Streumer on Non-Cognitivism and Reductivism About Normative Judgement

Bart Streumer believes that the following principle is true of all normative judgements: When two people make conflicting normative judgements, at most one of them is correct. Streumer argues that noncognitivists are unable to explain why is true, or our acceptance of it. I argue that his arguments are inconclusive. I also argue that our acceptance of is limited in the case of instrumental and epistemic normative judgements, and that the extent to which we do accept for such judgements can be explained by an assumption of shared standards of correctness. Finally, I argue that reductivists can appeal to the same ideas to defend their view that instrumental and epistemic normative judgements describe non-normative relations

Meaning in Life and the Metaphysics of Value

According to subjectivist views about a meaningful life, one's life is meaningful in virtue of desire satisfaction or feelings of fulfilment. Standard counterexamples consist of satisfaction found through trivial or immoral tasks. In response to such examples, many philosophers require that the tasks one is devoted to are objectively valuable, or have objectively valuable consequences. I argue that the counterexamples to subjectivism do not require objective value for meaning in life. I also consider other reasons for thinking that meaning in life requires objective value and raise doubts about their strength. Finally, I argue that beauty is not plausibly objective, but that it seems important for meaning. This puts pressure on the objectivist to explain why objectivity matters in the case of other values

Exploring sensor data management

The increasing availability of cheap, small, low-power sensor hardware and the ubiquity of wired and wireless networks has led to the prediction that `smart evironments' will emerge in the near future. The sensors in these environments collect detailed information about the situation people are in, which is used to enhance information-processing applications that are present on their mobile and `ambient' devices.\ud \ud Bridging the gap between sensor data and application information poses new requirements to data management. This report discusses what these requirements are and documents ongoing research that explores ways of thinking about data management suited to these new requirements: a more sophisticated control flow model, data models that incorporate time, and ways to deal with the uncertainty in sensor data

Expressivism and Arguing about Art

Peter Kivy claims that expressivists in aesthetics cannot explain why we argue about art. The situation would be different in the case of morals. Moral attitudes lead to action, and since actions affect people, we have a strong incentive to change people’s moral attitudes. This can explain why we argue about morals, even if moral language is expressive of our feelings. However, judgements about what is beautiful and elegant need not significantly affect our lives. So why be concerned with other people’s feelings about art? Kivy thinks the best explanation of our tendency to argue about art is that we implicitly believe in objective facts about aesthetics. This would count against expressivism. I argue two things: that there is no good reason to think that we don’t care about preferences and emotions unless they have significant practical consequences and that the truth of expressivism about aesthetic language is compatible with beliefs about objective aesthetic facts

3D modelling of branching in plants

Shoot branching is a key determinant of overall aboveground plant form. During plant development, the number of branches formed strongly influences the amount of light absorbed by the plant, and thus the plant’s competitive strength in terms of light capture in relation to neighbouring plants. Branching is regulated by multiple internal factors which are modulated by different environmental signals. A key environmental signal in the context of a plant population is a low red / far-red intensity ratio (R:FR) of the light reflected by neighbouring plants. For instance, low R:FR results in suppression of branching in favour of elongation growth, which is a key aspect of shade avoidance. Shade avoidance enables plants to anticipate future competition by preventing being shaded, rather than to react to prevailing shade conditions. Internally, branching is regulated by a finely tuned plant hormone network. The interactions within this network are modified by environmental cues such as R:FR which is perceived by specific photoreceptors. Combined, internal and external signals enable regulation of branch formation under the influence of environmental conditions. The different aspects of branching control act at different levels of biological organization (organ, whole plant, plant community). These aspects can be integrated in one modelling approach, called functional-structural plant modelling (FSPM), explicitly considering spatial 3D plant development. An FSP model typically contains detailed information at any moment in development of the plant on the number, size, location and orientation of all organs that make up the plant. In FSP models, physiological and physical processes occur within the plant (e.g. photosynthesis and transport of assimilates), and interaction with the environment occurs at the interface of organ and environment (e.g. light absorption by a leaf). Explicit simulation of absorption and scattering of light at the level of the plant organ is an important aspect of FSPM. In combination with dedicated experiments, this modelling tool can be used to analyse the response of plants to (imminent) competition, simulate the competitive advantage of shade avoidance for plants of different architecture, and predict plant form in various light environments. To assess the effect of plant population density through R:FR signalling on tillering (branching) in spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), an FSPM study was conducted (Figure 1). A simple descriptive relationship was used to link R:FR as perceived by the plant to extension growth of tiller buds and probability of a bud to form a tiller. A further study included a complete sub-model of branching regulation, aiming at simulating branching as an emergent property in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) under the influence of R:FR. These and other studies show that FSPM is a promising tool to simulate aspects of plant development, such as branching, under the influence of environmental factors. In close combination with dedicated experiments, FSPM can shape our ideas of the mechanisms controlling plant development, can integrate existing knowledge on plant development, and can predict plant development in untested conditions

Modeling micro-macro pedestrian counterflow in heterogeneous domains

We present a micro-macro strategy able to describe the dynamics of crowds in heterogeneous media. Herein we focus on the example of pedestrian counterflow. The main working tools include the use of mass and porosity measures together with their transport as well as suitable application of a version of Radon-Nikodym Theorem formulated for finite measures. Finally, we illustrate numerically our microscopic model and emphasize the effects produced by an implicitly defined social velocity. Keywords: Crowd dynamics; mass measures; porosity measure; social network

Optimal Monetary Policy in an Interdependent World

In the literature on international monetary policy, the paradigm is that gains from coordination are fairly small. Monetary policy is conducted to stabilize macroeconomic fluctuations and gains from policy coordination arise from preventing national monetary authorities from strategically manipulating the terms of trade by means of these stabilization policy instruments. However, as it has been emphasized by \cite{lucas:2003a}, welfare gains from stabilizing fluctuations are generically small since they are of second order. In this paper, I develop a dynamic stochastic two-country model with sticky wages and a cash-in-advance restriction which is in the spirit of the New Open Economy Macroeconomics framework. In this environment, monetary authorities can manipulate the terms of trade by conducting a general short-run monetary policy using both the nominal interest rate and the money supply. The money supply affects the terms of trade by altering the nominal exchange rate ex post and it is used in the traditional way so as to stabilize macroeconomic fluctuations. The nominal interest rate affects the terms of trade by changing expected inflation ex ante. Self-oriented national policymakers use the nominal interest rates to raise the terms of trade ex ante. This leads to an inefficient inflation tax whose welfare effects are of first order. Consequently, gains from monetary policy coordination are of first order.International Policy Coordination, General Short-Run Monetary Policy, New Open Economy Macroeconomics

Controllable linear π\pi-phase modulation in a thermal atom vapor without diffraction or absorption

A scheme is proposed to achieve substantial controllable phase modulation for a probe field propagating through a thermal atomic vapor in double-$\Lambda$ configuration. The phase modulation is based on the linear susceptibility of the probe field, paraxial diffraction is eliminated by exploiting the thermal motion of atoms, and residual absorption is compensated via an incoherent pump field. As a result, a strong controllable uniform phase modulation without paraxial diffraction is achieved essentially independent of the spatial profile or the intensity of the probe field. This phase shift can be controlled via the intensities of the control or the incoherent pump fields. A possible proof-of-principle experiment in alkali atoms is discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Exploring cultural factors in human-robot interaction: A matter of personality?

This paper proposes an experimental study to investigate task-dependence and cultural-background dependence of the personality trait attribution on humanoid robots. In Human-Robot Interaction, as well as in Human-Agent Interaction research, the attribution of personality traits towards intelligent agents has already been researched intensively in terms of the social similarity or complementary rule. These two rules imply that humans either tend to like others with similar personality traits or complementary personality traits more. Even though state of the art literature suggests that similarity attraction happens for virtual agents, and complementary attraction for robots, there are many contradictions in the findings. We assume that searching the explanation for personality trait attribution in the similarity and complementary rule does not take into account important contextual factors. Just like people equate certain personality types to certain professions, we expect that people may have certain personality expectations depending on the context of the task the robot carries out. Because professions have different social meaning in different national culture, we also expect that these task-dependent personality preferences differ across cultures. Therefore suggest an experiment that considers the task-context and the cultural background of users