Rational Requirements Research Articles

Повышение работоспособности подающих устройств деревоперерабатывающего оборудования

The working capacity of the logging and wood processing equipment feeding mechanisms is determined by the achievable coupling of the roller’s working elements with the movable blanks. The coupling stability depends significantly on the geometry specified in the design and implemented in manufacturing and physicochemical properties of the materials of tenons that capture, hold and continuously move the blanks into the processing zone. During operation, the geometrical parameters of tenons are changing due to wearing out, which is a result of a complex set of mechanical, chemical, thermal and other influences that accompany friction and deformation interaction of working elements of feeders and movable wood. Worn down tenons do not provide reliable movement of a blank, due to its slippage, which causes quality reduction of final products and leads to intensification of the cutting tool wearing out. At the same time the features of influence of tenon geometrical form on the mating forces of feeding rollers with movable blanks in conditions of development of the tribotechnical characteristics, which provide their working capacity, are not studied sufficiently for the practical use. Therefore, the research purpose is to clarify the conditions of friction-mechanical interaction of working elements of rollers with wood and to identify patterns of wearing out of tenon working surfaces, which allows theoretically substantiate their rational geometrical shape and requirements for the physicochemical characteristics of recommended materials. The acting load’s principles realized in the zone of contact of the metal surfaces of tenons with wood at displacement of blanks are considered for these purposes. The process of the force interaction change of tenons with blanks is shown beginning with the moment of contact of a certain tenon until it leaves the coupling. Its analysis showed that already at the beginning of the contact the shock bending load begins to act on the top of a tenon. The load in case of peak values often leads to wearing out by crumbling sufficiently large microvolumes of the feeding tenons. The probability of development of such fracture pattern is the greatest with insufficient strength of the using material and pre-sence of structural defects, especially unfavorably located microcracks, and the action of dangerous tensile residual stresses. These factors also significantly affect the corrosion-mechanical wearing out of the working surfaces of tenons and their resistance movement in wood. Thus, the main factor of effective transportation of a blank to the processing zone and achievement of high wearing resistance of feeding rollers is optimization the tenon geometry, properties of the assigned materials and technology of strengthening treatment of the concerned details. For citation: Pamfilov E.A., Pilyushina G.A., Sheveleva E.V., Prozorov Ya.S., Pyrikov P.G. Improving the Feeder’s Working Capacity of Timber Processing Equipment. Lesnoy Zhurnal [Forestry Journal], 2019, no. 2, pp. 102–110. DOI: 10.17238/issn0536-1036.2019.2.102

Mineral content estimation in Atriplex hortensis L., an indigenous vegetable of Trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, India

The present study was aimed at estimating the mineral contents and elucidating nutritious importance of this traditionally grown vegetable, Atriplex hortensis L. from Ladakh region of India. Altogether 70 accessions of 14 populations (five individuals from each population) of A. hortensis L. were collected from different regions. The collected accessions (seeds) were sown in randomized block design (RBD) with three replications at research field of Defence Institute of High Altitude Research (DIHAR, DRDO) during the cropping season of the year 2015–16. Plants were evaluated for mineral content by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES). Statistical analysis was carried out for analysis of variance and principal component analysis (PCA) using SPSS ver 21.0 and XLSTAT, 2017. The results demonstrated a high level of variation in 13 estimated mineral elements including Ca, Mg, Zn, Na, K, S, B, Cu (P≤0.01) and Si (P≤0.05). Sulphur (S) was found to be the highest and ranged from 53.090±0.020 to 81.433±0.025 mg/g in the study samples, whereas selenium (Se) was present in very low concentration and ranged from 0.004±0.0001 to 0.089±0.003, respectively. The PCA suggested that Mg, Na, Zn, Si and Ca were highly correlated to the first component (27% of the variability); K, Cu and P to the second component (17% of the variability), and Al and S to the third component (15% of the variability). Altogether 59% of variability was accounted for the first three components (PCA) in the study. The study indicated that Trans-Himalayan vegetable, A. hortensis L. was rich in mineral content and hence had considerable nutritional value. This vegetable is naturally supported by the harsh climate of Ladakh region, therefore, could augment appreciably to the fresh ration requirements of troops and local population.

HOUSING PRESSURE REGULATOR WITH IMPROVED WATER-SAVING CHARACTERISTICS

The issues related to the problem of reducing unproductive water losses in the systems of cold and hot water supply of apartment buildings are considered in the article. The insufficient efficiency of application of known water saving devices, reducing overhead costs, the cause of which is the contradiction between the requirements of rationality and ensuring the maximum demand for a public water supply service, is shown. The recommendations for improving the design of the piston apartment pressure regulator “after itself”, ensuring a reduction in nonproductive costs are developed. The results of an experimental study of a pressure regulator with an improved water saving characteristic are presented.

On the Limits of the Precautionary Principle

The precautionary principle (PP) is an influential principle of risk management. It has been widely introduced into environmental legislation, and it plays an important role in most international environmental agreements. Yet, there is little consensus on precisely how to understand and formulate the principle. In this article I prove some impossibility results for two plausible formulations of the PP as a decision-rule. These results illustrate the difficulty in making the PP consistent with the acceptance of any tradeoffs between catastrophic risks and more ordinary goods. How one interprets these results will, however, depend on one's views and commitments. For instance, those who are convinced that the conditions in the impossibility results are requirements of rationality may see these results as undermining the rationality of the PP. But others may simply take these results to identify a set of purported rationality conditions that defenders of the PP should not accept, or to illustrate types of situations in which the principle should not be applied.

Rationality and Synchronic Identity

Many requirements of rationality rely for their application on facts about identity at a time. Take the requirement not to have contradictory beliefs. It is irrational if a single agent believes P and believes ∼P, but it is not irrational if one agent believes P and another believes ∼P. There are puzzle cases, however, in which it is unclear whether we have a single agent, or instead two or more. I consider and reject possible criteria of identity at a time before proposing a pluralist alternative on which there are vastly more agents than we might have thought. This pluralist thesis is analogous to mereological universalism, on which there are all sorts of strange disconnected objects of which we don’t usually take note. I conclude by giving a pragmatic account of which of these rational agents it makes sense to attend to, by appealing the purposes that we have in employing rationally evaluative language.

Рациональность и виды нормативных оснований

The paper discusses problems related to possible gaps between the requirements of rationality and normativity. It shows that the analysis of a practical action from the point of view of instrumental rationality cannot be done without supplementing the context with the requirements of epistemic rationality. Only taking into account the demands of both types of rationality gives us hope to expect that the resulting rational grounds will have normative force. It is also shown that even this normative validity doesn’t always lead to the performance of the rational action. The author analyses the promising distinction of rational grounds offered by J. Gert and notes the strong and weak points of this approach.

A Broomean Model of Rationality and Reasoning

John Broome has developed an account of rationality and reasoning which gives philosophical foundations for choice theory and the psychology of rational agents. We formalize his account into a model that differs from ordinary choice-theoretic models through focusing on psychology and the reasoning process. Within that model, we ask Broome’s central question of whether reasoning can make us more rational: whether it allows us to acquire transitive preferences, consistent beliefs, non-akratic intentions, and so on. We identify three structural types of rationality requirements: consistency requirements, completeness requirements, and closedness requirements. Many standard rationality requirements fall under this typology. Based on three theorems, we argue that reasoning is successful in achieving closedness requirements, but not in achieving consistency or completeness requirements. We assess how far our negative results reveal gaps in Broome's theory, or deficiencies in choice theory and behavioral economics.

The Right to Believe that only one Religion is true

Some philosophers claim to show that religious diversity should lead rational beings to find some conciliation between them. They say that diversity should mean that no one could pretend to hold the truth. We must therefore renounce alethic exclusivity, the claim that a certain religion possesses by itself the truth. This encourages religious scepticism, because when well-informed and reasonable people disagree about their religious or anti-religious beliefs, their confidence in the justification of their beliefs must be reduced or diminished even if that belief were true – to the point that these people are intellectually reconciled. Let us call this claim the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation. I will first claim that it is not a sound principle of intellectual ethics. For that, I will first show that if this Principle claims to sceptically conclude to the plurality of religions, it is, in reality, a reasoning from a sceptical dogma, and not only a reasoning that leads to scepticism. I mean that it is a hidden atheistic argument disguised as an honest neutral reasoning. As it calls for an ethical requirement of rationality, without being then so transparent that it seems, it is important to show that this Principle borders on deception. I am secondly going to show that, even if one accepts to allow oneself to be conciliated by reasoning, the Principle has serious flaws, especially with regard to the philosophical psychology of religious faith. My conclusion will be that it is wrong that we should suspend any religious belief that an alleged epistemic peer does not share as soon as we become aware that he does not share it. It is not true that it is rational in any case to respect the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation, and that another attitude would always be irrational and morally disgusting.

Loving Kindness and Mercy: their Human and Cosmic Significance

AbstractThis paper starts by examining the language used in some well known scriptural passages where the importance of mercy or compassion is stressed. Such passages underline the ethical importance of a direct, physically and emotionally involved response. This leads on to a critique of the shortcomings of approaches to ethics which advocate the impersonal promotion of welfare; our lives as ethical beings depend intimately on the immediate responses arising from our encounters with others in our day-to-day lives. The paper then further explores the special status of loving kindness and mercy in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and argues that secular ethical systems, whether grounded in human nature or in the supposed requirements of rationality, are unlikely to be able to underwrite this kind of status. The final section reflects further on the ‘cosmic’ significance of love in a theistic worldview.

Revenge is sweet

The first half of this paper defends the claim revenge is a personal good. That is, it is the sort of thing, the pursuit of which, for oneself, always provides a reason for action. This makes trouble for the dominant philosophical view of the relation between morality and practical reason: a view held by theorists we can call ‘Angels’. Angels hold that moral requirements are also rational requirements. Devils, on the other hand, hold that immoral behavior is at least sometimes rationally required, so that one would have to act against reason to do what is right. The position in the largely undefended space between the Angels and the Devils is occupied by those we can call ‘Humans’. Humans acknowledge that immoral behavior is sometimes rationally permissible, but they also hold that it is never rationally required. The second half of the paper explains how one can endorse the view that revenge is a good without becoming a Devil. It also argues that the goodness of revenge supports the existence of a theoretically interesting kind of reason: a purely justifying reason.

METHODOLOGICAL BASES OF MECHANISM OF CREATION OF IMAGE OF NATIONAL TOURISM PRODUCT IN GLOBALIZATION CONDITIONS

The article outlines the preconditions for the formation of a positive image of a tourist product, which influences the increase of the authority of the state on the international level, increase of tourist flows, promotion of investment inflow, development of tourist and recreational infrastructure, increase of the general level of economic development and welfare of the population. It is revealed that in order to determine the "tourist magnet" for visitors it is necessary to take into account the completeness of the tourist product filling, which reflects the state, content and structure of the tourist and recreational potential of the country. It is also noted that the image affects the formation and attractiveness of the tourist destination for recreation, namely: health improvement, treatment, travel, etc. To cover the main provisions of the article, complex and historical approaches are used with the use of general scientific research methods: empirical (observation, experiment, description, comparison), empirical-theoretical (analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, approach), theoretical (formalization, definition, description, etc).
 It was established that the perception of the tourist image is influenced by rational requirements, interests, stereotypes, socio-cultural features of mass consciousness. In addition, by its nature, tourism has a figurative character - it's memories, associations, representations that are caused by mentioning a certain country as a tourist object. The image exists autonomously from state or other structures that are interested in its positive formation. The main difference between the image of the vision is that the image is constructed purposefully and consciously, while the vision is formed independently, naturally. It is proved that the formed positive image of the national tourist product, is associated with a high level of attractiveness, aesthetics, comfort, safety, the possibility of implementing a variety of tourist practices. To objectively assess the level of attractiveness of the image, it is necessary to establish the estimated indicators, of which the main groups are: psychophysical, social, reputation, cultural-aesthetic, and economic.
 Taking into account the particularities of the tourism industry, namely: the priority of the wishes of the consumers, the primacy and uniqueness of the tourist service, the extremely important role of marketing in the industry, as well as the integrated structure of the national tourist product on the basis of the WTO classification and the concept of the territorial tourism product.
 Such a structure should include the following components: tourist and recreational resources and services, including goods; related products and services; organizational, legal and socio-political environment of tourism; personnel potential of the country; infrastructure; marketing.

A Kantian virtue epistemology: rational capacities and transcendental arguments

In this paper, I’ll sketch an approach to epistemology that draws its inspiration from two aspects of Kant’s philosophical project. In particular, I want to explore how we might develop a Kantian conception of rationality that combines (1) a virtue-theoretical perspective on the nature of rationality with (2) a role for transcendental arguments in defining the demands this conception of rationality places upon us as thinkers. In discussing these connections, I’ll proceed as follows. First, I’ll describe the sorts of epistemological questions I’ll be focusing on, and the framework within which I’ll try to address them. Then I’ll say a bit about the connections between this framework on Kant’s own views. Next, I’ll explain in more detail how the two main elements of this framework relate to one another by explaining how a certain sort of “transcendental argument” allows us to derive conclusions about the requirements of rationality from facts about the nature of rational capacities. Then, I’ll briefly illustrate these connections with two examples: (1) the rationality of explanatory inference like inference to the best explanation and (2) the rationality of perceptual belief. Finally, I’ll conclude by saying a bit about the relevance of this ideas for debates about the rationality of basic beliefs or prior probabilities.

Desirability foundations of robust rational decision making

Recent work has formally linked the traditional axiomatisation of incomplete preferences a la Anscombe-Aumann with the theory of desirability developed in the context of imprecise probability, by showing in particular that they are the very same theory. The equivalence has been established under the constraint that the set of possible prizes is finite. In this paper, we relax such a constraint, thus de facto creating one of the most general theories of rationality and decision making available today. We provide the theory with a sound interpretation and with basic notions, and results, for the separation of beliefs and values, and for the case of complete preferences. Moreover, we discuss the role of conglomerability for the presented theory, arguing that it should be a rationality requirement under very broad conditions.

Certainty of Punishment and Criminal Thinking: Do the Rational and Non-rational Parameters of a Student’s Decision to Cheat on an Exam Interact?

The purpose of this study was to determine whether criminal thinking interacts with the rational requirements of human decision-making in a group of college students. A convenience sample of 315 undergraduates (114 males, 201 females) completed self-report measures of criminal thinking and estimated their likelihood of cheating on an exam given different levels of certainty of apprehension. A repeated-measures analysis of covariance revealed that students were significantly more likely to seize on the opportunity to cheat when the certainty of getting caught was 10% than when it was 50% and that students with higher levels of criminal thinking were more likely to take the opportunity to cheat than students with lower levels of criminal thinking. In addition, students exhibiting moderate proactive criminal thinking and moderate to high reactive criminal thinking were significantly less likely to be deterred from cheating when the odds of getting caught were low.

The Real Standard Picture, and How Facts Make It Law: A Response to Mark Greenberg

Mark Greenberg has attempted to refute what he regards as a popular metaphysical thesis about how law is constituted. He calls it the “Standard Picture”, and it includes a “Communication Theory”. His own “Moral Impact Theory” of law is built partly on that attempted refutation. I defend positions that are very close to the Standard Picture and Communication Theory, albeit different in important respects. In particular, they are not primarily metaphysical theses, although they have metaphysical implications. They are actual fundamental doctrines of constitutional law in Anglo-American legal systems, which I call Legislative Supremacy and Legislative Intention. I argue that: (a) these doctrines, and their metaphysical implications, vindicate much of the Standard Picture, and explain why so many theorists have been attracted to it; (b) the doctrines are inconsistent with Greenberg’s Moral Impact Theory; and (c) the best theory of what makes them part of the law is legal positivism: in other words, facts about legal practices make them law. In arguing for (a) and (b), I examine in detail and respond to Greenberg’s account of the legal principles and practice of statutory interpretation. I distinguish between three kinds of interpretation: clarifying, supplementing and rectifying. In arguing for (c), I contend that legal positivism satisfies Greenberg’s (questionable) insistence that any metaphysical account of what constitutes law must satisfy a “rationality requirement”.

The explanatory role of consistency requirements

Is epistemic inconsistency a mere symptom of having violated other requirements of rationality—notably, reasons-responsiveness requirements? Or is inconsistency irrational on its own? This question has important implications for the debate on the normativity of epistemic rationality. In this paper, I defend a new account of the explanatory role of the requirement of epistemic consistency. Roughly, I will argue that, in cases where an epistemically rational agent is permitted to believe P and also permitted to disbelieve P (relative to a body of epistemic reasons), the consistency requirement plays a distinct explanatory role. I will also argue that such a type of permissiveness is a live possibility when it comes to rational epistemic standards.

Epistemic authority: preemption through source sensitive defeat

Modern societies are characterized by a division of epistemic labor between laypeople and epistemic authorities. Authorities are often far more competent than laypeople and can thus, ideally, inform their beliefs. But how should laypeople rationally respond to an authority’s beliefs if they already have beliefs and reasons of their own concerning some subject matter? According to the standard view, the beliefs of epistemic authorities are just further, albeit weighty, pieces of evidence. In contrast, the Preemption View claims that, when one discovers what an authority believes, it is not permissible to rely on any of one’s own reasons concerning the subject matter. The original version of this view, as proposed by Linda Zagzebski, has recently been severely criticized for recommending blind trust and for abandoning even minimal standards for critical thinking. In our paper, we defend a new version of the Preemption View—Defeatist Preemptionism—in a way that differs radically from Zagzebski’s. We argue that our view can be derived from certain widely accepted general epistemic principles. In particular, we claim that preemption can be identified as a special case of source sensitive defeat. Moreover, we argue that Defeatist Preemptionism does not lead to the undesirable consequences that critics ascribe to the Preemption View. The paper thus articulates the foundations and refinements of the Preemption View, such that it adequately captures the phenomenon of epistemic authority and the rational requirements related to it.

The Level-Splitting View and the Non-Akrasia Constraint

Some philosophers have defended the idea that in cases of all-things-considered misleading higher-order evidence it is rational to take divergent doxastic attitudes to p and E supports p. In a recent paper, Sophie Horowitz has argued that such “Level-Splitting views” are implausible since they violate a rational requirement she calls the Non-Akrasia Constraint. In this paper, I argue that Horowitz’s objection is misguided since it conflates two distinct notions of epistemic rationality.

The Value of Rationality, by Ralph Wedgwood

The book is the first in a planned trilogy, with Rationality and Belief and Rationality and Choice to follow, titles which signal Wedgwood’s view that one concept of rationality applies across the practical and epistemic domains. The book’s chapters deal with a variety of disparate issues (for example, ‘ought implies can’, the nature of reasons, the meaning of ‘ought’, the structure of virtue, the virtue of rationality, and comparative values), each well worth studying for its own sake, and each explored with reference to the history of the subject, and to some of the main relevant discussions today. Yet, together they form a theory of rationality and its value. Wedgwood is developing a theory of the concept in order to understand the property it expresses. The concept is used primarily to evaluate mental states (beliefs, intentions) and events (decisions, judgements), evaluations that are based purely on the degree to which the mental states and events present in the thinker’s mind at, or shortly before, the relevant time (internalism) constitute a coherent pattern. Norms of rationality, that is, principles specifying what rationality requires, are constitutive of the mental state to which they apply. I assume that this means that what makes a mental state one of a particular kind is that certain requirements of rationality apply to it, namely, those that apply to the kind. Wedgwood underlines another aspect: each type of mental state and event that can be rational has an aim, and thinking rationally is a means of satisfying the aim. Beliefs aim at truth and choice aims at the practicable good. The means to the ends are rational mental states that are correct, that is, conform to norms of correctness that are themselves constitutive of the types of mental states, though they evaluate mental states by their relations to the external world. Both rationality and correctness come in degrees. The more irrational a person’s ways of thinking, the more incorrect his thinking is likely to be.

Normative Judgment and Rational Requirements: A Reply to Ridge

Normative Judgment and Rational Requirements: A Reply to Ridge