The Epistemic Value of Understanding-why

Some philosophers (e.g., Pritchard, Grimm, and Hills) recently have objected that veritism cannot explain the epistemic value of understanding-why. And they have proposed two anti-veritist accounts. In this paper, I first introduce their objection and argue that it fails. Next, I consider a strengthened version of their objection and argue that it also fails. After that, I suggest a new veritist account: Understanding-why entails believing the truth that what is grasped is accurate (or accurate enough), and it is this true belief, along with many other true beliefs understanding-why entails, that makes understanding-why finally epistemically valuable. Then, I explain why the two anti-veritist accounts are both false. Finally, I briefly discuss the idea that understanding involves a kind of know-how and show how veritism can explain the epistemic value of know-how in general.

Strengthened impairment argument does not restate Marquis

With Perry Hendricks, I recently outlined a strengthened version of the impairment argument (SIA) for the immorality of abortion. Alex Gillham has argued that our use of Don Marquis’ deprivation of a ‘future-like ours’ account entails we were merely restating Marquis’ argument for the immorality of abortion. Here, I explain why SIA is more than just a reframing of Marquis.

Strengthened impairment argument: restating Marquis?

Blackshaw and Hendricks recently developed a strengthened version of the impairment argument (SIA) that imports Marquis’ account of the wrongness of abortion. I then argued that if SIA imports Marquis’ account, then it restates Marquis’ position and thus is not very significant. In turn, Blackshaw and Hendricks explained why they take SIA to be importantly different from Marquis’ account. I have two aims in this response. First, I reconstruct Blackshaw and Hendricks’ arguments for the claim that SIA is importantly different from Marquis’ account. Second, I argue that SIA is not importantly different from Marquis’ account in the respect that Blackshaw and Hendricks take it to be.

LJELSR: A Strengthened Version of JELSR for Feature Selection and Clustering

Feature selection and sample clustering play an important role in bioinformatics. Traditional feature selection methods separate sparse regression and embedding learning. Later, to effectively identify the significant features of the genomic data, Joint Embedding Learning and Sparse Regression (JELSR) is proposed. However, since there are many redundancy and noise values in genomic data, the sparseness of this method is far from enough. In this paper, we propose a strengthened version of JELSR by adding the L1-norm constraint on the regularization term based on a previous model, and call it LJELSR, to further improve the sparseness of the method. Then, we provide a new iterative algorithm to obtain the convergence solution. The experimental results show that our method achieves a state-of-the-art level both in identifying differentially expressed genes and sample clustering on different genomic data compared to previous methods. Additionally, the selected differentially expressed genes may be of great value in medical research.

Maximal God

Perfect being theism is a version of theism that says that God is the greatest possible being. Although perfect being theism is the most common form of monotheism in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, its truth has been disputed by philosophers and theologians for centuries. Maximal God proposes a new, game-changing defence of perfect being theism by developing what the book calls the ‘maximal concept of God’. Perfect being theists typically maintain that God is an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being but, according to Maximal God, God should be understood rather as a being that has the maximal consistent set of knowledge, power, and benevolence. The book argues that once we accept the maximal concept, we can establish perfect being theism on two grounds. First, we can refute nearly all existing arguments against perfect being theism simultaneously. Second, we can construct a novel, strengthened version of the modal ontological argument for perfect being theism. The book concludes that the maximal God concept provides the basis for a unified defence of perfect being theism that is highly effective and economical.

Framing functions and a strengthened version of Dehn’s lemma

We prove the following strengthened version of Dehn’s lemma: if a knot in a three-sphere possesses a compressing disc which intersects with the knot at only two points of opposite sign, then it is the unknot. This result was conjectured by Greene–Wiest.

The maximum likelihood degree of a very affine variety

We show that the maximum likelihood degree of a smooth very affine variety is equal to the signed topological Euler characteristic. This generalizes Orlik and Terao’s solution to Varchenko’s conjecture on complements of hyperplane arrangements to smooth very affine varieties. For very affine varieties satisfying a genericity condition at infinity, the result is further strengthened to relate the variety of critical points to the Chern–Schwartz–MacPherson class. The strengthened version recovers the geometric deletion–restriction formula of Denhamet al. for arrangement complements, and generalizes Kouchnirenko’s theorem on the Newton polytope for nondegenerate hypersurfaces.

Summability implies Collet–Eckmann almost surely

We provide a strengthened version of the famous Jakobson's theorem. Consider an interval map $f$ satisfying a summability condition. For a generic one-parameter family ${f}_{t} $ of maps with ${f}_{0} = f$, we prove that $t= 0$ is a Lebesgue density point of the set of parameters for which ${f}_{t} $ satisfies both the Collet–Eckmann condition and a strong polynomial recurrence condition.