scholarly journals Degrees of Doxastic Justification

Erkenntnis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz Schulz

AbstractThis paper studies degrees of doxastic justification. Dependency relations among different beliefs are represented in terms of causal models. Doxastic justification, on this picture, is taken to run causally downstream along appropriate causal chains. A theory is offered which accounts for the strength of a derivative belief in terms of (i) the strength of the beliefs on which it is based, and (ii) the epistemic quality of the belief-forming mechanisms involved. It is shown that the structure of degrees of justification converges to ranking theory under ideal conditions.

Paleobiology ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean R. Connolly ◽  
Arnold I. Miller

During the Ordovician Radiation, domination of benthic marine communities shifted away from trilobites, toward articulated brachiopods, and, to a lesser degree, toward bivalves and gastropods. Here, models are formulated that mathematically represent alternative hypothesized causes of this transition. These include models in which per-genus origination or extinction probabilities were constrained to be (1) constant, (2) diversity-dependent, (3) productivity-dependent, or (4) jointly dependent on productivity and diversity. Using a method adapted from capture-mark-recapture (CMR) population studies, we estimate origination, extinction, and sampling probabilities jointly in order to avoid confounding patterns in turnover probabilities with temporal variation in the quality of the fossil record. Using Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC), we assessed the fit of the alternative causal models relative to one another, and relative to a noncausal “phenomenological” alternative that placed no constraints on the pattern of temporal variation in origination or extinction. There were differences among taxa in the relative fit of these models, suggesting that the effects of productivity and diversity varied among higher taxa. In the aggregate, however, there was strong support for diversity-dependent origination. For extinction, poor fit of the alternative causal models suggests that we lack a good explanation for extinction patterns. These analyses support the hypothesis that diversity-dependent origination, particularly in trilobites, contributed to the Ordovician faunal transitions. By contrast, the effects of increased productivity, if indeed they were large enough to influence global diversification patterns, did not proceed in the hypothesized manner.


Author(s):  
Moustafa Gadalla ◽  
Deyi Xue

A reconfigurable product serves as multiple products to deliver different functions through reconfiguration processes to change between product configurations. An optimization method was developed in our previous research to identify both the optimal design and the optimal reconfiguration processes. Because the generic design or process considering different candidates was modeled by an AND–OR tree or graph, importance weights were assigned to nodes with an AND or OR relation, such that the less-important nodes were pruned to improve the optimization efficiency. In this research, an extended analytic network process method is introduced to further improve the quality of the optimal reconfigurable product design approach when dependency relations among descriptions of design/process candidates and evaluation criteria are considered. In this method, the initial weights of the design/process nodes in the AND–OR tree or graph are adjusted based on the dependency relations such that the weights which truly reflect their contributions to the solutions are achieved. In addition, multiple evaluation criteria similar to the evaluation measures used in optimization are selected to identify the weights of the design/process nodes. A case study has been implemented to demonstrate effectiveness of the extended analytic network process for improving the quality of optimal reconfigurable product design.


Author(s):  
Hadeel Mohammad Darwish, Muhammad Mazyad Drybati, Mounzer Ha Hadeel Mohammad Darwish, Muhammad Mazyad Drybati, Mounzer Ha

Statistical surveys are usually conducted to obtain data describing a problem in a studied society, and many surveys experience a rise in nonresponse rates, as the rate of nonresponse may affect the bias of the nonresponse in survey estimates. Recent empirical results show instances of nonresponse rate correlation with nonresponse bias, we attempt to translate statistical experiences of nonresponse bias in newly published studies and research into causal models that lead to assumptions about when a lack of response causes bias in estimates. Research studies of the estimates of nonresponse bias show that this bias often exists. The logical question is: what is the advantage of surveys if they suffer from high rates of nonresponse, since post-survey adjustments for nonresponse require additional variables, the answer depends on the nature of the design and the quality of the additional variables.  


Author(s):  
K. T. Tokuyasu

During the past investigations of immunoferritin localization of intracellular antigens in ultrathin frozen sections, we found that the degree of negative staining required to delineate u1trastructural details was often too dense for the recognition of ferritin particles. The quality of positive staining of ultrathin frozen sections, on the other hand, has generally been far inferior to that attainable in conventional plastic embedded sections, particularly in the definition of membranes. As we discussed before, a main cause of this difficulty seemed to be the vulnerability of frozen sections to the damaging effects of air-water surface tension at the time of drying of the sections.Indeed, we found that the quality of positive staining is greatly improved when positively stained frozen sections are protected against the effects of surface tension by embedding them in thin layers of mechanically stable materials at the time of drying (unpublished).


Author(s):  
L. D. Jackel

Most production electron beam lithography systems can pattern minimum features a few tenths of a micron across. Linewidth in these systems is usually limited by the quality of the exposing beam and by electron scattering in the resist and substrate. By using a smaller spot along with exposure techniques that minimize scattering and its effects, laboratory e-beam lithography systems can now make features hundredths of a micron wide on standard substrate material. This talk will outline sane of these high- resolution e-beam lithography techniques.We first consider parameters of the exposure process that limit resolution in organic resists. For concreteness suppose that we have a “positive” resist in which exposing electrons break bonds in the resist molecules thus increasing the exposed resist's solubility in a developer. Ihe attainable resolution is obviously limited by the overall width of the exposing beam, but the spatial distribution of the beam intensity, the beam “profile” , also contributes to the resolution. Depending on the local electron dose, more or less resist bonds are broken resulting in slower or faster dissolution in the developer.


Author(s):  
G. Lehmpfuhl

Introduction In electron microscopic investigations of crystalline specimens the direct observation of the electron diffraction pattern gives additional information about the specimen. The quality of this information depends on the quality of the crystals or the crystal area contributing to the diffraction pattern. By selected area diffraction in a conventional electron microscope, specimen areas as small as 1 µ in diameter can be investigated. It is well known that crystal areas of that size which must be thin enough (in the order of 1000 Å) for electron microscopic investigations are normally somewhat distorted by bending, or they are not homogeneous. Furthermore, the crystal surface is not well defined over such a large area. These are facts which cause reduction of information in the diffraction pattern. The intensity of a diffraction spot, for example, depends on the crystal thickness. If the thickness is not uniform over the investigated area, one observes an averaged intensity, so that the intensity distribution in the diffraction pattern cannot be used for an analysis unless additional information is available.


Author(s):  
K. Shibatomi ◽  
T. Yamanoto ◽  
H. Koike

In the observation of a thick specimen by means of a transmission electron microscope, the intensity of electrons passing through the objective lens aperture is greatly reduced. So that the image is almost invisible. In addition to this fact, it have been reported that a chromatic aberration causes the deterioration of the image contrast rather than that of the resolution. The scanning electron microscope is, however, capable of electrically amplifying the signal of the decreasing intensity, and also free from a chromatic aberration so that the deterioration of the image contrast due to the aberration can be prevented. The electrical improvement of the image quality can be carried out by using the fascionating features of the SEM, that is, the amplification of a weak in-put signal forming the image and the descriminating action of the heigh level signal of the background. This paper reports some of the experimental results about the thickness dependence of the observability and quality of the image in the case of the transmission SEM.


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