Magnetism and Practical Terms

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-165
Author(s):  
Billy Dunaway

Reference magnetism is an appealing meta-semantic theory for moral realists, since it applies to properties that are metaphysically elite, and the idea that moral properties are among the elite properties is an attractive one for realists. They can also appeal to it to explain both the scope and limits of the stability of moral terms. Moral terms are highly stable, because users of moral language who don’t apply their word ‘right’ to moral rightness will still refer to it, rather than non-elite properties that fit their use better. However, this does not imply that all users of moral language refer to moral rightness. If there are other morally relevant properties besides rightness that are also primitively elite, then it is possible for some users to refer to these. Realists can use reference magnetism to explain why moral terms are highly stable, without committing themselves to the Universal Disagreement thesis. These insights can also be implemented within a contextualist semantics for practical language.

Author(s):  
Billy Dunaway

This book develops and defends a framework for moral realism. It defends the idea that moral properties are metaphysically elite, or privileged parts of reality. It argues that realists can hold that this makes them highly eligible as the referents for our moral terms, an application of a thesis sometimes called reference magnetism. And it elaborates on these theses by introducing some natural claims about how we can know about morality, by having beliefs that are free from a kind of risk of error. This package of theses in metaphysics, meta-semantics, and epistemology is motivated with a view to an explanation of possible moral disagreements. Many writers have emphasized the scope of moral disagreement, and have given compelling examples of possible users of moral language who appear to be genuinely disagreeing, rather than talking past one another, with their use of moral language. What has gone unnoticed is that there are limits to these possible disagreements, and not all possible users of moral language are naturally interpreted as capable of genuine disagreement. The realist view developed in this book can explain both the extent of, and the limits to, moral disagreement, and thereby has explanatory power that counts significantly in its favor.


2020 ◽  
pp. 53-86
Author(s):  
Billy Dunaway

This chapter argues against the Universal Disagreement thesis. Some possible communities use moral language, but do not have substantive disagreements with others who use their moral language differently. These are cases where the parties both use their terms with a moral role, but instead of differing over which substantive theory they follow when applying their moral terms (as in the original Moral Twin Earth cases), they differ in which additional roles they use these terms with. This is consistent with intuitions about Moral Twin Earth cases, but shows that they can lead to overgeneralizations about the semantic effects of a moral role. Instead, what needs to be explained by a meta-semantics for moral language is a more limited claim. Realists will have to show that moral terms are highly stable, but that it is possible to use a term such as ‘right’ with a moral role without referring to moral rightness.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 435-456
Author(s):  
Piotr Szałek

There is a long‑standing dispute among scholars concerning Berkeley’s supposed commitment to an emotivist theory of meaning as the very first (and an early modern) instance of non‑cognitivism. According to this position, the domains of religious and moral language do not refer to facts about the world, but rather express the emotional attitudes of religious or moral language users. Some scholars involved in the dispute argue for taking Berkeley to be an emotivist (non‑cognitivist), while others hold that we should not do so. This paper puts forward an interpretation that lends support to the non‑cognitivist reading of his stance, but in expressivist rather than emotivist terms. It argues that the label “expressivism” does more justice to the textual evidence concerning his understanding of moral language, as what is distinctive where this philosopher is concerned is his interest in explaining the nature of our practice of employing moral language (i.e. how we come to formulate moral statements as expressions of our non‑referential attitudes, and the meta‑level considerations pertaining to morality associated with this), rather than whether morality is just a matter of our emotions or feelings (i.e. such first‑order considerations about morality as whether moral rightness and wrongness correspond merely to our emotional states).


1982 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 605-613
Author(s):  
P. S. Conti

Conti: One of the main conclusions of the Wolf-Rayet symposium in Buenos Aires was that Wolf-Rayet stars are evolutionary products of massive objects. Some questions:–Do hot helium-rich stars, that are not Wolf-Rayet stars, exist?–What about the stability of helium rich stars of large mass? We know a helium rich star of ∼40 MO. Has the stability something to do with the wind?–Ring nebulae and bubbles : this seems to be a much more common phenomenon than we thought of some years age.–What is the origin of the subtypes? This is important to find a possible matching of scenarios to subtypes.


1999 ◽  
Vol 173 ◽  
pp. 309-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Fukushima

AbstractBy using the stability condition and general formulas developed by Fukushima (1998 = Paper I) we discovered that, just as in the case of the explicit symmetric multistep methods (Quinlan and Tremaine, 1990), when integrating orbital motions of celestial bodies, the implicit symmetric multistep methods used in the predictor-corrector manner lead to integration errors in position which grow linearly with the integration time if the stepsizes adopted are sufficiently small and if the number of corrections is sufficiently large, say two or three. We confirmed also that the symmetric methods (explicit or implicit) would produce the stepsize-dependent instabilities/resonances, which was discovered by A. Toomre in 1991 and confirmed by G.D. Quinlan for some high order explicit methods. Although the implicit methods require twice or more computational time for the same stepsize than the explicit symmetric ones do, they seem to be preferable since they reduce these undesirable features significantly.


Author(s):  
Godfrey C. Hoskins ◽  
V. Williams ◽  
V. Allison

The method demonstrated is an adaptation of a proven procedure for accurately determining the magnification of light photomicrographs. Because of the stability of modern electrical lenses, the method is shown to be directly applicable for providing precise reproducibility of magnification in various models of electron microscopes.A readily recognizable area of a carbon replica of a crossed-line diffraction grating is used as a standard. The same area of the standard was photographed in Phillips EM 200, Hitachi HU-11B2, and RCA EMU 3F electron microscopes at taps representative of the range of magnification of each. Negatives from one microscope were selected as guides and printed at convenient magnifications; then negatives from each of the other microscopes were projected to register with these prints. By deferring measurement to the print rather than comparing negatives, correspondence of magnification of the specimen in the three microscopes could be brought to within 2%.


Author(s):  
E. R. Kimmel ◽  
H. L. Anthony ◽  
W. Scheithauer

The strengthening effect at high temperature produced by a dispersed oxide phase in a metal matrix is seemingly dependent on at least two major contributors: oxide particle size and spatial distribution, and stability of the worked microstructure. These two are strongly interrelated. The stability of the microstructure is produced by polygonization of the worked structure forming low angle cell boundaries which become anchored by the dispersed oxide particles. The effect of the particles on strength is therefore twofold, in that they stabilize the worked microstructure and also hinder dislocation motion during loading.


Author(s):  
Mihir Parikh

It is well known that the resolution of bio-molecules in a high resolution electron microscope depends not just on the physical resolving power of the instrument, but also on the stability of these molecules under the electron beam. Experimentally, the damage to the bio-molecules is commo ly monitored by the decrease in the intensity of the diffraction pattern, or more quantitatively by the decrease in the peaks of an energy loss spectrum. In the latter case the exposure, EC, to decrease the peak intensity from IO to I’O can be related to the molecular dissociation cross-section, σD, by EC = ℓn(IO /I’O) /ℓD. Qu ntitative data on damage cross-sections are just being reported, However, the microscopist needs to know the explicit dependence of damage on: (1) the molecular properties, (2) the density and characteristics of the molecular film and that of the support film, if any, (3) the temperature of the molecular film and (4) certain characteristics of the electron microscope used


Author(s):  
Robert J. Carroll ◽  
Marvin P. Thompson ◽  
Harold M. Farrell

Milk is an unusually stable colloidal system; the stability of this system is due primarily to the formation of micelles by the major milk proteins, the caseins. Numerous models for the structure of casein micelles have been proposed; these models have been formulated on the basis of in vitro studies. Synthetic casein micelles (i.e., those formed by mixing the purified αsl- and k-caseins with Ca2+ in appropriate ratios) are dissimilar to those from freshly-drawn milks in (i) size distribution, (ii) ratio of Ca/P, and (iii) solvation (g. water/g. protein). Evidently, in vivo organization of the caseins into the micellar form occurs in-a manner which is not identical to the in vitro mode of formation.


Author(s):  
S. Shinozaki ◽  
J. W. Sprys

In reaction sintered SiC (∽ 5um average grain size), about 15% of the grains were found to have long-period structures, which were identifiable by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In order to investigate the stability of the long-period polytypes at high temperature, crystal structures as well as microstructural changes in the long-period polytypes were analyzed as a function of time in isothermal annealing.Each polytype was analyzed by two methods: (1) Electron diffraction, and (2) Electron micrograph analysis. Fig. 1 shows microdensitometer traces of ED patterns (continuous curves) and calculated intensities (vertical lines) along 10.l row for 6H and 84R (Ramsdell notation). Intensity distributions were calculated based on the Zhdanov notation of (33) for 6H and [ (33)3 (32)2 ]3 for 84R. Because of the dynamical effect in electron diffraction, the observed intensities do not exactly coincide with those intensities obtained by structure factor calculations. Fig. 2 shows the high resolution TEM micrographs, where the striped patterns correspond to direct resolution of the structural lattice periodicities of 6H and 84R structures and the spacings shown in the figures are as expected for those structures.


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