A Better Disjunctivist Response to the 'New Evil Genius' Challenge

This paper aims for a more robust epistemological disjunctivism (ED) by offering on its behalf a new and better response to the ‘new evil genius’ problem. The first section articulates the ‘new evil genius challenge’ (NEG challenge) to ED, specifying its two components: the ‘first-order’ and ‘diagnostic’ problems for ED. The first-order problem challenges proponents of ED to offer some explanation of the intuition behind the thought that your radically deceived duplicate is no less justified than you are for adopting her perceptual beliefs. In the second section, I argue that 'blamelessness' explanations are inadequate to the task and offer better explanations in their place—that of ‘trait-level virtue’ and ‘reasonability’. The diagnostic problem challenges proponents of ED to explain why it is that classical internalists disagree with them about how to interpret 'new evil genius' considerations. The proponent of ED owes some error theory. I tackle this problem in the third section, arguing that classical internalists overlook disjunctivist interpretations of new evil genius intuitions owing to a mistaken commitment to a ‘vindicatory’ explanation of perceptual knowledge

Faith as Extended Knowledge

You don’t know that p unless it’s on account of your cognitive abilities that you believe truly that p. Virtue epistemologists think there’s some such ability constraint on knowledge. This looks to be in considerable tension, though, with putative faith- based knowledge. For it can easily seem that when you believe something truly on the basis of faith this isn't because of anything you're competent to do. Rather faith-based beliefs are a product of divine agency. Appearances notwithstanding, I argue in this paper that there’s no deep tension between faith-based knowledge and virtue epistemology. Not if we learn to conceive of faith as a kind of extended knowledge

A Plea for the Theist in the Street

It can be easy to assume that since the “theist in the street” is unaware of any of the traditional arguments for theism, he or she is not in position to offer independent rational support for believing that God exists. I argue that that is false if we accept with William Alston that “manifestation beliefs” can enjoy rational support on the basis of suitable religious experiences. I make my case by defending the viability of a Moorean-style proof for theism—a proof for the existence of God that parallels in structure G. E. Moore’s famous proof for the existence of the external world. I argue that this shows that even if the theist in the street has nothing to offer for helping to convince the religious sceptic, this needn’t entail that she cannot offer independent rational support in defense of her theistic belief

How many lone parents are receiving tax credits?

When data on child poverty in 2003/04 were released, the fall in child poverty since 2002/03 was smaller than had been expected. Brewer et al. (2005) identified several reasons that might explain this, one of which was that the Family Resources Survey (FRS) - the data-set from which the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) income series is currently derived - may have been under-recording the number of families receiving tax credits (or the equivalent level of support in out-of-work benefits) and therefore underestimating the incomes of some low-income families with children. Brewer et al. (2006), who analyse what happened to child poverty between 1998/99 and 2004/05, show that estimates of spending on tax credits received by families with children based on the FRS have been getting increasingly inaccurate over time compared with estimates made by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), with around £5 billion of spending on tax credits received by families with children going unrecorded by the FRS in 2004/05. However, a detailed comparison of estimates of the number of families with children receiving tax credits (or equivalent in out-of-work benefits) based on the FRS with the equivalent estimates based on the government's administrative data is confounded by the fact that HMRC estimates that the government is paying the child tax credit and the equivalent in out-of-work benefits to more lone parents than official statistics suggest live in the UK

Transport in a sustainable urban future

Transport is acknowledged as a vital ingredient of any credible strategy for the sustainable city because of the key role it plays in promoting economic development, quality of life and wellbeing. Yet managing urban transport effectively, given its complex and intersecting economic, environmental and social impacts, is also precisely the kind of ‘wicked problem’ that policy makers consistently find hard to resolve (Docherty and Shaw, 2011a; Conklin, 2006; Rittel and Webber, 1973). Many of the reasons for this are longstanding and emanate in particular from the dominance of the private car in meeting the demand for mobility, which has built up over many decades in the developed world, but which is now being reproduced at a much higher pace in the fast growing cities of the Pacific Rim and elsewhere (Newman and Kenworthy, 1999; Lyons and Loo, 2008). Although it has undoubtedly transformed our patterns of travel and consumption, concerns over the limitations and externalities of private car transport – primarily traffic congestion, environmental degradation and social exclusion – have for many years stimulated various initiatives designed to mitigate these externalities (Feitelson and Verhoef, 2001; Knowles et al, 2008). The conflict between the car, long promoted by neoliberal voices as a potent weapon of the free market and individual liberty, and competing visions of a more ‘public’ transport system based on collective modes such as the bus and train, and active travel by walking and cycling, has been played out over many years. Nowhere has this conflict been more intense than in cities, as it is here that the problems such as congestion, poor local air quality and mobility deprivation are often at their most intense (Cahill, 2010; Docherty et al, 2008)

Tester automatically checks insulation of individual conductors in multiple-strand cables

Insulation tester checks multiple-strand electrical cables in nuclear rocket reactors. It has both manual and automatic capabilities and can check the insulation of a cable with 200 or more conductors in a few minutes

Families and Children Strategic Analysis Programme (FACSAP): Childcare use and mothers’ employment: a review of British data sources

In this paper we investigate recent trends in childcare use amongst families in Great Britain, and provide a thorough comparison of the different household survey and administrative datasets. The three datasets in questions are Families and Children Study (FACS), Family Resources Survey (FRS), Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Parents’ Demand for Childcare (PDFC)

Schemes and estimates for the long-time numerical solution of Maxwell’s equations for Lorentz metamaterials

We consider time domain formulations of Maxwell's equations for the Lorentz model for metamaterials. The field equations are considered in two different forms which have either six or four unknown vector fields. In each case we use arguments tuned to the physical laws to derive data-stability estimates which do not require Gronwall's inequality. The resulting estimates are, in this sense, sharp. We also give fully discrete formulations for each case and extend the sharp data-stability to these. Since the physical problem is linear it follows (and we show this with examples) that this stability property is also reflected in the constants appearing in the a priori error bounds. By removing the exponential growth in time from these estimates we conclude that these schemes can be used with confidence for the long-time numerical simulation of Lorentz metamaterials.This work was supported in part by NSFC Project 11271310, NSF grant DMS-1416742, and a grant from the Simons Foundation (#281296 to Li), in part by scheme 4 London Mathematical Society funding and in part by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/H011072/1 to Shaw)

NASA's Aircraft Icing Analysis Program

An overview of the NASA ongoing efforts to develop an aircraft icing analysis capability is presented. Discussions are included of the overall and long term objectives of the program as well as current capabilities and limitations of the various computer codes being developed. Descriptions are given of codes being developed to analyze two and three dimensional trajectories of water droplets, airfoil ice accretion, aerodynamic performance degradation of components and complete aircraft configurations, electrothermal deicer, fluid freezing point depressant antideicer and electro-impulse deicer. The need for bench mark and verification data to support the code development is also discussed, and selected results of experimental programs are presented