Alternative Picture Research Articles

Do we have a theory of early universe cosmology?

The inflationary scenario has become the paradigm of early universe cosmology, and – in conjunction with ideas from superstring theory—has led to speculations about an “inflationary multiverse”. From a point of view of phenomenology, the inflationary universe scenario has been very successful. However, the scenario suffers from some conceptual problems, and thus it does not (yet) have the status of a solid theory. There are alternative ideas for the evolution of the very early universe which do not involve inflation but which agree with most current cosmological observations as well as inflation does. In this lecture I will outline the conceptual problems of inflation and introduce two alternative pictures - the “matter bounce” and “string gas cosmology”, the latter being a realization of the “emergent universe” scenario based on some key principles of superstring theory. I will demonstrate that these two alternative pictures lead to the same predictions for the power spectrum of the observed large-scale structure and for the angular power spectrum of cosmic microwave background anisotropies as the inflationary scenario, and I will mention predictions for future observations with which the three scenarios can be observationally teased apart.

Spin liquid states in the vicinity of a metal-insulator transition

We study in this paper quantum spin liquid states (QSLs) at the vicinity of metal-insulator transition. Assuming that the low energy excitations in the QSLs are labeled by "spinon" occupation numbers with the same Fermi surface structure as in the corresponding metal (Fermi-liquid) side, we propose a phenomenological Landau-like low energy theory for the QSLs and show that the usual U(1) QSLs is a representative member of this class of spin liquids. Based on our effective low energy theory, an alternative picture to the Brinkman-Rice picture of Mott metal-insulator transition is proposed. The charge, spin and thermal responses of QSLs are discussed under such a phenomenology.

An archaeology of Australia since 1788 By SusanLawrence and PeterDavies New York: Springer, 2011 ISSN 1574‐0439. ISBN 978‐1‐4419‐7484‐6; e‐ISBN 978‐1‐4419‐7485‐3. Pp. 421. €59.55.

An archaeology of Australia since 1788 By Susan Lawrence and Peter Davies New York: Springer, 2011 ISSN 1574-0439. ISBN 978-1-4419-7484-6; e-ISBN 978-1-4419-7485-3. Pp. 421. 59.55 [pounds sterling]. The book presents an archaeology of Australia from 1788 to 1945 in a series of themes in 13 chapters: convict origins, Aboriginal dispossession and survival, shipwrecks and maritime trade, sealing, whaling and maritime industries, pastoralism and agriculture, gold rushes and precious metals, manufacturing and processing, migration and ethnicity, an urbanised nation, Australians at home, death, and the twentieth century and beyond. The title's indefinite article suggests that there is more than one possible archaeology of this period. The main reason Lawrence and Davies cite for the importance of study of the historical archaeology of Australia is the differences between the archaeological record and the historical record, and therefore it can offer perspectives. A key area here is in the realm of daily life, many aspects of which typically not mentioned in records. Places of home and work may have been too mundane to describe: farmhouses and outbuildings, shops, mines, mills and factories that were all part of the landscape and therefore rarely worthy of mention. The study of the archaeology of such places can tell us about these earlier societies and ways of being, and the book focuses on the conditions of rich and poor, convicts and their administrators, Aboriginal people, women, children and minority groups. Social and cultural themes of gender, status, ethnicity and identity are examined within the larger themes of historical processes, such as urbanisation, industry and culture contact. Importantly, this book engages with the relevant historical debates as well as the historical archaeology and typically provides some analysis where there are alternative pictures of the past or where the archaeology and history provide contested viewpoints, as in the discussion about the variability of the status suggested by a building in contrast with the artefacts found within the building and what they represent of the lives of the residents, such as found at Lake Innes. The archaeological stories that Lawrence and Davies tell are examined as part of the global processes of colonisation, creation of settler societies, industrial revolution, mass consumer consumption and the emergence of national identities. They also examine the political context in which research about archaeological sites has been undertaken and the influences that these have had on archaeological knowledge. Each chapter provides an introductory historical and theoretical background as well as overviews of the archaeological site case studies, some of which are then described. The individual case studies present the key elements of sites as well as engaging with the various interpretative structures of the archaeologists, and are occasionally contrasted with each other. This book is a generational successor to Graham Connah's Of the hut I builded: The Archaeology of Australia's History (1988, retitled 1993). The pulling together of a new overview book is a major achievement that will be useful for teaching, to consultants and in designing future research. Lawrence and Davies are to be congratulated for their perseverance. This publication shows how much work has been done in the past 25 years. …

What does the articulatory output buffer know about alternative picture names? Evidence against the response-exclusion hypothesis

When participants name pictures in the presence of a distractor word, a semantic relation between distractor word and picture name interferes with the naming response. Some models take this to reflect a lexical-competition process, while other models assume it to result from a postlexical response-exclusion mechanism. According to the latter view, the distractor word has privileged access to an articulatory output buffer and has to be purged from it before the picture name can be produced. This buffer is assumed to have access to information that is relevant within a given task such as gross semantic category information. Any (semantic) similarity between the picture name and the distractor word then should render removal of the distractor more difficult and thus prolong naming latencies. However, more fine-grained semantic information is not accessible to the articulatory output buffer and, thus, should not affect naming performance. We tested this assumption by comparing the effect of two semantic distractor conditions keeping the semantic relation between distractor words and the to-be-produced (basic-level) picture names constant, while manipulating only the relation between the distractor and the pictures' subordinate-level name. Contrary to the predictions of the response-exclusion hypothesis, this manipulation determined whether or not semantic interference was obtained.

FIRST ACTS, LAST ACTS, AND ABANDONMENT

This contribution reconstructs and assesses Yaffe's claims about what constitutes an attempt, what can count as evidence that an attempt has been made, whether abandonment is a genuine defense, and whether attempts should be punished less severely than completed crimes. I contrast Yaffe's account of being motivated by an intention and the completion of an attempt in terms of the truth of the completion counterfactual with an alternative picture of attempts as temporally extended decision trees that are complete insofar as the agent has progressed toward the final act in the tree. I suggest that this alternative scalar conception of attempt may provide a more plausible account of the defense of abandonment. I also raise questions about whether Yaffe has provided an adequate justification of his mix of luck skepticism about censure and luck realism about punishment.

Flake modification in European Early and Early–Middle Pleistocene stone tool assemblages

Early and Early–Middle Pleistocene archeological sites provide data about human dispersals into Europe from at least 1.2 Ma. Up to now, the fragmentary archeological record indicated only sporadic hominin presence, with punctated migration “waves” not necessarily leading to colonization. We consider an alternative demographical picture in which hominin presence in Europe could have been sustained from this time. This paper explores the possibility that early hominin groups confronted different landscapes by adapting their technology to changing ecosystems. Innovative technological achievements were developed into new forms out of potential existing within the variability of early stone industries, leading to the production of a more diversified toolkit. Among these innovations, the increased secondary knapping of flakes points to conceptually more complex production sequences. This paper proposes a comparative view of secondary knapped flakes from some key Early–Middle Pleistocene sites in order to explore the hypothesis of demographical stability in Western Europe from this time.

Lexical bias and prosodic cues: An eye-tracking study of compound/phrase disambiguation

Despite compounds and phrases exhibiting distinct prosodic cues (e.g., pitch and duration), adults fail to use these cues in certain contexts. In two eye-tracking experiments, I examined English speakers’ attention to prosody in adjective-noun string disambiguation to explore a lexical bias previously reported (e.g., “hot dog” is interpreted as the food, regardless of prosody.) In experiment 1, 24 participants were presented with pictures of the compound and phrasal representations for possible compounds (20 known, 10 novel) accompanied by an audio presentation of either a phrasal or compound production. Replicating previous findings, participants sometimes ignored prosody and exhibited biases towards compound pictures for common compounds and towards phrasal pictures for novel compounds. The fixation data reveals similar patterns in which participants appeared to not consider the alternative picture, even when it matched available prosodic cues. In experiment 2, the phrasal/compound pictures were decoupled and placed with unrelated distractors and participants were asked whether either picture matched the audio presentation of a phrasal or compound production. This experiment helps to determine whether the exhibited lexical bias is an artifact of experimental designs using minimal pairs or whether prosody is still ignored when frequency and novelty are not directly competing.

Belief ascriptions and social externalism

I outline Brandom’s theory of de re and de dicto belief ascriptions, which plays a central role in Brandom’s overall theory of linguistic communication, and show that this theory offers a surprising, new response to Burge’s (Midwest Stud 6:73–121, 1979) argument for social externalism. However, while this response is in principle available from the perspective of Brandom’s theory of belief ascription in abstraction from his wider theoretical enterprise, it ceases to be available from this perspective in the wider context of his inferential role semantics and his doctrines of scorekeeping and of the expressive role of belief ascriptions in discourse. In this wider context, Brandom’s theory of belief ascriptions implies that Burge’s argument trivially fails to have the disquieting implications for psychological explanations that it is widely taken to have. Yet since this is not trivially so, Brandom’s theory apparently provides a false picture of our practice of interpreting belief ascriptions. I then argue that Brandom might as well accept the alternative picture of interpreting belief ascriptions that Burge’s argument presupposes: even in the context of his overall project, Brandom’s take on our practice of interpreting them does not afford belief ascriptions with the discursive significance Brandom claims they have.

Actuality and the amodal perspective

In this paper, I examine our intuitive understanding of metaphysical contingency, and ask what features a metaphysical picture must possess in order to satisfy our intuitions about modal matters. After spelling out what I think are the central intuitions in this domain, I examine the debate between the two most widely held views on the nature of modality, namely, modal realism and modal actualism. I argue that while each of these views is able to accommodate some of our intuitions, it leaves others unsatisfied. I then present an alternative metaphysical picture, which I argue can accommodate our intuitions in a way that the traditional views cannot. More specifically, I argue that our intuitions about modality call for a pluralist view of the structure of reality—a view on which there is more than one ultimate ‘shape’ to the fundamental facts, each corresponding to a distinct metaphysically privileged perspective on reality.

An alternative picture of alkali-metal-mediated metallation: cleave and capture chemistry

This perspective article takes an alternative look at alkali-metal-mediated chemistry (exchange of a relatively inert C-H bond for a more reactive C-metal bond by a multicomponent reagent usually containing an alkali metal and a less electropositive metal such as magnesium or zinc). It pictures that the cleavage of selected C-H bonds can be accompanied by the capturing of the generated anion by the multi (Lewis acid)-(Lewis base) character of the residue of the bimetallic base. In this way small atoms or molecules (hydrides, oxygen-based anions) as well as sensitive organic anions (of substituted aromatic compounds, ethers or alkenes) can be captured. Cleave and capture reactions which occur in special positions on the organic substrate are also included.

Where Do We Go from Here? The Future of English Higher Education

AbstractA Delphi study has been carried out, soliciting views from higher education experts on likely and desirable developments in English higher education until 2025. The paper reports the most salient findings of the Delphi questionnaire and presents two scenarios that focus largely on the institutional fabric of the system. The first scenario follows the general agreement emerging from the two rounds of the Delphi study and suggests a smaller higher education system and the return of a binary divide between about 25 research‐intensive universities and about 70 other higher education institutions. The second scenario is a counter‐scenario that intends to present an alternative picture of English higher education in 2025. That scenario suggests a compact system of six research‐intensive universities, about 40 comprehensive institutions and five private providers. With respect to the steering of the system, a key difference between the two scenarios is that the former assumes a continuing role of market forces, whereas the latter is based on a much stronger role of the government.

The Temporal Foundation of the Self and the Other: A Phenomenological Reading of Narcissism

Rethinking the manner in which psychoanalysis articulates the self’s relation to the other, this paper returns to the primordial stage of narcissism. The paper traces the consequences of the Freudian and Lacanian notions of narcissism and offers a new, alternative picture of the narcissistic stage by suggesting, in light of Heidegger and Loewald, that temporality must be recognized as a constitutive dimension of the self’s openness to the Other.

Revisiting the Cultural Dope

This essay focuses on the “cultural dope,” an ironic reference in Harold Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology to the rule-following actor in conventional sociological theories. In the nearly half-century since the publication of that book, the “cultural dope” has been incorporated into numerous criticisms of “models of man” in the human sciences. Garfinkel’s account appeals to many writers because it seems to present an alternative picture of the actor: an individual who is self-aware, reflective, and skilled in the conduct of daily affairs. A problem with such a generalized picture of the actor is that it may seem to encourage uncritical acceptance of whatever “the public” (or a broad segment of the public) happens to believe or support. This paper revisits Garfinkel’s account of the cultural dope, and contrasts “conservative” and “radical” readings of what Garfinkel does with that figure. The “conservative” reading leaves the edifice of a social-structural model largely intact, and provides an alternative, more complex, picture of individual action than that of a cultural dope. The “radical” reading places relevant social structures in a dependent relation to the contingencies of action, and thus destabilizes the very theoretical edifice that sets up the problem of how to integrate individual actions with stable social structures. In line with the “radical” reading, this paper suggests that Garfinkel creates serious difficulty for any generalized “model of man,” regardless of whether it portrays the individual as active or passive, well-informed or ignorant, or reflexive or not.

Two Approaches to Holographic Baryons/Nuclei

We overview baryons in a string theoretical holographic QCD. In the large Nc limit, the baryon can be viewed in two different ways. The first is a holographic lift of Skyrmion, except that not only pions but also an infinite number of spin 1 mesons are used to construct the solitonic baryon. This approach has been pursued to give an infinitely predictive model of meson–baryon dynamics. After a brief review, we comment on the alternative picture where the baryon is viewed as wrapped D-branes, which leads to a quantum mechanical description involving matrices. The two approaches give surprisingly similar answers for some quantities, such as hadronic size of baryons and repulsive cores, even though they represent two very different approximations.

What Generates the Realism/Anti-Realism Dichotomy?

The most basic divide amongst analytic metaphysicians separates realists from anti-realists. By examining certain characteristic and problematic features of these two families of views, we uncover their underlying metametaphysical orientations, which turn out to coincide. This shared philosophical picture that underlies both the realist and the anti-realist project we call the Modern Picture. It rests on a crucial distinction between reality as it is for us and reality as it is in itself. It is argued that this distinction indeed generates the realism/anti-realism dichotomy, and is also responsible for the problematic aspects highlighted earlier. We conclude by sketching an alternative philosophical picture that rejects the distinction between reality as it is for us and reality as it is in itself, which we call the Aristotelian Picture, and consider whether it is able to avoid the issues to which the Modern Picture gives rise.

Ontology

A small but thriving philosophical industry is engaged in the ontology of art: the avowed aim is to specify the kind ofthing an artwork is, or the ontological category to which an artwork belongs. Here is Amie Thomasson's description of the enterprise:The central question for the ontology of art is this: sort of entities are works of art? Are they physical objects, ideal kinds, imaginary entities, or something else? How are works of art of various kinds related to the mental states of artists or viewers, to physical objects, or to abstract visual, auditory or linguistic structures? Under what conditions do works come into existence, survive, or cease to exist?1And here is Guy Rohrbaugh's description:Ontologists offer a map of reality, one divided into such broad, overlapping territories as physical and mental, concrete and abstract, universal and particular. Such a map provides the setting for further philosophical investigation. Ontologists of art seek to locate works of art in this wider terrain, to say where in our universe they fit in. Their governing question is, thus, What kind ofthing is a work of art?2Music is among the artforms frequently targeted by the enterprise. Julian Dodd, for example, says Wynton Marsalis composed In This House, On This Morning in 1992. But what is the nature of the thing he composed? Dodd undertakes the project of addressing . . the categorial question: the issue of which ontological category works of music belong to.3 In similar spirit, Jerrold Levinson asks What exactly did Beethoven compose?. . . what sort ofthing is it, this quintet which was the outcome of Beethoven's creative activity?4 And Stephen Davies, reflecting upon philosophical theories of music ontology, says Philosophers argue over whether musical works are classes, types, or kinds, over whether they are universale or particulars, over whether they are created or discovered, and over whether musical works, as well as their performances, consist of sounds . . ..5Such questions appear reasonable: we wish to know what sorts of entities are in the world, and - should artworks find place in the inventory - what sorts of things they are. But given puzzles and complexities involving essence, individuation, metaphysical explanation, and the relation between objects and practices, it is not clear what constitutes successful answers to such questions; nor is it clear whether the ontologist of art provides anything not already provided by critics, historians, and consumers of art. The situation is no clearer within that subindustry concerned specifically with the ontology of music. One upshot of these concerns is that artworld ontologists might be engaged in a dubious enterprise.Others have voiced skepticism about the value of ontological inquiry in the arts;6 but the skepticism I advocate here is more global, grounded in general methodological concerns about the explanatory and/or justificatory power of ontological theories.The structure of the discussion is as follows: Sections I and II address the kind of explanation - if any - that artworld ontologies might plausibly be construed as providing. Part III muddies the waters by acknowledging that artworld ontology might not, after all, be in the business of explanation, and offers alternative pictures of the ontologist's goals. Parts IV-VI broach the disturbing possibility that art-ontological theories provide nothing over and above information already provided by the art historian and sociologist of art; and traditional concerns about modality and essence motivate the idea that ontologies of art and music are nothing more than reifications of theorists' commitments to the relative importance of certain artwork properties.7 Later sections explore several efforts to salvage and legitimize the practice of artworld ontology but conclude that prospects for such salvation are dim.IArt is not science. Granted, there is artistry in science: physics requires creativity and imagination; and there is science in art: painting and musical composition require problem solving and effective use of resources. …

Anharmonic thermal motion of atoms in thermoelectric Mg2Si studied via convergent-beam electron diffraction

We study the thermal motion of the atoms in the thermoelectric material Mg${}_{2}$Si by using electron diffraction. The nanodiffraction or convergent-beam electron diffraction technique we use allows us to observe simultaneously many Bragg reflections with large reciprocal lattice vectors. Previous observations of anharmonicity by single-crystal x-ray diffraction are confirmed, and we determine the anharmonicity parameter of the Mg atom in the tetrahedral environment with high accuracy, $\ensuremath{\beta}=(\ensuremath{-}4.27\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.14)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}12}$ erg \AA{}${}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ around room temperature. In an alternative picture the Mg atom tends to vibrate around positions displaced $4.50\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.14$ pm from the center of the tetrahedron.

Rapid star formation and global gravitational collapse

Most young stars in nearby molecular clouds have estimated ages of 1-2 Myr, suggesting that star formation is rapid. However, small numbers of stars in these regions with inferred ages of >= 5-10 Myr have been cited to argue that star formation is instead a slow, quasi-static process. When considering these alternative pictures it is important to recognize that the age spread in a given star-forming cloud is necessarily an upper limit to the timescales of local collapse, as not all spatially-distinct regions will start contracting at precisely the same instant. Moreover, star-forming clouds may dynamically evolve on timescales of a few Myr; in particular, global gravitational contraction will tend to yield increasing star formation rates with time due to generally increasing local gas densities. We show that two different numerical simulations of dynamic, flow-driven molecular cloud formation and evolution 1) predict age spreads for the main stellar population roughly consistent with observations, and 2) raise the possibility of forming small numbers of stars early in cloud evolution, before global contraction concentrates the gas and the bulk of the stellar population is produced. In general, the existence of a small number of older stars among a generally much-younger population is consistent with the picture of dynamic star formation, and may even provide clues to the time evolution of star-forming clouds.

A pedagogical presentation of a C⋆-algebraic approach to quantum tomography

It is now well established that quantum tomography provides an alternative picture of quantum mechanics. It is common to introduce tomographic concepts starting with the Schrödinger–Dirac picture of quantum mechanics on Hilbert spaces. In this picture, states are a primary concept and observables are derived from them. On the other hand, the Heisenberg picture, which has evolved in the C⋆-algebraic approach to quantum mechanics, starts with the algebra of observables and introduces states as a derived concept. The equivalence between these two pictures amounts, essentially, to the Gelfand–Naimark–Segal construction. In this construction, the abstract C⋆-algebra is realized as an algebra of operators acting on a constructed Hilbert space. The representation that is defined may be reducible or irreducible, but in either case it allows us to identify a unitary group associated with the C⋆-algebra by means of its invertible elements. In this picture both states and observables are appropriate functions on the group; it also follows that quantum tomograms are strictly related with appropriate functions (positive-type) on the group. In this paper we present, using very simple examples, a tomographic description emerging from the set of ideas connected with the C⋆-algebra picture of quantum mechanics. In particular, we introduce the tomographic probability distributions for finite and compact groups, and formulate an autonomous criterion to recognize a given probability distribution as a tomogram of quantum state.

FORGETTING AND THE TASK OF SEEING: Ordinary Oblivion, Plato, and Ethics

ABSTRACTThe gaps, fissures, and lapses of attention in a life—what I call “ordinary oblivions”—are fertile fragilities that present a compelling source for ethics. Plato, not Aristotle, is the ancient philosopher specially poised to speak to this feature of human life. Drawing upon poet C. K. Williams's idea that forgetting is a “looking away” that makes possible “beginning again,” I present a Platonic approach to ethics as an alternative to Aristotelian or virtue ethics. Plato's Phaedrus is a key source text for this alternate picture; from it I suggest how we might construe Iris Murdoch's “task of seeing” in terms of the engagement with written form. Poetry is a central locale for such engagement, and thus suggests a kind of ethical praxis that arises from the theoretical emphases of my examination of forgetting, the unmoored self, remade other‐regard, and sacred sources.