The relation between categories and sentence frames as presented in ryle's "the concept of mind" is discussed. smart states, "it is important to note that the fact that two expressions 'a' and 'b' "will" go into the same blank in a sentence frame does "not" prove that they are of the same category." (staff).

Why is it that philosophers find it so hard to come to agreement? Many disputes that have gone on for centuries or even millennia are still unresolved, even though there has been increased conceptual sophistication on the part of the contending parties. Consider, for example, the question of free will, where libertarians still contest the field with determinists and compatibilists.

This paper defends the idea that there might be vagueness or indeterminacy in the world itself---as opposed to merely in our representations of the world---against the charges of incoherence and unintelligibility. First we consider the idea that the world might contain vague *properties and relations*; we show that this idea is already implied by certain well-understood views concerning the semantics of vague predicates (most notably the fuzzy view). Next we consider the idea that the world might contain vague *objects*; we (...) argue that an object is indeterminate in a certain respect (colour, size, etc.) just in case it is a borderline case of a maximally specific colour (size, etc.) property. Finally we consider the idea that the *world as a whole* might be indeterminate; we argue that the world is indeterminate just in case it lacks a determinate division into determinate objects. (shrink)

This paper is partly to get rid of some irritation which I have felt at the quite common tendency of philosophers to elucidate (for example) ‘is red’ in terms of ‘looks red’. For a relatively recent example see, for example, Frank Jackson and Robert Pargetter, ‘An Objectivist′s Guide to Subjectivism about Colour’. However rather than try to make a long list of references, I would rather say ‘No names, no pack drill’. I have even been disturbed to find the use (...) of the words ‘looks red’ that I am opposing ascribed to me by Keith Campbell in his useful article ‘David Armstrong and Realism about Colour’. I am not saying that such talk is necessarily wrong. Talk of ‘looks red’ may be a way of harmlessly referring to the behavioural discriminations with respect to colour of a human percipient. Where it is dangerous, at least to those of us who wish to argue for a broadly physicalist account of the mind, is that it may have concealed overtones of reference to epiphenomenal and irreducibly psychic properties of experiences. Moreover even if it does not do so it may be fence sitting on this issue and liable to misinterpretation. (shrink)

Rotating machinery produces vibrations depending upon the design of the rotor systems as well as any faults or uncertainties in the machine that can increase the vibrations of such systems. This study illustrates the effectiveness of using surrogate modeling based on kriging in order to predict the vibrational behavior of a complex flexible rotor in the presence of uncertainties. The basic idea of kriging is to predict unknown values of a function by using a small size set of known data. (...) The kriging estimation is based on a weighted average of the known values of the function in the neighborhood of the point for which the value of the function has to be calculated. The crucial dependence of a kriging predictor versus the correlation functions and different orders will be illustrated. This paper also shows that reducing the number of samples required to have predictive models can be achieved by performing an initial understanding of the mechanical system of interest and by considering certain characteristics directly deriving from the physics of the problem studied. (shrink)