We study the universal .properties of period-doubling bifurcation sequences in twodimensional area-preserving maps. This paper begins with a description of the period-doubling process based on the work of Greene, MacKay, Vivaidi, and Feigenbaum [I] and others [2, 3, 4]. The scaling laws which the period-doubling process is found to obey are explained through a renormalization argument previousl...

This paper formulates in the first part some requirements for a certain sort of computational argumentation systems, namely those which are designed for a very specific purpose: to motivate reflection on one’s own thinking, and to induce cognitive change. This function of argumentation systems is important for argument-based conflict negotiations, deliberation processes, intercultural communica...

LFG grants syntactic functions a central role and has developed a theory of argument structure, Lexical Mapping Theory (LMT), which is independent of phrase-structure trees and thus able to account for morpholexical derivations. Yet some fundamental phenomena falling within the scope of morpholexical analysis – such as morphosemantic (meaning-altering) operations, phenomena referred to elsewher...

The Eulerian mapping closure approach is developed for uncertainty propagation in computational uid mechanics. The approach is used to study the Probability Density Function (PDF) for the concentration of species advected by a random shear ow. An analytical argument shows that uctuation of the concentration eld at one point in space is non-Gaussian and exhibits stretched exponential form. An Eu...

The Argument Interchange Format (AIF) has been devised in order to support the interchange of ideas and data between different projects and applications in the area of computational argumentation. In order to support such interchange, an abstract ontology for argumentation is presented, which serves as an interlingua between various more concrete argumentation languages. In this paper, we aim t...

Recent developments in cosmology indicate that every history having a nonzero probability is realized in infinitely many distinct regions of spacetime. Thus, it appears that the universe contains infinitely many civilizations exactly like our own, as well as infinitely many civilizations that differ from our own in any way permitted by physical laws. We explore the implications of this conclusi...

I’ll raise a problem for Retributivism, the view that legal punishment is justified on the basis of desert. I’ll focus primarily on Mitchell Berman’s recent defense of the view. He gives one of the most sophisticated and careful statements of it. And his argument is representative, so the problem I’ll raise for it will apply to other versions of Retributivism. His insights about justification a...