Does Contextualism Hinge on A Methodological Dispute?

In this entry, we provide an overview of some of the methodological debates surrounding contextualism and consider whether they are, in effect, based on an underlying methodological dispute. We consider three modes of motivation of epistemic contextualism including i) the method of cases, ii) the appeal to linguistic analogies and iii) the appeal to conceptual analogies and functional roles. We also consider the methodological debates about contextualism arising from experimental philosophy. We conclude that i) there is no distinctive methodological doctrine or set of methodological doctrines that is centrally invoked by all epistemic contextualists and ii) the substantive dispute about the truth of contextualism very frequently, although not invariably, reflects an underlying methodological dispute

Dynamic simulations of water at constant chemical potential

The grand molecular dynamics (GMD) method has been extended and applied to examine the density dependence of the chemical potential of a three-site water model. The method couples a classical system to a chemical potential reservoir of particles via an ansatz Lagrangian. Equilibrium properties such as structure and thermodynamics, as well as dynamic properties such as time correlations and diffusion constants, in open systems at a constant chemical potential, are preserved with this method. The average number of molecules converges in a reasonable amount of computational effort and provides a way to estimate the chemical potential of a given model force field

Expert system training and control based on the fuzzy relation matrix

Fuzzy knowledge, that for which the terms of reference are not crisp but overlapped, seems to characterize human expertise. This can be shown from the fact that an experienced human operator can control some complex plants better than a computer can. Proposed here is fuzzy theory to build a fuzzy expert relation matrix (FERM) from given rules or/and examples, either in linguistic terms or in numerical values to mimic human processes of perception and decision making. The knowledge base is codified in terms of many implicit fuzzy rules. Fuzzy knowledge thus codified may also be compared with explicit rules specified by a human expert. It can also provide a basis for modeling the human operator and allow comparison of what a human operator says to what he does in practice. Two experiments were performed. In the first, control of liquid in a tank, demonstrates how the FERM knowledge base is elicited and trained. The other shows how to use a FERM, build up from linguistic rules, and to control an inverted pendulum without a dynamic model