This tutorial covers a variety of methods for 3D shape matching and retrieval that are characterized by the use of a real-valued function defined on the shape (mapping function) to derive its signature. The methods are discussed following an abstract conceptual framework that distinguishes among the three main components of these class of shape matching methods: shape analysis, via the applicat...

We present a novel, log-radius profile representation for convex curves and define a new operation for combining the shape features of curves. Unlike the standard, angle profile-based methods, this operation accurately combines the shape features in a visually intuitive manner. This method have implications in shape analysis as well as in investigating how the brain perceives and generates curv...

We propose two differential geometric representations of planar shapes using: (i) direction functions and (ii) curvature functions, of their boundaries. Under either representation, planar shapes are treated as elements of infinite-dimensional shape spaces. Pairwise differences between the shapes are quantified using the lengths of geodesics connecting them on the shape spaces. We specify the g...

A long debate in aesthetics concerns the reasoned nature of criticism. The main questions ask whether criticism is based on (normative) reasons, critics communicate reasons fo...

I have argued elsewhere that respect for human rights requires a robust notion of responsibility, and that this in turn depends on folk-psychological ideas including free will, and also that such ideas need to be articulated in such a way that they can be used in combination with contemporary science in the development of the criminal law. Stephen J. Morse contends that responsibility is explai...

Most accounts of responsibility begin from either of two prominent points of departure: the idea that an agent must have some characterological or expressive connection to the action, or alternately, the idea that an agent must be in some sense responsive to reasons. Indeed, we might even understand much of the past couple of decades of philosophical work on moral responsibility as concerned wi...

In my first lecture I listed seven questions about reasons that seemed to require answers. These were: Relational Character: Reasons are reasons for an agent. How is this relational character to be understood? Ground of Truth: In virtue of what are claims about reasons true, when they are true? Does the idea that claims about reasons are true or false, independent of our opinions about them, an...