The nature of doubt and a new puzzle about belief, doubt, and confidence

In this paper, I present and defend a novel account of doubt. In Part 1, I make some preliminary observations about the nature of doubt. In Part 2, I introduce a new puzzle about the relationship between three psychological states: doubt, belief, and confidence. I present this puzzle because my account of doubt emerges as a possible solution to it. Lastly, in Part 3, I elaborate on and defend my account of doubt. Roughly, one has doubt if and only if one believes one might be wrong; I argue that this is superior to the account that says that one has doubt if and only if one has less than the highest degree of confidence

Credence: A Belief-First Approach

This paper explains and defends a belief-first view of the relationship between belief and credence. On this view, credences are a species of beliefs, and the degree of credence is determined by the content of what is believed. We begin by developing what we take to be the most plausible belief-first view. Then, we offer several arguments for it. Finally, we show how it can resist objections that have been raised to belief-first views. We conclude that the belief-first view is more plausible than many have previously supposed

Beliefs do not come in degrees

Philosophers commonly say that beliefs come in degrees. Drawing from the literature, I make precise three arguments for this claim: an argument from degrees of confidence, an argument from degrees of firmness, and an argument from natural language. I show that they all fail. I also advance three arguments that beliefs do not come in degrees: an argument from natural language, an argument from intuition, and an argument from the metaphysics of degrees. On the basis of these arguments, I conclude that beliefs do not come in degrees

Reformed Epistemology, Clairvoyance, and the Role of Evidence

Reformed epidemiologists like Alvin Plantinga and William Alston are well known for their view that one can rationally believe that God exists without believing on the basis of any evidence - scientific, philosophical, or otherwise. I defend reformed epistemology from objections (including one having to do with clairvoyance), and I develop a view about the role that evidence should play in the rationality of theistic belief

Physical constraints on accuracy and persistence during breast cancer cell chemotaxis

Directed cell motion in response to an external chemical gradient occurs in many biological phenomena such as wound healing, angiogenesis, and cancer metastasis. Chemotaxis is often characterized by the accuracy, persistence, and speed of cell motion, but whether any of these quantities is physically constrained by the others is poorly understood. Using a combination of theory, simulations, and 3D chemotaxis assays on single metastatic breast cancer cells, we investigate the links among these different aspects of chemotactic performance. In particular, we observe in both experiments and simulations that the chemotactic accuracy, but not the persistence or speed, increases with the gradient strength. We use a random walk model to explain this result and to propose that cells' chemotactic accuracy and persistence are mutually constrained. Our results suggest that key aspects of chemotactic performance are inherently limited regardless of how favorable the environmental conditions are

Negotiating Time: Design as Historical Practice

In North Jakarta, the bulldozed remnants of the April 11 (2016) eviction of Kampung Pasar Ikan presented a site of radical transformation and urban planning. The eviction was in part motivated by a Dutch-Indonesian alliance, to construct a 40 billion USD sea wall and reclaimed islands to prevent the city from slowly sinking. In this text we start by asking, how are people living in Pasar Ikan responding to and enacting their own futures through repair? What does repair in a landscape of complete disrepair look like? And how is history both erased and enacted in this process? We then move to West Kalimantan where a DIY drone collective makes aerial drone technology and trains groups to map land that they say is vulnerable to incursions by resource developers. We ask, how is the forest located, recognized and constituted by these and other cartographic practices? Whose time and in what time are forest boundaries set and reset by mapping techniques in West Kalimantan? How do these cartographies become artifacts that travel and influence how history is thought and practiced

Adhesion Lithography Peel Tool Design

This document describes the adhesion lithography peel tool, designed for the automation of the final step of the adhesion lithography process

Adhesion lithography for large-area patterning of asymmetric nanogap electrodes

As the resolution of devices in the electronics industry has hit the nanoscale, device fabrication costs have rapidly increased. Whilst commercial technologies such as electron-beam lithography are able to define nanoscale features, they are costly and unsuitable for large area electronics. Research is now focusing on fabrication techniques that can pattern features on the nanoscale on flexible substrates, over large areas without incurring these high costs, such as adhesion lithography (a-Lith). A-Lith is a large-scale fabrication technique for producing planar asymmetric nanogap electrodes [1]. Devices have been created with gap width:length aspect ratios \u3e100000. The technique can be carried out in air and at ambient temperature making it ideal for the field of plastic electronics [2]. The a-Lith technique relies on a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) molecule selectively coating a prepatterned metal (M1) which then changes the adhesion forces. A second metal (M2) is then deposited over the top and can be specifically patterned when peeled using an adhesive due to its reduced adhesion on M1 relative to elsewhere. M2 only remains in the areas where there is no M1 (in the areas where it directly contacts the substrate). Where M2 fractures at the edge of M1, a nanogap (≈10 nm) is formed between the two metals [1]. A-Lith has shown improved device performance across many areas of device electronics as the ability to pattern electrodes side-by-side largely eliminates parasitic capacitances. Such electrodes have been utilized in device applications including high responsivity photodiodes [3], nano organic light emitting diodes [4], memristors [2] and high speed diodes [5]. This fabrication technique was previously only successfully carried out with Al, Au and Ti as M1, and Al and Au as M2, with the Al and Au (with an Al adhesion layer) thermally evaporated. In this work, a-Lith has been successful executed with a variety of materials sputtered including Cu, Ni, Ti, Mo, Cr and Al as M1. M2 is shown to be successful with Al, Ni, Cu and Cr. This has allowed for further devices applications to be explored including devices utilizing 2D materials. References [1] D. J. Beesley et al., “Sub-15-nm patterning of asymmetric metal electrodes and devices by adhesion lithography.” Nat. Commun., vol. 5, (2014), p. 3933. [2] J. Semple et al., “Large-area plastic nanogap electronics enabled by adhesion lithography,” npj Flex. Electron., vol. 18, (2018). [3] G. Wyatt-Moon, et al., “Deep Ultraviolet Copper(I) Thiocyanate (CuSCN) Photodetectors Based on Coplanar Nanogap Electrodes Fabricated via Adhesion Lithography,” ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, vol. 9, (2017), p. 41965. [4] G. Wyatt-Moon, et al., “Flexible nanogap polymer light-emitting diodes fabricated via adhesion lithography (a-Lith),” J. Phys. Mater, vol. 1, (2018). [5] J. Semple et al., “Radio Frequency Coplanar ZnO Schottky Nanodiodes Processed from Solution on Plastic Substrates,” Small, vol. 12, (2016), p. 1993