Doctorateness: where should we look for evidence?

This chapter considers the possibility of an “institutional theory of artistic research”. It proposes four distinct quadrants in which one might look for evidence for such a theory, which needs to have the capacity to accommodate the diverse positions on artistic research in the literature. The quadrants ("explicit", "implicit", "generic", and "specific") form a Boolean square with which one may also consider the contested term “doctorateness” in any field. The chapter concludes in due course, artistic research will gain a voice that causes researchers to re-describe activity in other disciplines owing to the way in which artistic research will be described.Peer reviewe

Some Properties of Strongly Regular Graphs

An approach to the enumeration of feasible parameters for strongly regular graphs is described, based on the pair of structural parameters (a,c) and the positive eigenvalue e. The Krein bound ensures that there are only finitely many possibilities for c, given a and e, and the standard divisibility conditions can be used to reduce the possibilities further. Many sets of feasible parameters appear to be accidents of arithmetic, but in some cases the conditions are satisfied for algebraic reasons. As an example, we discuss an infinite family of feasible parameters for which the corresponding graphs necessarily have a closed neighborhood as a star complement for e.Comment: 15 page

Singularities of optimal attitude motions

This paper considers the problem of planning optimal attitude motions for spacecraft. The extremal solutions that result from this optimization problem are characterized and their singularities identified. Following this these singularities are solved analytically inferring the form of particular optimal velocities. These particular solutions are then integrated and their corresponding motions derived independently of a local coordinate chart. These motions have the potential to be used as smooth, optimal reference trajectories for performing certain re-orientations for spacecraft

The Second Subconstituent of some Strongly Regular Graphs

This is a report on a failed attempt to construct new graphs that are strongly regular with no triangles. The approach is based on the assumption that the second subconstituent has an equitable partition with four parts. For infinitely many odd prime powers we construct a graph that is a plausible candidate for the second subconstituent. Unfortuantely we also show that the corresponding graph is strongly regular only when the prime power is 3, in which case the graph is already known.Comment: 9 page

Non-human Intention and Meaning-Making: An Ecological Theory

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97550-4_12Social robots have the potential to problematize many attributes that have previously been considered, in philosophical discourse, to be unique to human beings. Thus, if one construes the explicit programming of robots as constituting specific objectives and the overall design and structure of AI as having aims, in the sense of embedded directives, one might conclude that social robots are motivated to fulfil these objectives, and therefore act intentionally towards fulfilling those goals. The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of this description of social robotics on traditional notions of intention and meaningmaking, and, in particular, to link meaning-making to a social ecology that is being impacted by the presence of social robots. To the extent that intelligent non-human agents are occupying our world alongside us, this paper suggests that there is no benefit in differentiating them from human agents because they are actively changing the context that we share with them, and therefore influencing our meaningmaking like any other agent. This is not suggested as some kind of Turing Test, in which we can no longer differentiate between humans and robots, but rather to observe that the argument in which human agency is defined in terms of free will, motivation, and intention can equally be used as a description of the agency of social robots. Furthermore, all of this occurs within a shared context in which the actions of the human impinge upon the non-human, and vice versa, thereby problematising Anscombe's classic account of intention.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

T=0 Partition Functions for Potts Antiferromagnets on Lattice Strips with Fully Periodic Boundary Conditions

We present exact calculations of the zero-temperature partition function for the $q$-state Potts antiferromagnet (equivalently, the chromatic polynomial) for families of arbitrarily long strip graphs of the square and triangular lattices with width $L_y=4$ and boundary conditions that are doubly periodic or doubly periodic with reversed orientation (i.e. of torus or Klein bottle type). These boundary conditions have the advantage of removing edge effects. In the limit of infinite length, we calculate the exponent of the entropy, $W(q)$ and determine the continuous locus ${\cal B}$ where it is singular. We also give results for toroidal strips involving ``crossing subgraphs''; these make possible a unified treatment of torus and Klein bottle boundary conditions and enable us to prove that for a given strip, the locus ${\cal B}$ is the same for these boundary conditions.Comment: 43 pages, latex, 4 postscript figure