Alasdair MacIntyre’s Contribution to Marxism: A Road not Taken

This essay questions, through a critique of his reading of classical Marxism, the path taken by Alasdair MacIntyre since his break with the Marxist Left in the 1960s. It argues that MacIntyre was uncharitable in his criticisms of Marxism, or at least in his conflation of the most powerful aspects of the classical Marxist tradition with the crudities of Kautskyian and Stalinist materialism. Contra MacIntyre, this essay locates in the writings of the revolutionary Left which briefly flourished up to and just after the Russian Revolution a rich source of dialectical thinking on the relationship between structure and agency that escapes the twin errors of crude materialism or political voluntarism. Moreover, it suggests that by reaching back to themes reminiscent of the young Marx this tradition laid the basis for a renewed ethical Marxism, and that in his youth MacIntyre pointed to the realisation of this project

On the eigenvalues of a biharmonic Steklov problem

We consider an eigenvalue problem for the biharmonic operator with Steklov-type boundary conditions. We obtain it as a limiting Neumann problem for the biharmonic operator in a process of mass concentration at the boundary. We study the dependence of the spectrum upon the domain. We show analyticity of the symmetric functions of the eigenvalues under isovolumetric perturbations and prove that balls are critical points for such functions under measure constraint. Moreover, we show that the ball is a maximizer for the first positive eigenvalue among those domains with a prescribed fixed measure.Comment: This paper will appear in the proceedings of the IMSE 2014 Conferenc

Neumann to Steklov eigenvalues: asymptotic and monotonicity results

We consider the Steklov eigenvalues of the Laplace operator as limiting Neumann eigenvalues in a problem of mass concentration at the boundary of a ball. We discuss the asymptotic behavior of the Neumann eigenvalues and find explicit formulas for their derivatives at the limiting problem. We deduce that the Neumann eigenvalues have a monotone behavior in the limit and that Steklov eigenvalues locally minimize the Neumann eigenvalues.Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Section A Mathematics and will appear in a revised form subsequent to editorial input by the ICMS/Royal Soc. of Edinburgh. Material on these pages is copyright Cambridge University Press. http://www.rsescotlandfoundation.org.uk/proceedings-a-mathematics.html journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=PR

A maximum principle in spectral optimization problems for elliptic operators subject to mass density perturbations

We consider eigenvalue problems for general elliptic operators of arbitrary order subject to homogeneous boundary conditions on open subsets of the euclidean N-dimensional space. We prove stability results for the dependence of the eigenvalues upon variation of the mass density and we prove a maximum principle for extremum problems related to mass density perturbations which preserve the total mass

Semiclassical bounds for spectra of biharmonic operators

We provide complementary semiclassical bounds for the Riesz means $R_1(z)$ of the eigenvalues of various biharmonic operators, with a second term in the expected power of $z$. The method we discuss makes use of the averaged variational principle (AVP), and yields two-sided bounds for individual eigenvalues, which are semiclassically sharp. The AVP also yields comparisons with Riesz means of different operators, in particular Laplacians

Generation of amplitude-squeezed light from a room-temperature Fabry-Perot semiconductor laser

Amplitude-squeezed light with intensity fluctuations 29% below the standard quantum limit (SQL) is produced from a pump-suppressed room-temperature semiconductor laser, corresponding to 41% below the SQL after correction for detection efficiency. Excess noise, which degrades the observed squeezing, appears to be associated with the presence of weak longitudinal side modes

Civil Procedure as a Critical Discussion

This Article develops a model for analyzing legal dispute resolution systems as systems for argumentation. Our model meshes two theories of argument conceived centuries apart: contemporary argumentation theory and classical stasis theory. In this Article, we apply the model to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as a proof of concept. Specifically, the model analyzes how the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure function as a staged argumentative critical discussion designed to permit judge and jury to rationally resolve litigants’ differences in a reasonable manner. At a high level, this critical discussion has three phases: a confrontation, an (extended) opening, and a concluding phase. Those phases are the umbrella under which discrete argumentation phases occur at points we call stases. Whenever litigants seek a ruling or judgment, they reach a stasis—a stopping or standing point for arguing procedural points of disagreement. During these stases, the parties make arguments that fall into predictable “commonplace” argument types. Taken together, these stock argument types form a taxonomy of arguments for all civil cases. Our claim that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure function as a system for argumentation is novel, as is our claim that civil cases breed a taxonomy of argument types. These claims also mark the beginning of a broader project. Starting here with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, we embark on a journey that we expect to follow for several years (and which we hope other scholars will join), exploring our model’s application across dispute resolution systems and using it to make normative claims about those systems. From a birds-eye view, this Article also represents a short modern trek in a much longer journey begun by advocates in city states in and near Greece nearly 2500 years ago