200°C to promote the release of volatile fission products. The three additional zones that capture fission products can be controlled to operate between 100-1100°C. A detailed description of the OTS will be presented as well as some initial background information on high temperature seal options

Independence and property in Kant's Rechtslehre

I argue that the freedom which is to coexist with the freedom of choice of others in accordance with a universal law mentioned in Kant's Rechtslehre is not itself freedom of choice. Rather, it is the independence which is a condition of being able to exercise genuine free choice by not having to act in accordance with the choices of others. Kant's distinction between active and passive citizenship appears, however, to undermine this idea of independence, because the possession of a certain type of property right on the part of some citizens makes it possible for them to dominate others. Kant's account of property in this way turns out to be central to the question as to whether his Rechtslehre represents an internally consistent account of how freedom can be guaranteed within a legal and political community. I go on to argue that Kant's attempt to justify a pre-political right of property cannot be viewed as a successful justification of private property, and that he should have abandoned the notion of such a right together with any presumption in favour of private property

Xenobiotic CAR activators induce Dlk1-Dio3 locus non-coding RNA expression in mouse liver

Predicting the impact of human exposure to chemicals such as pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals requires the development of reliable and predictive biomarkers suitable for the detection of early events potentially leading to adverse outcomes. In particular, drug-induced non-genotoxic carcinogenesis (NGC) during preclinical development of novel therapeutics intended for chronic administration in humans is a major challenge for drug safety. We previously demonstrated Constitutive Androstane Receptor (CAR) and WNT signaling-dependent up-regulation of the pluripotency associated Dlk1-Dio3 imprinted gene cluster non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in the liver of mice treated with tumorpromoting doses of phenobarbital (PB). Here, to explore the sensitivity and the specificity of this candidate liver tumor promotion ncRNAs signature we compared phenotypic, transcriptional and proteomic data from wild-type, CAR/PXR double knock-out and CAR/PXR double humanized animals treated with tumor-promoting doses of PB or chlordane, both well-established CAR activators. We further investigated selected transcriptional profiles from mouse liver samples exposed to seven NGC compounds working through different mode of actions, overall suggesting CAR-activation specificity of the Dlk1-Dio3 long ncRNAs activation. We propose that Dlk1-Dio3 long ncRNAs up-regulation is an early CAR-activation dependent transcriptional signature during xenobiotic-induced mouse liver tumor promotion. This signature may further contribute mode of action-based ‘weight of evidence’ cancer risk assessment for xenobiotic-induced rodent liver tumors

Stellar photometry with the Hubble Space Telescope Wide-field/Planetary camera - A progress report

We describe the prospects for the use of the Wide-Field/Planetary Camera (WFPC) for stellar photometry. The large halos of the point-spread function (PSF) resulting from spherical aberration and from spatial, temporal, and color variations of the PSF are the main limitations to accurate photometry. Degradations caused by crowding are exacerbated by the halos of the PSF. Here we attempt to quantify these effects and determine the current accuracy of stellar photometry with the WFPC. In realistic cases, the brighter stars in crowded fields have 0.09 mag errors; fainter stars have larger errors depending on the degree of crowding. We find that measuring Cepheids in Virgo Cluster galaxies is not currently possible without inordinate increases in exposure times