title: Two solutions for deflationism: assertion, explanation, and alethic desires

authors: Wyatt, Jeremy

abstract: Deflationists aim to upend traditional metaphysical inquiry about truth, proposing that we instead investigate why we think and speak about truth as we do. This iconoclastic agenda has faced a consistent barrage of criticisms, many of which have been ably dispatched. In this talk, I’ll focus on two recent challenges to deflationism about the concept TRUTH (or 'conceptual deflationism') that have yet to be addressed. Dorit Bar-On and Keith Simmons have argued that conceptual deflationists cannot account for the plausible Fregean idea that to assert a proposition is to present it as being true. In response, I’ll explain how revisiting the deflationary claim that facts involving TRUTH lack explanatory power reveals the compatibility of this Fregean proposal with conceptual deflationism. Even more recently, Jamin Asay has appealed to ‘alethic desires’ in arguing that TRUTH is a more robust concept than conceptual deflationists allow. The problem is meant to be that conceptual deflationists cannot accommodate the fact that someone who has a belief that p can desire that their belief be true without desiring that p. In response, I’ll explain why the case that Asay presents is likely a product of framing effects and thus poses no threat to conceptual deflationism.

text: Two solutions for deflationism: assertion, explanation, and alethic desires Deflationists aim to upend traditional metaphysical inquiry about truth, proposing that we instead investigate why we think and speak about truth as we do. This iconoclastic agenda has faced a consistent barrage of criticisms, many of which have been ably dispatched. In this talk, I’ll focus on two recent challenges to deflationism about the concept TRUTH (or 'conceptual deflationism') that have yet to be addressed. Dorit Bar-On and Keith Simmons have argued that conceptual deflationists cannot account for the plausible Fregean idea that to assert a proposition is to present it as being true. In response, I’ll explain how revisiting the deflationary claim that facts involving TRUTH lack explanatory power reveals the compatibility of this Fregean proposal with conceptual deflationism. Even more recently, Jamin Asay has appealed to ‘alethic desires’ in arguing that TRUTH is a more robust concept than conceptual deflationists allow. The problem is meant to be that conceptual deflationists cannot accommodate the fact that someone who has a belief that p can desire that their belief be true without desiring that p. In response, I’ll explain why the case that Asay presents is likely a product of framing effects and thus poses no threat to conceptual deflationism.

year: 2022

title: Improved grid integration of intermittent electricity generation using electric vehicles for storage: A simulation study

authors: Monigatti, Paul

subjects: electric vehicles

abstract: This paper describes a simulation to establish the extent to which reliance on non-dispatchable energy sources, particularly wind generation, could in the future be extended beyond accepted norms, by utilizing the distributed battery capacity of an electric vehicle fleet for storage. The notion of exploiting the distributed battery capacity of an electric vehicle fleet as grid storage is not new. However, this simulation study specifically examines the potential impact of the idea in the New Zealand context. The simulation makes use of real and projected data in relation to vehicle usage, full potential wind generation capacity and availability, taking into account weather variation, and typical daily and seasonal patterns of electricity usage. It differs from previous studies in that it is based on individual vehicles, rather than a bulk battery model. At this stage, the simulation does not take into account local or regional flows. A more detailed analysis of these localized effects will follow in subsequent stages of the simulation work.

text: Improved grid integration of intermittent electricity generation using electric vehicles for storage: A simulation study This paper describes a simulation to establish the extent to which reliance on non-dispatchable energy sources, particularly wind generation, could in the future be extended beyond accepted norms, by utilizing the distributed battery capacity of an electric vehicle fleet for storage. The notion of exploiting the distributed battery capacity of an electric vehicle fleet as grid storage is not new. However, this simulation study specifically examines the potential impact of the idea in the New Zealand context. The simulation makes use of real and projected data in relation to vehicle usage, full potential wind generation capacity and availability, taking into account weather variation, and typical daily and seasonal patterns of electricity usage. It differs from previous studies in that it is based on individual vehicles, rather than a bulk battery model. At this stage, the simulation does not take into account local or regional flows. A more detailed analysis of these localized effects will follow in subsequent stages of the simulation work.

year: 2012

title: Putting Sylvia in her place: history, geographical theory and the “New” Education

authors: Middleton, Sue

subjects: Sylvia Ashton-Warner

abstract: New Zealander Sylvia Ashton-Warner, a teacher in remote rural Mori schools in the 1940s-1950s, became internationally renowned as a novelist and educational theorist. Earlier commentators portrayed her educational theory as in conflict with those of her time and place, but recent studies conceptualise them as enabled by it. While space/place has often been considered the preserve of the geographer and time that of the historian, Henri Lefebvre and others suggest that: “these issues need to be thought together rather than separately” and that macro-, meso- and micro-levels of analysis be engaged simultaneously. The author traces how conceptual, linguistic, sensory and intellectual resources of the global “New Education” movement extended into the tiny bush-encircled Mori communities in which Sylvia taught and wrote in the 1940s-1950s and surfaced in her writing. The article zooms in and out between the “the immensity of the global” (the New Education, the Second World War) and “the intimately tiny” (her classroom and home). The “data” include Sylvia's non-fiction education texts and official documents of her time: school curricula, education policy documents, Ministerial and Inspectors' reports. What Lefebvre terms a “Rhythm analysis” of Ashton-Warner's educational writing shows intermingled pulses of domestic life, routines of educational bureaucracy, cycles of nature, and cataclysms of world events. It is important for historians to study “the where rather than just the when with location and landscape central parts of the analysis”.

text: Putting Sylvia in her place: history, geographical theory and the “New” Education New Zealander Sylvia Ashton-Warner, a teacher in remote rural Mori schools in the 1940s-1950s, became internationally renowned as a novelist and educational theorist. Earlier commentators portrayed her educational theory as in conflict with those of her time and place, but recent studies conceptualise them as enabled by it. While space/place has often been considered the preserve of the geographer and time that of the historian, Henri Lefebvre and others suggest that: “these issues need to be thought together rather than separately” and that macro-, meso- and micro-levels of analysis be engaged simultaneously. The author traces how conceptual, linguistic, sensory and intellectual resources of the global “New Education” movement extended into the tiny bush-encircled Mori communities in which Sylvia taught and wrote in the 1940s-1950s and surfaced in her writing. The article zooms in and out between the “the immensity of the global” (the New Education, the Second World War) and “the intimately tiny” (her classroom and home). The “data” include Sylvia's non-fiction education texts and official documents of her time: school curricula, education policy documents, Ministerial and Inspectors' reports. What Lefebvre terms a “Rhythm analysis” of Ashton-Warner's educational writing shows intermingled pulses of domestic life, routines of educational bureaucracy, cycles of nature, and cataclysms of world events. It is important for historians to study “the where rather than just the when with location and landscape central parts of the analysis”.

year: 2011