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I first show how one might argue for a mind-independent conception of beauty and artistic merit. I then discuss whether this makes aesthetic judgements suitable to undermine skeptical worries about the existence of mind-independent moral value and categorical reasons.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to distinguish between two kinds of companions in guilt strategy: by analogy, and by entailment. It explores the methodology of companions in guilt arguments and argues that proponents of guilt argument assume that the error theory is comprised of a single argument. The book provides one of the first sustained discussions and critiques of Terence Cuneo’s illocutionary companions in guilt argument. It also argues that if epistemic normativity can be analysed in terms of truth, then prudential normativity can be analysed in terms of pleasure. The book discusses the prospects for companions in guilt arguments that take aesthetic judgments or properties as a companion for their moral counterparts. It shows that a version of guilt argument based on the metaphysics of the thick evaluative or on what it is to understand thick evaluative concepts fails.

Tracking the sources of particulate organic matter (POM) exported from catchments is important to understand the transfer of energy from soils to oceans. The suitability of investigating the molecular composition of POM by thermally assisted hydrolysis and methylation using tetramethylammonium hydroxide directly coupled to gas chromatography and mass spectrometry is presented. The results of this molecular-fingerprint approach were compared with previously published elemental (% C, % N) and isotopic data (δ13C, δ15N) acquired in a nested headwater catchment in the Piedmont region, eastern United States of America (12 and 79 ha). The concordance between these results highlights the effectiveness of this molecular tool as a valuable method for source fingerprinting of POM. It emphasizes litter as the main source of exported POM at the upstream location (80±14 %), with an increasing proportion of streambed (SBed) sediment remobilization downstream (42 ± 29 %), specifically during events characterized by high rainfall amounts. At the upstream location, the source of POM seems to be controlled by the maximum and median hourly rainfall intensity. An added value of this method is to directly investigate chemical biomarkers and to mine their distributions in terms of biogeochemical functioning of an ecosystem. In this catchment, the distribution of plant-derived biomarkers characterizing lignin, cutin and suberin inputs were similar in SBed and litter, while the proportion of microbial markers was 4 times higher in SBed than in litter. These results indicate that SBed OM was largely from plant litter that has been processed by the aquatic microbial community.

This paper has four parts. In the first part I argue that moral facts are subject to a certain epistemic accessibility requirement. Namely, moral facts must be accessible to some possible agent. In the second part I show that because this accessibility requirement on moral facts holds, there is a route from facts about the moral disagreements of agents in idealized conditions to conclusions about what moral facts there are. In the third part I build on this route to show that (*) if there is significant moral disagreement in idealized conditions, then our understanding of morality is fatally flawed and we should accept relativism over non‐naturalism and quasi‐realism. So, if, like many, you think that there would be significant moral disagreement in idealized conditions, you should hold that our understanding of morality is fatally flawed and reject non‐naturalism and quasi‐realism. In the fourth part of this paper I show that (*) undermines the plausibility of non‐naturalism, quasi‐realism, and the view that our understanding of morality is not fatally flawed even if we do not have sufficient reason to believe that there would be significant moral disagreement in idealized conditions.

International audience; Particulate organic matter (POM) plays an important biogeochemical role towards ecology, ecotoxicology andcarbon cycle. Moreover POM within the fluvial suspended sediment load during infrequent high flows cancomprise a larger portion of long-term flux than dissolved species. It is well documented that storm events thatconstituted only 10-20% of the year contributed to >80% of POC exports. But the origin and composition ofPOM transferred during those hot moments remained unclear. In order to improve our knowledge on this topicwe explore the variability in storm event-transported sediments’ POM content and source down a continuum ofcatchment drainage locations.Wetland, upland and forest O horizons, litter, river banks and bed sediments were analyzed for their contentin organic C, isotopic (13C) and molecular (thermochemiolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry)fingerprints. The isotopic and molecular fingerprints recorded in suspended and deposited (differentiated into fine,medium and coarse particles) sediments sampled during different storm events down a continuum of catchmentdrainage locations (12 and 79 ha).This study highlights compositional differences between the catchment size (12 versus 79 ha), the particlesize of deposited sediment (fine versus medium versus coarse) and the sampling time during a storm event (risinglimb versus peak flow versus falling limb). Two sampling strategies were used. Suspended sediments sampled ata specific time during flood events allow evaluating changes along the hydrograph, while deposited sedimentsthat integrate the entire event allow making comparisons with drainage scale. For deposited sediments, theproportion of OM coming from the endmembers wetland, litter and Forest O horizon decreases from the 12hato the 79ha catchment, which exhibited a higher proportion of OM coming from stream bed sediment and riverbanks. For both catchments, from fine to coarse particles, the influence of stream bed sediments and river banksdecreases while the influence of Forest O horizon increases. For suspended sediments, the evolution during stormevents were opposite in the 12ha and the 79ha catchments. In the 12ha catchment, during the rising limb of thehydrograph, POM seems to be inherited from stream bed sediments and river banks, while from the rising limbto the peak flow, the influence of litter and/or wetland increases. This influence decreases during the falling limb.The opposite trend was observed in the 79ha catchment, with an increasing contribution of stream bed sedimentsto the OM exported during a storm event.What is the information to take away? First POM transferred in headwater catchments has multiple sources.Secondly, the combination of those sources is different along the size continuum of particles. Then, down acontinuum of catchment drainage locations, the combination of sources changes both along the size continuumand during storm events. This information is critical for identifying the various drivers and mechanisms behindPOM transport and for understanding the impacts of POM on aquatic metabolism and downstream water quality

Our concepts of good simpliciter, good for, and good as a particular kind of thing must share some common element. I argue that all three types of goodness can be analysed in terms of the reasons that there are for a certain sets of agents to have pro-attitudes. To this end I provide new and compelling accounts of good for and goodness of a kind in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes that are more explanatorily illuminating than competing accounts and that evade the objections that undermine previous accounts of good for and goodness of a kind in terms of reasons.

Results from the recent 1979 census of the Soviet Union indicate that regional rates of population change between 1970 and 1979 were generally lower than those of the preceding intercensal period of 1959-70 and that regional variations were generally similar to those of 1959-70. The Soviet population is becoming more concentrated again with the most pronounced shift being towards the rapidly growing non-Slavic South especially Central Asia. However the extent of interregional redistribution appears to be lessening. Appreciable urbanization continued to occur in most regions especially in the western areas due to rapid urban growth and deepening rural population decline. (summary in FRE) (EXCERPT)

The thesis outlines the need for a method of communicating concepts of environmental action, reviews environmental movements and simulation gaming theory, proposes methodology and learning objectives and describes an environmental simulation game named ''Community". The game simulates a small town with four industries (food, housing, textile and automobile manufacturing) that employ four to thirty-three players who exchange money, pollute, and vote on community issues. The game rules, playing board, player roles, event cards, tokens, game operation and participant reactions are described. The conclusion states the game of ''Community" represents a design that involved individuals in participatory, decision making situations concerning economic, political and pollution processes, A need is stated for additional research on the effects of simulation gaming. A bibliography lists sources consulted on environmental movements and simulation gaming. The appendices contain the game model elements in a playing form. The author's vita notes a university background in history and education with work experience in community organization. Master of Science

THIS PAPER IS PRIMARILY CONCERNED WITH A TEST TO FAILURE OF A VERY SMALL-SCALE MODEL OF A REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAME, PATTERNED AFTER THAT CONSTRUCTED FOR THE NEW STATEN ISLAND FERRY TERMINAL IN LOWER MANHATTAN. RESULTS INDICATE THAT MICROCONCRETE MODELS EVEN AT EXTREME SCALE FACTORS, CONFORM TO THE ULTIMATE STRENGTH PROVISIONS OF ACI-318-63 AND THEREFORE CAN BE USED TO STUDY COLLAPSE BEHAVIOR EVEN OF RELATIVELY COMPLICATED FRAMES. CHECKS AGAINST ANALYTIC PREDICTIONS FROM BOTH "MECHANISM" AND "FINITE LINEAR APPROXIMATION" STRATEGIES CONFIRM THAT RATIONAL LIMIT ANALYSIS AND DESIGN TO UTILIZE MOMENT REDISTRIBUTION AND THE RESULTING ENERGY ABSORPTION CAPACITY IS POSSIBLE AND ATTRACTIVE. /AUTHOR/

Evidence based-policy (EBP) is a popular research paradigm in the applied social sciences and within government agencies. Informally, EBP represents an explicit commitment to applying scientific methods to public affairs, in contrast to ideologically-driven or merely intuitive “common-sense” approaches to public policy. More specifically, the EBP paradigm places great weight on the results of experimental research designs, especially randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and systematic literature reviews that place evidential weight on experimental results. One hope is that such research designs and approaches to analysing the scientific literature are sufficiently robust that they can settle what really ‘works’ in public policy. Can EBP succeed in displacing reliance on domain-specific expertise? On our account, this is seldom, if ever, the case. The key reason for this is that underlying this approach is generally an appeal to argument by induction, which always requires further assumptions to underwrite its validity, and if not induction, some other argument form that also requires assumptions that are very often not validated for the case at hand.

Iris Murdoch both argues that perceptual experience itself can be evaluatively significant, and that the best way of making sense of this claim is to say that experience is shaped by the concepts that subjects possess and deploy as situated historical agents with a stance upon the world. This paper examines the implications of Murdoch’s distinctive conception of moral perception as a form of ‘vision’ revelatory of value for recent companions in guilt arguments for moral objectivism from thick evaluative concepts and speech act theory. I question the underlying motivation for holding that conventional norms that pertain to speech are themselves moral norms in developing a metaethical view of moral value (see Cuneo, 2014). Instead, I argue that there is an essentially relational dimension to realistic and continuous self-cultivation in concept application that is helpfully understood in terms of virtue. This, if I am right, brings into view a new perspective on the so-called companions in guilt strategy in metaethics.