A Theory of Presentism

Also appears in: (1) L.N.Oaklander and E.Magalhaes (eds.) Presentism: A Reader (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010) (2) L.N. Oaklander (ed.) Routledge Major Works: The Philosophy of Time: Critical Concepts in Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2008)Most of us would want to say that it is true that Socrates taught Plato. According to realists about past facts, this is made true by the fact that there is, located in the past, i.e., earlier than now, at least one real event that is the teaching of Plato by Socrates. Presentists, however, in denying that past events and facts exist cannot appeal to such facts to make their past-tensed statements true. So what is a presentist to do? There are at least three conditions that would ideally be met in a satisfactory solution to this problem: (1) It must preserve our views about which statements are true and which false; (2) It must be transparent what the truthmakers are for those statements; (3) It must accommodate the truth-value links between various times. I shall survey two different families of proposals for the presentist's truthmakers and show that they fail at least one of these three conditions. This is not entirely negative, for it shows us what an adequate solution to the problem would look like. I go on to show where presentists can find suitable objects that satisfy these conditions, and in this way give a clear statement of presentism, something that is lacking in the literature.Peer reviewe

Explanation and Quasi-Miracles in Narrative Understanding: The Case of Poetic Justice

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Craig Bourne, and Emily Caddick Bourne, ‘Explanation and Quasi‐miracles in Narrative Understanding: The Case of Poetic Justice’, Dialectica, Vol. 71 (4): 563-579, January 2018, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/1746-8361.12201. Under embargo until 29 January 2020. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.David Lewis introduced the idea of a quasi-miracle to overcome a problem in his initial account of counterfactuals. Here we put the notion of a quasi-miracle to a different and new use, showing that it offers a novel account of the phenomenon of poetic justice, where characters in a narrative get their due by happy accident (for example, when the murderer of King Mitys happens to be crushed by a falling statue of Mitys). The key to understanding poetic justice is to see what makes poetically just events remarkable coincidences. We argue that remarkable coincidence is to be understood in terms of a distinctive type of experience quasi-miracles offer. Cases of poetic justice offer a dual awareness of the accidental nature of the events and of a non-accidental process, involving intention, which it appears would explain them. We also extend this account to incorporate how we might experience magic tricks. An account of poetic justice as quasi-miraculous allows us to account for the experience of encounters with poetic justice, as involving the incongruity of seeing design in accident.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Forging Commonwealth consensus: the buck stops with the Secretary-General

The Commonwealth is in danger of letting its commitments to both the agenda of democracy and rights, and the agenda of development, become sterile and vacuous. The argument that has been raging over creating a Commissioner for Democracy, the Rule of Law and Human Rights reflects a dysfunctional organisation, stuck in an outdated North-South stand-off, crying out for creative leadership. Here, Richard Bourne argues that the Commonwealth Secretariat must build consensus, and galvanise governments to take practical ownership of the values that, in the new Commonwealth Charter, they will be claiming to promote. When few leaders spend time thinking how to use their Commonwealth networks, it is the job of the Secretary General to show them

Participants’ reflections on being interviewed about risk and sexual behaviour: implications for collection of qualitative data on sensitive topics

In this article, we explore how those taking part in an interview about sex and risk reflected on their participation and what, if any, impact it had on them. All 22 individuals who were interviewed in an initial study were invited to document their thoughts and feelings about the research process in a short follow-up exercise. The data relating to the 11 people who shared their reflections on the interview were subjected to a thematic analysis. The themes that emerged describe the value participants placed on honest and open interaction within neutral and non-judgmental environments. They also illustrate how being interviewed about prior behaviour can facilitate a sense-making process and might provide some degree of cathartic benefit. The findings help improve our understanding of how individuals reflect on their interview participation, which can in turn help to inform the development of ethically sensitive qualitative data collection

Non-Commutative Chern Numbers for Generic Aperiodic Discrete Systems

The search for strong topological phases in generic aperiodic materials and meta-materials is now vigorously pursued by the condensed matter physics community. In this work, we first introduce the concept of patterned resonators as a unifying theoretical framework for topological electronic, photonic, phononic etc. (aperiodic) systems. We then discuss, in physical terms, the philosophy behind an operator theoretic analysis used to systematize such systems. A model calculation of the Hall conductance of a 2-dimensional amorphous lattice is given, where we present numerical evidence of its quantization in the mobility gap regime. Motivated by such facts, we then present the main result of our work, which is the extension of the Chern number formulas to Hamiltonians associated to lattices without a canonical labeling of the sites, together with index theorems that assure the quantization and stability of these Chern numbers in the mobility gap regime. Our results cover a broad range of applications, in particular, those involving quasi-crystalline, amorphous as well as synthetic (i.e. algorithmically generated) lattices.Comment: 44 pages, 4 figures. v2: typos corrected and references updated. v3: Minor changes, to appear in J. Phys. A (Mathematical and Theoretical

Ten Simple Rules for Making Good Oral Presentations

1 documento en pdf de 174 páginas.El presente proyecto describió los cambios, avances, y transformaciones que generó el diseño y la implementación de un ambiente de aprendizaje mediado por TIC en la segmentación analítica que es un nivel de desarrollo de pensamiento y a la exposición oral de los estudiantes de grado sexto jornada mañana, Colegio Paraíso Mirador, sede C, localidad Ciudad Bolívar, Bogotá D. C, Colombia. La muestra del proyecto fue por conveniencia, no probabilística y presentó 37 estudiantes (21 hombres y 16 mujeres) del curso 602. El tipo de estudio del proyecto fue cualitativo-descriptivo, estudio de caso. La fundamentación pedagógica se basó en el aprendizaje significativo aunque también presentó algunos elementos conductistas y constructivistas. El ambiente de aprendizaje TIC influyó fortaleciendo la fluidez oral, el discurso y la coherencia en las exposiciones; por otra parte, identificó aspectos a mejorar como la pronunciación, voz baja, vocabulario, inferencia de términos especializados, cortesía comunicativa, escucha, atención, prudencia, particularización de herramientas y detalles comunicativos fonológicos importantes; también influyó a nivel científico fortaleciendo analíticamente el pensamiento de los educandos