4,593 research outputs found
Beyond Frege-Geach: neglected problems for Expressivism
No full textThis thesis is about the viability of meta-normative expressivism. On what I take to be the dominant conception of the view, it subscribes to two theses. First, that the meaning of sentences is to be explained in terms of the mental states these sentences conventionally express. Second, that there is a fundamental difference in the roles of the states expressed by normative sentences and the states expressed by descriptive sentences: descriptive sentences, according to expressivists, express mental states which are representational and non-motivational, while normative sentences express non-representational and motivational states. Expressivism has attracted many naturalistically inclined philosophers for its ability to explain many of the distinctive features of normative discourse and thought, without adding entities to our ontology that are metaphysically and epistemologically problematic. In this way, expressivism promises to preserve the legitimacy of our ordinary normative practice within a naturalistic world-view, without giving up on any of its distinctive features. Despite it’s benefits, expressivism also faces significant problems. While one of these problems, the Frege-Geach Problem, has attracted a lot of attention, there are several other problems that have not been sufficiently addressed by . But, given that the reasonable assumption that the plausibility of philosophical theories needs to be assessed holistically, it seems that one should pay attention to these problems to be able to assess expressivism’s overall plausibility. In this thesis I explain how expressivists can solve two of these problems. The first problem the dissertation is concerned with is the normative attitude problem. This is a dilemma based on the challenge that expressivists need to give an account of the nature of the attitude that normative thinking consists in. The dilemma is then that expressivists could either do this by holding that normative thinking consists in sui generis attitudes, which is uninformative and potentially in conflict with naturalism, or by holding that normative thinking reduces to attitudes fully describable in non-normative terms, which is in conflict with our intuitions about normative thinking. I argue that this dilemma is structurally identical to a dilemma which meta-normative representationalism faces (expressivism’s dialectical rival) and that expressivists can use the same theoretical resources to address the normative attitude problem meta-normative representationalists have used to address their version of the dilemma. I also argue that these resources will not only help more traditional versions of expressivism, according to which normative thinking reduces to familiar kinds of attitudes fully describable in non-normative terms, but opens up the possibility of an expressivist view according to which normative thinking consists in sui generis attitudes. The second problem I consider is a challenge to a particular expressivist project: quasi-realism. Part of this project is to show that expressivism is compatible with a web of closely connected assumptions, namely, that normative thought and discourse are truth-apt and normative judgements are beliefs. While quasi-realists have made some progress in this direction, there is one relevant phenomenon that has so far been neglected, namely, those uses of that-clauses that are associated with propositional content. This is a problematic neglect, because that-clauses figure prominently in platitudes characterizing our ordinary notions of “truth-aptitude” and “belief ”, and so expressivists need to provide a plausible account of these uses of that-clauses which fits with their allowing that normative thought and discourse are truth-apt and normative judgements are beliefs. I address this challenge as follows: I first remove any worries that one might have that a plausible account of that-clauses that helps the quasi-realist could be given, by introducing the distinction between semantics and meta-semantics and locating expressivism at the level of metasemantics. I then develop a deflationist view of that-clauses which suits the quasi-realist’s purposes. I start by giving such a view for the use of that-clauses in meaning-attributions by expanding on the work of Wilfried Sellars. I then go on to explain how the account can be generalized to the use of that-clauses in belief-attributions and propositional attitude ascriptions more generally, in a way that allows expressivists to say that normative judgements are beliefs
FIGURE 7. X in A new species of Bolitoglossa (Caudata, Plethodontidae) from the continental divide of western Panama
No full textFIGURE 7. X-ray images of the entire holotype; (A) Ventrolateral view; (B) Lateral view. Scale bar = 2 cm.Published as part of Hertz, Andreas, Lotzkat, Sebastian & Köhler, Gunther, 2013, A new species of Bolitoglossa (Caudata, Plethodontidae) from the continental divide of western Panama, pp. 463-475 in Zootaxa 3636 (3) on page 471, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3636.3.5, http://zenodo.org/record/22194
Efficient and flexible approach to simulate low-dimensional quantum lattice models with large local Hilbert spaces
No full textQuantum lattice models with large local Hilbert spaces emerge across various fields in quantum many-body physics. Problems such as the interplay between fermions and phonons, the BCS-BEC crossover of interacting bosons, or decoherence in quantum simulators have been extensively studied both theoretically and experimentally. In recent years, tensor network methods have become one of the most successful tools to treat such lattice systems numerically. Nevertheless, systems with large local Hilbert spaces remain challenging. Here, we introduce a mapping that allows to construct artificial U(1) symmetries for any type of lattice model. Exploiting the generated symmetries, numerical expenses that are related to the local degrees of freedom decrease significantly. This allows for an efficient treatment of systems with large local dimensions. Further exploring this mapping, we reveal an intimate connection between the Schmidt values of the corresponding matrix-product-state representation and the single-site reduced density matrix. Our findings motivate an intuitive physical picture of the truncations occurring in typical algorithms and we give bounds on the numerical complexity in comparison to standard methods that do not exploit such artificial symmetries. We demonstrate this new mapping, provide an implementation recipe for an existing code, and perform example calculations for the Holstein model at half filling. We studied systems with a very large number of lattice sites up to L = 501 while accounting for N-ph = 63 phonons per site with high precision in the CDW phase
Episode 35: Alexis Castellanos, Author of “Isla to Island”, and Her Panel Presentation during the Operación Pedro Pan Two-Day Event
No full textIn Part 1 of “Operación Pedro Pan: The Voices and Stories of Cuba’s Child Exodus—A Knights HistoryCast Mini-Series,” the Department of History’s Sebastian Garcia talked with Alexis Castellanos, an author, illustrator, graphic novelist, and a panelist at the esteemed, conspicuous, and powerful “Operación Pedro Pan: Honoring the Cultural, Historical Legacy of Cuba’s Child Exodus” Two-Day Program that Florida Humanities, UCF’s Department of English and Department of Modern Languages and Literatures sponsored (see https://cah.ucf.edu/pedro-pan/ for more details on sponsors and the program in general).
Sebastian structured this specific episode on Alexis Castellanos’ Isla to Island, a wordless graphic novel grounded by her personal family history and the history of Operación Pedro Pan (Operation Peter Pan). By analyzing such a historic event through the medium of fiction, Sebastian argued that this is one of the most unique Knights HistoryCast episodes of all time. Naturally, their conversation expanded to what she talked about during her panel presentation in Panel One, Day 1 of the event that featured “internationally renowned scholars that discussed the political, historical, and cultural legacy of Operación Pedro Pan (1960-1962).” (https://cah.ucf.edu/pedro-pan/)
To purchase Isla to Island (strongly recommend), check out: https://islatoisland.com/.
To find out more about Alexis and her professional work, check out her website at https://alexiscastellanos.com/https://stars.library.ucf.edu/knightshistorycast/1034/thumbnail.jp
Automated construction of -invariant matrix-product operators from graph representations
No full textWe present an algorithmic construction scheme for
matrix-product-operator (MPO) representations of arbitrary
U(1)U(1)-invariant
operators whenever there is an expression of the local structure in
terms of a finite-states machine (FSM). Given a set of local operators
as building blocks, the method automatizes two major steps when
constructing a U(1)U(1)-invariant
MPO representation: (i) the bookkeeping of auxiliary bond-index shifts
arising from the application of operators changing the local quantum
numbers and (ii) the appearance of phase factors due to particular
commutation rules. The automatization is achieved by post-processing the
operator strings generated by the FSM. Consequently, MPO representations
of various types of U(1)U(1)-invariant
operators can be constructed generically in MPS algorithms reducing the
necessity of expensive MPO arithmetics. This is demonstrated by
generating arbitrary products of operators in terms of FSM, from which
we obtain exact MPO representations for the variance of the Hamiltonian
of a S=1S=1
Heisenberg chain.</jats:p
Friedrich-Ebert-Preis an Volker Köhler
No full textDer Friedrich-Ebert-Preis für die beste Dissertation oder Habilitation zur Erforschung der Geschichte, Politik und Kultur der Weimarer Republik der Forschungsstelle Weimarer Republik an der Universität Jena ging dieses Jahr u.a. an Dr. des. Volker Köhler, Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Geschichte der TU Darmstadt. Ausgezeichnet wurde Köhler für seine 2015 eingereichte Dissertation "Die Mikropolitik der Genossen, Freunde und Junker. Zur Bedeutung personaler Verbindungen im poli..
A new microendemic frog species of the genus Blommersia (Anura: Mantellidae) from the east coast of Madagascar
No full textPabijan, Maciej, Gehring, Philip-Sebastian, Köhler, Jörn, Glaw, Frank, Vences, Miguel (2011): A new microendemic frog species of the genus Blommersia (Anura: Mantellidae) from the east coast of Madagascar. Zootaxa 2978: 34-50, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20773
FIGURE 5 in A new species of Sibon (Squamata: Colubroidea: Dipsadidae) from the Cordillera Central of western Panama, with comments on other species of the genus in the area
No full textFIGURE 5. Snail-eaters collected in western Panama: (A) Sibon annulatus (La Fortuna, SMF 88715), (B) S. annulatus (Río Changena, SMF 91578), (C) S. longifrenis (Cerro Mariposa, SMF 91581), (D) S. nebulatus (La Fortuna, SMF 90209), (E) S. perissostichon (La Fortuna, SMF 88716), (F) and (G) Dipsas articulata (Cerro Negro, SMF 89952), (H) D. temporalis (Cerro Negro, SMF 89769).Published as part of Lotzkat, Sebastian, Hertz, Andreas & Köhler, Gunther, 2012, A new species of Sibon (Squamata: Colubroidea: Dipsadidae) from the Cordillera Central of western Panama, with comments on other species of the genus in the area, pp. 26-40 in Zootaxa 3485 on page 36, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20886
FIGURE 10 in A new species of Dactyloa from eastern Panama, with comments on other Dactyloa species present in the region
No full textFIGURE 10. Hemipenis of the Paratype (SMF 97269) of Dactyloa maia sp. nov. A) Sulcate view; B) asulcate view; C) lateral view.Published as part of Batista, Abel, Vesely, Milan, Mebert, Konrad, Lotzkat, Sebastian & Köhler, Gunther, 2015, A new species of Dactyloa from eastern Panama, with comments on other Dactyloa species present in the region, pp. 57-84 in Zootaxa 4039 (1) on page 74, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4039.1.2, http://zenodo.org/record/28996
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