Knowing Full Well

Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa

This chapter considers the epistemic normativity that constitutes our knowledge. It introduces two of Plato's best-known dialogues, which are both inquiries about knowledge. The Theaetetus inquires into its nature; the Meno into its value. Each dialogue, the chapter suggests, involves the same basic question: What sort of normativity is constitutive of our knowledge? A belief that falls short of knowledge is thereby inferior. It is better to know than to get it wrong, of course, and also better than to get it right just by luck. The chapter then asks what is involved in such an evaluation, and in addressing this question the chapter draws out a solution for both Platonic problems.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Wanqi Ma ◽  
Xiaoxiao Liao ◽  
Wei Dai ◽  
Weike Pan ◽  
Zhong Ming

Recommender systems have been a valuable component in various online services such as e-commerce and entertainment. To provide an accurate top-N recommendation list of items for each target user, we have to answer a very basic question of how to model users’ feedback effectively. In this article, we focus on studying users’ explicit feedback, which is usually assumed to contain more preference information than the counterpart, i.e., implicit feedback. In particular, we follow two very recent transfer to rank algorithms by converting the original feedback to three different but related views of examinations, scores, and purchases, and then propose a novel solution called holistic transfer to rank (HoToR), which is able to address the uncertainty challenge and the inconvenience challenge in the existing works. More specifically, we take the rating scores as a weighting strategy to alleviate the uncertainty of the examinations, and we design a holistic one-stage solution to address the inconvenience of the two/three-stage training and prediction procedures in previous works. We then conduct extensive empirical studies in a direct comparison with the two closely related transfer learning algorithms and some very competitive factorization- and neighborhood-based methods on three public datasets and find that our HoToR performs significantly better than the other methods in terms of several ranking-oriented evaluation metrics.


Episteme ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-452
Author(s):  
Joshua Schechter

AbstractThis paper discusses Ernest Sosa's account of knowledge and epistemic normativity. The paper has two main parts. The first part identifies places where Sosa's account requires supplementation if it is going to capture important epistemic phenomena. In particular, additional theoretical resources are needed to explain (i) the way in which epistemic aims are genuinely good aims, and (ii) the way in which some forms of reasoning can be epistemically better than others even when they are equally conducive to attaining the truth. The second part focuses on Sosa's claim that there is a kind of belief – judgmental belief – that doesn't merely aim at truth but also aims at aptness, and that this kind of belief is central to our mental lives. The paper raises several concerns about this part of Sosa's account, including the concern that aiming at aptness is overly self-directed, and so is more closely tied to vice than epistemic virtue.


1972 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 27-38
Author(s):  
J. Hers

In South Africa the modern outlook towards time may be said to have started in 1948. Both the two major observatories, The Royal Observatory in Cape Town and the Union Observatory (now known as the Republic Observatory) in Johannesburg had, of course, been involved in the astronomical determination of time almost from their inception, and the Johannesburg Observatory has been responsible for the official time of South Africa since 1908. However the pendulum clocks then in use could not be relied on to provide an accuracy better than about 1/10 second, which was of the same order as that of the astronomical observations. It is doubtful if much use was made of even this limited accuracy outside the two observatories, and although there may – occasionally have been a demand for more accurate time, it was certainly not voiced.


Author(s):  
J. Frank ◽  
P.-Y. Sizaret ◽  
A. Verschoor ◽  
J. Lamy

The accuracy with which the attachment site of immunolabels bound to macromolecules may be localized in electron microscopic images can be considerably improved by using single particle averaging. The example studied in this work showed that the accuracy may be better than the resolution limit imposed by negative staining (∽2nm).The structure used for this demonstration was a halfmolecule of Limulus polyphemus (LP) hemocyanin, consisting of 24 subunits grouped into four hexamers. The top view of this structure was previously studied by image averaging and correspondence analysis. It was found to vary according to the flip or flop position of the molecule, and to the stain imbalance between diagonally opposed hexamers (“rocking effect”). These findings have recently been incorporated into a model of the full 8 × 6 molecule.LP hemocyanin contains eight different polypeptides, and antibodies specific for one, LP II, were used. Uranyl acetate was used as stain. A total of 58 molecule images (29 unlabelled, 29 labelled with antl-LPII Fab) showing the top view were digitized in the microdensitometer with a sampling distance of 50μ corresponding to 6.25nm.


Author(s):  
A. V. Crewe

We have become accustomed to differentiating between the scanning microscope and the conventional transmission microscope according to the resolving power which the two instruments offer. The conventional microscope is capable of a point resolution of a few angstroms and line resolutions of periodic objects of about 1Å. On the other hand, the scanning microscope, in its normal form, is not ordinarily capable of a point resolution better than 100Å. Upon examining reasons for the 100Å limitation, it becomes clear that this is based more on tradition than reason, and in particular, it is a condition imposed upon the microscope by adherence to thermal sources of electrons.


Author(s):  
Li Li-Sheng ◽  
L.F. Allard ◽  
W.C. Bigelow

The aromatic polyamides form a class of fibers having mechanical properties which are much better than those of aliphatic polyamides. Currently, the accepted morphology of these fibers as proposed by M.G. Dobb, et al. is a radial arrangement of pleated sheets, with the plane of the pleats parallel to the axis of the fiber. We have recently obtained evidence which supports a different morphology of this type of fiber, using ultramicrotomy and ion-thinning techniques to prepare specimens for transmission and scanning electron microscopy.


Author(s):  
P.R. Swann ◽  
A.E. Lloyd

Figure 1 shows the design of a specimen stage used for the in situ observation of phase transformations in the temperature range between ambient and −160°C. The design has the following features a high degree of specimen stability during tilting linear tilt actuation about two orthogonal axes for accurate control of tilt angle read-out high angle tilt range for stereo work and habit plane determination simple, robust construction temperature control of better than ±0.5°C minimum thermal drift and transmission of vibration from the cooling system.


Author(s):  
K.C. Newton

Thermal effects in lens regulator systems have become a major problem with the extension of electron microscope resolution capabilities below 5 Angstrom units. Larger columns with immersion lenses and increased accelerating potentials have made solutions more difficult by increasing the power being handled. Environmental control, component choice, and wiring design provide answers, however. Figure 1 indicates with broken lines where thermal problems develop in regulator systemsExtensive environmental control is required in the sampling and reference networks. In each case, stability better than I ppm/min. is required. Components with thermal coefficients satisfactory for these applications without environmental control are either not available or priced prohibitively.


Author(s):  
D. Cherns

The use of high resolution electron microscopy (HREM) to determine the atomic structure of grain boundaries and interfaces is a topic of great current interest. Grain boundary structure has been considered for many years as central to an understanding of the mechanical and transport properties of materials. Some more recent attention has focussed on the atomic structures of metalsemiconductor interfaces which are believed to control electrical properties of contacts. The atomic structures of interfaces in semiconductor or metal multilayers is an area of growing interest for understanding the unusual electrical or mechanical properties which these new materials possess. However, although the point-to-point resolutions of currently available HREMs, ∼2-3Å, appear sufficient to solve many of these problems, few atomic models of grain boundaries and interfaces have been derived. Moreover, with a new generation of 300-400kV instruments promising resolutions in the 1.6-2.0 Å range, and resolutions better than 1.5Å expected from specialist instruments, it is an appropriate time to consider the usefulness of HREM for interface studies.


Author(s):  
H.A. Cohen ◽  
W. Chiu ◽  
J. Hosoda

GP 32 (molecular weight 35000) is a T4 bacteriophage protein that destabilizes the DNA helix. The fragment GP32*I (77% of the total weight), which destabilizes helices better than does the parent molecule, crystallizes as platelets thin enough for electron diffraction and electron imaging. In this paper we discuss the structure of this protein as revealed in images reconstructed from stained and unstained crystals.Crystals were prepared as previously described. Crystals for electron microscopy were pelleted from the buffer suspension, washed in distilled water, and resuspended in 1% glucose. Two lambda droplets were placed on grids over freshly evaporated carbon, allowed to sit for five minutes, and then were drained. Stained crystals were prepared the same way, except that prior to draining the droplet, two lambda of aqueous 1% uranyl acetate solution were applied for 20 seconds. Micrographs were produced using less than 2 e/Å2 for unstained crystals or less than 8 e/Å2 for stained crystals.


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