We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

Coastal ecosystems are increasingly dominated by humans. Consequently, the human dimensions of sustainability science have become an integral part of emerging coastal governance and management practices. But if we are to avoid the harsh lessons of land management, coastal decision makers must recognize that humans are one of the more coastally dependent species in the biosphere. Management responses must therefore confront both the temporal urgency and the very real compromises and sacrifices that will be necessary to achieve a sustainable coastal (...) ecosystem, one that is economically feasible, socially just, and ecologically sound. (shrink)

How and why does a metaphor work? What happens to us when we hear or read one? My guess is that a metaphor, because it is an erroneous statement, conflicts with our expectations. It releases, triggers, and stimulates our predisposition to detect error and to take corrective action. We do not dismiss or reject a metaphor as simply a false statement for we recognize it as a metaphor and know as [Donald] Davidson suggests that it alludes to something else that (...) we might wish to notice. It preempts our attention and propels us on a quest for the underlying truth. We are launched into a creative, inventive, pleasurable act. To turn Piaget around, to invent is to understand. For the hearer or reader of a metaphor to detect, by himself, the nature of the error and to invent his own version of the truth entails understanding and achievement and thus pleasure. Such pleasure perhaps owes its origin to, and is enhanced by an echo from, the metaphoric playfulness of childhood. A metaphor is a peremptory invitation to discovery. What is discoverable are the various allusive ties, or common attributes, between the metaphor and the underlying truth to which it points. It is plausible to guess that the pleasure, and hence power, of the metaphor depends on two factors. It is the more powerful and effective the greater the number of allusive ties discovered and the greater the speed or suddenness with which the discoveries are made. A metaphor that packs all of its allusions into one or a few words should be more effective than a metaphor on which the same allusions are scattered throughout a long chain of words or sentences. The number of allusive ties in some sense reflects how close the metaphor approaches the truth—how near it is to being on target. Perhaps the closer it is, the more compelling the urge to correct the error—like the pull of a magnet. Don R. Swanson is professor and dean of the graduate library school at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

Gliomas are diffuse and invasive brain tumors with the nefarious ability to evade even seemingly draconian treatment measures. Here we introduce a simple mathematical model for drug delivery of chemotherapeutic agents to treat such a tumor. The model predicts that heterogeneity in drug delivery related to variability in vascular density throughout the brain results in an apparent tumor reduction based on imaging studies despite continual spread beyond the resolution of the imaging modality. We discuss a clinical example for which the (...) model-predicted scenario is relevant. The analysis and results suggest an explanation for the clinical problem of the long-standing confounding observation of shrinkage of the lesion in certain areas of the brain with continued growth in other areas. (shrink)

There are important similarities between moral thought and talk and thought and talk about gender: disagreements about gender, like disagreements about morality, seem to be intractable and to outstrip descriptive agreement; and it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be a woman in terms of particular social, biological, or other descriptive features, just as it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be good or right in terms of any set of (...) descriptive properties. These similarities give us reason to investigate the idea that, like moral thought and talk, gender thought and talk is inherently normative. This paper proposes a normative account of gender thought and talk in terms of fitting treatment. On this fitting treatment account, to judge that A is gender G is just to judge that it is fitting to treat A as a G. This account is a descriptive or hermeneutical account of our gender thought and talk rather than an ameliorative account of our gender concepts or a metaphysical account of gender properties in social metaphysics. This paper argues that other descriptive accounts of gender thought and talk face problems that the fitting treatment account overcomes. (shrink)

Der fünfte Band der Reihe trägt den Titel Ethik und Politik aus interkultureller Sicht. Neben einer begrifflichen, methodischen und inhaltlichen Klärung, was aus interkultureller Sicht bedeutet, werden in den verschiedenen Beiträgen ethische und politische Ansätze im heutigen Weltkontext der Philosophie erörtert. Interkulturell orientiertes philosophisches Denken weist alle Zentrismen zurück, ohne jedoch die jeweilige kulturelle Sedimentiertheit in Frage zu stellen. Folgerichtig wird so auch ein jeder Monismus abgelehnt. Das heutige Angesprochensein der Kulturen verlangt von uns, von den beiden Fiktionen einer totalen (...) Identität und völligen Differenz unter den ethischen und politischen Modellen Abschied zu nehmen. Die These von der Überlappung zielt auf das Wahrnehmen von grundsätzlichen Ähnlichkeiten und erhellenden Differenzen in den Ansätzen. Wer einen Pluralismus bejaht, muß auch bereit sein, im Geiste der Toleranz die unterschiedlichen Ansätze zur Ethik und Politik ernst zu nehmen. Wer den Konsens zu sehr betont, liebäugelt mit irgendeinem Identitätsmodell, vernachlässigt den Kompromiß. Tatsache ist jedoch, daß gerade Kompromisse zur Konfliktlösung beitragen. So sind die Beiträge dieses Bandes dem Ziel gewidmet, sowohl eine theoretische Begründung als auch eine praktische Bewältigung der interkulturellen Verständigung in Ethik und Politik zu leisten. (shrink)

Epistemic decision theorists aim to justify Bayesian norms by arguing that these norms further the goal of epistemic accuracy—having beliefs that are as close as possible to the truth. The standard defense of Probabilism appeals to accuracy dominance: for every belief state that violates the probability calculus, there is some probabilistic belief state that is more accurate, come what may. The standard defense of Conditionalization, on the other hand, appeals to expected accuracy: before the evidence is in, one should expect (...) to do better by conditionalizing than by following any other rule. We present a new argument for Conditionalization that appeals to accuracy‐dominance, rather than expected accuracy. Our argument suggests that Conditionalization is a rule of coherence: plans that conflict with Conditionalization don't just prescribe bad responses to the evidence; they also give rise to inconsistent attitudes. (shrink)

A popular argument is that peer disagreement about controversial moral topics undermines justified moral belief in a way that peer disagreement about non-moral topics does not undermine justified non-moral belief. Call this argument the argument for moral skepticism from peer disagreement. Jason Decker and Daniel Groll have recently made a companions in guilt response to this argument. Decker and Groll argue that if peer disagreement undermines justified moral belief, then peer disagreement undermines much non-moral justified belief; if the argument for (...) moral skepticism from peer disagreement succeeds, then a kind of non-moral skepticism holds too. And we should not hold that the status of such non-moral beliefs are undermined by peer disagreement. In this paper, I shows that Decker and Groll’s companions in guilt argument fails. I then draw out the implications of my argument for the epistemology of disagreement and the epistemology of moral disagreement more generally. For instance, I then argue that peer disagreement about morality does not undermine all justified moral belief but that peer disagreement about morality does preclude most moral beliefs from being justified and constituting knowledge in a way that peer disagreement about non-moral topics does not preclude most non-moral beliefs from being justified and constituting knowledge. (shrink)

In this article, we consider two independently appealing theories—the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience—and argue that at least one is false. The Growing-Block view is a theory about the nature of time. It says that past and present things exist, while future things do not, and the passage of time consists in new things coming into existence. Humean Supervenience is a theory about the nature of entities like laws, nomological possibility, counterfactuals, dispositions, causation, and chance. It says that none of (...) these entities are fundamental, since if they were, this would entail the existence of irreducible necessary connections between matters of fact. Instead, these entities supervene on a fundamental, non-nomological ‘Humean mosaic’ of property instances at spacetime points. We will further explain and motivate the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience in Sects. 2 and 3, but first, we turn to our master argument. (shrink)

I am interested in extending modal calculi by adding propositional quantifiers, given by the rules for quantifier introduction: provided that p does not occur free in A.

The author's motivation for constructing the calculi of this paper\nis so that time and tense can be "discussed together in the same\nlanguage" (p. 282). Two types of enriched propositional caluli for\ntense logic are considered, both containing ordinary propositional\nvariables for which any proposition may be substituted. One type\nalso contains "clock-propositional" variables, a,b,c, etc., for\nwhich only clock-propositional variables may be substituted and that\ncorrespond to instants or moments in the semantics. The other type\nalso contains "history-propositional" variables, u,v,w, etc., for\nwhich only history-propositional variables may (...) be substituted and\nthat correspond to maximally linearly ordered subsets of instants.\nThis second type is for tense logics in which time is not linear\nand where at any moment there may exist alternative future courses\nof events. Quantifiers are included in both types but only for clock-\nand history-propositional variables. However, these quantifiers are\ngiven an essentially substitutional interpretation. In addition,\nbesides each clock-propositional variable being true at exactly one\ninstant, the semantics requires that for each instant there be at\nleast one clock-propositional variable true at that instant, which\nin effect amounts to having each instant of the model "denoted" in\nthe formalism by some clock-propositional variable. Thus it is not\nsurprising that quantification over clock-propositional variables\nturns out to have a "well behaved first-order semantics" (p. 284).\n{One axiom relating history- with clock-propositions seems to need\nrevision: CKTauTbuAUabUba. Since the clock-propositional variables\nmight be true at the same instant the consequent should include an\nalternative, namely, LCab.} Besides the standard truth-functional\nand tense operators G,H,F,P, the author includes L for "it is\nalways the case that". The model-theoretic earlier-than relation\nordering instants and the semantic truth-at (an instant) relation\nare formalized by Uab and Taα (for a wff α) which\nare defined respectively as LCbPa (whenever the clock-proposition\nb is the case the clock-proposition a was the case) and LCaα\n(α is the case whenever the clock-proposition a is the case).\nBecause the future tense operators are definable in terms of U\nand T and the latter are definable in terms of L and P, the\ndual of H, the author notes that his completeness proofs can be\nrestricted to L and H as primitive and with the future tense\noperators used for other interpretations, especially Prior, A.'s\nindeterminist "it will be the case that", where time is not linear.\nThe author concludes with some rather technical observations showing\nthat "in ordinary tense logics the instants are nonstandard elements\nof the models. This provides", according to the author, "a semantic\npressure to build the instants into tense logic, so that they will\nappear as standard elements in the models" (p. 283). (shrink)

We show that five important elements of the ‘nomological package’— laws, counterfactuals, chances, dispositions, and counterfactuals—needn’t be a problem for the Growing-Block view. We begin with the framework given in Briggs and Forbes (in The real truth about the unreal future. Oxford studies in metaphysics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012 ), and, taking laws as primitive, we show that the Growing-Block view has the resources to provide an account of possibility, and a natural semantics for non-backtracking causal counterfactuals. We show (...) how objective chances might ground a more fine-grained concept of feasibility, and furnished a places in the structure where causation and dispositions might fit. The Growing-Block view, thus understood, provides the resources to explain the close link between modality and tense, so that it predicts modal change as time passes. This account lets us capture not only what the future might hold for us, and also what might have been. (shrink)

Sociological and philosophical analysis of the role of will power upon the moral development of individuals.

This book is an attack on the widespread assumption that the mind has parts and that it is the interaction between these parts which accounts for the irrational behaviour displayed un self- deception and weakness of will.

Aim To study the views of people in a largely Muslim country, Kuwait, of the acceptability of a life-ending action such as physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Method 330 Kuwaiti university students judged the acceptability of PAS in 36 scenarios composed of all combinations of four factors: the patient's age (35, 60 or 85 years); the level of incurability of the illness (completely incurable vs extremely difficult to cure); the type of suffering (extreme physical pain or complete dependence) and the extent to (...) which the patient requests a life-ending procedure, euthanasia or PAS (no request, some form of request, repeated requests). In all scenarios, the patients were women who were receiving the best possible care. The ratings were subjected to cluster analysis and analyses of variance. Results Five clusters were found. For 44%, PAS was always very unacceptable, no matter what the circumstances. For 23%, it was unacceptable, but less so if the patient was older or requested it repeatedly. For 16%, it was unacceptable if the patient was young but was acceptable if the patient was elderly. For 5%, it was unacceptable if the patient had extreme pain but was acceptable if completely dependent. For 11%, it was unacceptable if the patient did not request it but acceptable if she did. Conclusion The majority of the Kuwaiti university students opposed PAS either categorically or with a slight variation according to circumstances. Nonetheless, a minority approved of PAS in some cases, particularly when the patient was elderly. (shrink)