8,263 research outputs found
In Breakable Glasses: Toward a Naturalist Orientational Cosmology
The author develops the formula, "that process that gives rise to all that exists," as a specification of the cosmos within which human life may find meaningful, ethical orientation. Her position intends to be consonant with the natural sciences and conversant with traditional orientational cosmologies of the world religions. After analyzing each of the key terms in this central formula, she provisionally proposes three ethical stances (humility, responsibility, and celebration) that might follow from orientation to the cosmos seen as "that process that gives rise to all that exists.
The Evolution of American Microtargeting: An Examination of Trends in Political Messaging
The usage of targeted messaging by political campaigns has seen a drastic evolution over the past half-century. Through advancement in campaign technology, and an increasingly large amount of personal information up for sale, campaigns have continually narrowed their scope from targeting large demographic groups to targeting each voter individually through a process called microtargeting. This presentation examines both the history of microtargeting in American politics, and the potential effects of its utilization
Ethics and the Perfect Moral Law
Summary
This paper examines contemporary virtue ethics and the claim that Christian ethics is a virtue ethic. Three central theses are identified as being central to virtue ethics: a priority thesis, a perfectionist thesis and a communitarian thesis. It is argued that defences of the priority thesisâit best addresses the moral crisis in our society, it does justice to historical consciousness and it remedies the incompleteness in deontic ethicsâare unconvincing. It is argued that virtue and moral perfection are best understood in terms of psychologically appropriate dispositions to act in accordance with moral principles. It is further argued that the communitarian thesis raises relativist difficulties and fails to do justice to the universal elements of morality. Each of these arguments is developed philosophically and the implications for Christian ethics are explored. In light of the theory of virtue sketched in the paper it is concluded that the independence thesis, upon which virtue ethics rests, is untenable and that an examination of the structure of the universal moral principles underlying the Christian faith remains the proper subject matter for Christian ethics
The Principle of Analogy
The Principle of Analogy.
ABSTRACT.
Sceptics question whether âdistinctively humanâ predicates such as âjustâ, âlovingâ and âpowerfulâ can intelligibly be attributed to a divine being. If not, then a vicious form of agnosticism seems to threaten orthodox theism. Especially if one assumes a broadly empiricist semantics the challenge, whether formulated in terms of a univocal or an equivocal understanding of predicates, seems to generate intractable philosophical problems. Aquinasâ theory of analogical predication, understood either in terms of âanalogy duorum ad tertiumâ or in terms of âanalogy unus ad alterumâ, is an influential response to this sceptical challenge. Difficulties in each understanding are explored and it is suggested that a more fruitful framework for understanding theistic language is to be found in late 20th century nativism of Fodor and Quine
Moral Projection and the Intelligibility of Collective Forgiveness
ABSTRACT.
The paper explores the philosophical intelligibility of contemporary defences of collective political forgiveness against a background of sceptical doubt, both general and particular. Three genera sceptical arguments are examined: one challenges the idea that political collectives exist; another challenges the idea that moral agency can be projected upon political collectives; a final argument challenges the attribution of emotions, especially anger, to collectives. Each of these sceptical arguments is rebutted. At a more particular level, the contrasts between individual forgiveness and collective forgiveness gives rise to various problems and the âdesiderataâ for their resolution - authority, specificity and temporal proximity - are briefly explored
Rings in the Extreme: PCNA Interactions and Adaptations in the Archaea
Biochemical and structural analysis of archaeal proteins has enabled us to gain great insight into many eukaryotic processes, simultaneously offering fascinating glimpses into the adaptation and evolution of proteins at the extremes of life. The archaeal PCNAs, central to DNA replication and repair, are no exception. Characterisation of the proteins alone, and in complex with both peptides and protein binding partners, has demonstrated the diversity and subtlety in the regulatory role of these sliding clamps. Equally, studies have provided valuable detailed insight into the adaptation of protein interactions and mechanisms that are necessary for life in extreme environments
Propagator with Positive Cosmological Constant in the 3D Euclidian Quantum Gravity Toy Model
We study the propagator on a single tetrahedron in a three dimensional toy
model of quantum gravity with positive cosmological constant. The cosmological
constant is included in the model via q-deformation of the spatial symmetry
algebra, that is, we use the Tuarev-Viro amplitude. The expected repulsive
effect of dark energy is recovered in numerical and analytic calculations of
the propagator at large scales comparable to the infrared cutoff. However, due
to the simplicity of the model we do not obtain the exact Newton limit of the
propagator. This is a first step toward the similar calculation in the full 3+1
dimensional theory with larger numbers of simplicies.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure
National Launch System: Structures and materials
The National Launch System provides an opportunity to realize the potential of Al-Li. Advanced structures can reduce weights by 5-40 percent as well as relax propulsion system performance specifications and reduce requirements for labor and materials. The effect on costs will be substantial. Advanced assembly and process control technologies also offer the potential for greatly reduced labor during the manufacturing and inspection processes. Current practices are very labor-intensive and, as a result, labor costs far outweigh material costs for operational space transportation systems. The technological readiness of new structural materials depends on their commercial availability, producibility and materials properties. Martin Marietta is vigorously pursuing the development of its Weldalite 049 Al-Li alloys in each of these areas. Martin Marietta is also preparing to test an automated work cell concept that it has developed using discrete event simulation
A coarse-grained generalized second law for holographic conformal field theories
We consider the universal sector of a -dimensional large-
strongly-interacting holographic CFT on a black hole spacetime background .
When our CFT is coupled to dynamical Einstein-Hilbert gravity with Newton
constant , the combined system can be shown to satisfy a version of the
thermodynamic Generalized Second Law (GSL) at leading order in . The
quantity is
non-decreasing, where is the (time-dependent) area
of the new event horizon in the coupled theory. Our is the notion of
(coarse-grained) CFT entropy outside the black hole given by causal holographic
information -- a quantity in turn defined in the AdS dual by the
renormalized area of a corresponding bulk causal
horizon. A corollary is that the fine-grained GSL must hold for finite
processes taken as a whole, though local decreases of the fine-grained
generalized entropy are not obviously forbidden. Another corollary, given by
setting , states that no finite process taken as a whole can
increase the renormalized free energy , with constants set by . This latter corollary
constitutes a 2nd law for appropriate non-compact AdS event horizons.Comment: minor corrections, 18 page
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