Matilal's Metaethics

Bimal Krishna Matilal (1935-1991) was a Harvard-educated Indian philosopher best known for his contributions to logic, but who also wrote on wide variety of topics, including metaethics. Unfortunately, the latter contributions have been overlooked. Engaging with Anglo-American figures such as Gilbert Harman and Bernard Williams, Matilal defends a view he dubs ‘pluralism.’ In defending this view he draws on a wide range of classical Indian sources: the Bhagavad-Gītā, Buddhist thinkers like Nāgārjuna, and classical Jaina concepts. This pluralist position is somewhere between relativism and absolutist realism. Unlike the relativist, he argues that there is a genuinely universal morality; unlike the absolutist, he argues that there are multiple, but often conflicting and incommensurable, moral frameworks and ideals. This paper will explain his objections to relativism, as well as flesh out his suggestive remarks about his own pluralistic account

What Do SLPs Need to Consider When Picking a Peer for Peer-Mediated Intervention?

Peer-mediated intervention consists of the instruction of particular strategies to a small group of peers that demonstrates strengths in communication and social interactions with classmates diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder(ASD)(Thiemann-Bourque et. al., 2016). Peer-mediated intervention in a school setting is essential because it integrates the education of all children to provide opportunities to address play and functional communication skills.https://griffinshare.fontbonne.edu/slp-posters-2023/1027/thumbnail.jp

Estimating node lifetime in interference environments

For commercial Wireless Sensor Network (WSNs) deployments it is necessary to estimate the network lifetime. It must be possible before network deployment to determine how long a network maintains operational before maintenance is required and batteries have to be replaced. Unfortunately, node lifetime is very dependent on the radio environment in which the node is operated. As we will demonstrate in this paper the node lifetime in a very busy radio environment can be up to 11 times shorter than in a quiet environment. WSNs employ duty-cycled communication protocols where receivers periodically sample the channel to determine if it has to remain active to receive a message. Radio interference triggers the receive mechanism causing an unnecessary wake-up which leads to an increase in a node’s energy consumption. In this paper we present a method for estimating node energy consumption in a target radio environment. We describe how to capture the essential characteristics of the radio environment and how to use this information to predict node lifetime. We demonstrate the usability of the proposed method using the well known WSN communication protocol ContikiMAC. Our evaluation comprising real-world scenarios shows that the proposed method is able to accurately predict node lifetime

A Plea for Emoji

It’s interesting and a bit surprising how little attention philosophy has given to the status of emoji, those funny little symbols that punctuate text messages, Twitter, and other digital spaces. They have become ubiquitous, but maybe because they’re seen as frivolous or a “lower” form of communication, philosophy hasn’t paid them much mind. But they are an interesting aesthetic phenomenon. They are part language, part representational image. They are phenomenologically interesting in their effect on how we experience the written word. They punctuate, accentuate, emphasize, and add flavor to our communication in ways that are difficult to achieve otherwise. It would not be ridiculous to say that they represent a genuine linguistic development—a change in conventional orthography, and of an almost unbelievably sudden and dramatic, even revolutionary, kind