How do skeptical thought experiments work? The skeptic invites us to “entertain” a vividly described possibility, then argues that skeptical conclusions follow from our inability to rule that possibility out. I contend that the argument’s soundness hinges on whether the skeptical possibilities generate legitimate doubts: we need to separate the issue of whether we can rule a possibility out fro...

The \Boom hierarchy" is a hierarchy of types that begins at the level of trees and includes lists, bags and sets. This hierarchy forms the basis for the calculus of total functions developed by Bird and Meertens, and which has become known as the \Bird-Meertens formalism". This paper describes a hierarchy of types that logically precedes the Boom hierarchy. We show how the basic operators of th...

The way we represent intentions, behaviors, and the spatial context, is crucial for any approach to mobile intention recognition. Formal grammars are cognitively comprehensible and make expressiveness properties explicit. By adding spatial domain knowledge to a grammar we can reduce parsing ambiguities. We argue that there are a number of mobile intention recognition problems which require the ...

Authors often convey meaning by referring to or imitating prior works of literature, a process that creates complex networks of literary relationships ("intertextuality") and contributes to cultural evolution. In this paper, we use techniques from stylometry and machine learning to address subjective literary critical questions about Latin literature, a corpus marked by an extraordinary concent...

In this paper, we study the plasmonic thermal conductance of ordered stacks of metallic nanorings in a host material. Using second quantized formalism of the Random Phase Approximation, we first determine the dispersion relations of surface plasmon waves on the stacks of nanorings. Then, using Landauer-Buttiker formalism, we determine the coefficient of plasmonic thermal conductance and heat cu...

CRITICISM as an instinctive reaction to the performance of poetry is as old as song,” writes George Kennedy in beginning theCambridge History of Literary Criticism, and Kenneth Dover reminds readers of the Frogs that “in pre-literate cultures the composition of songs is a process in which discussion and criticism, often passionate, play an important part—and inevitably so, because aesthetic rea...

SUMMARY This paper exposits and develops Bayesian methods of model criticism and robustness analysis. The objectives are to clarify the Bayesian interpretation of non-Bayesian diagnostic tests, and provide explicitly Bayesian procedures accessible to practical investigators. Speciic methods for prior density criticism and robustness analysis, and data density criticism, are presented. All are b...