Reply to Nathan: How to reconstruct the causal argument

Nicholas Nathan tries to resist the current version of the causal argument for sense-data in two ways. First he suggests that, on what he considers to be the correct re-construction of the argument, it equivocates on the sense of proximate cause. Second he defends a form of disjunctivism, by claiming that there might be an extra mechanism involved in producing veridical hallucination, that is not present in perception. I argue that Nathan’s reconstruction of the argument is not the appropriate one, and that, properly interpreted, the argument does not equivocate on proximate cause. Furthermore, I claim that his postulation of a modified mechanism for hallucinations is implausibly ad hoc.     

Silver nitrate-acetonitrile and iodine-benzene complexes as studied by NMR in thermotropic liquid crystals

Silver nitrate-acetonitrile and π iodine-benzene complexes in thermotropic liquid crystals have been studied by ¹H, ²H, and ¹³C NMR spectroscopy and by optical microscopy. Evidence for at least two silver complexes in each liquid crystal is presented.     

Sub-bundles of the complexified tangent bundle

We study embeddings of complex vector bundles, especially line bundles, in the complexification of the tangent bundle of a manifold. The aim is to understand implications of properties of interest in partial differential equations.

     

HREM studies of the structure and the oxidation process of copper clusters created by inert gas aggregation

Structure and reactivity with oxigen of Cu clusters in the size range of 4.5±2.5 nm created by the inert gas aggregation technique were studied by HREM. The pure Cu clusters investigated under clean conditions show the structures of MTP's with a small lattice dilatation of the (111) plane of 1.25%. For icosahedral and decahedral particles this dilatation corresponds to a splitting of the nearest neighbour distance showing two different values, i.e. dilatation of 2.2% and contraction of 2.8% for the two edges of the deformed tetrahedral subunits, respectively. Oxidation at room temperature and air pressure of 1 bar only begins after a few minutes of exposure to air, after having undergone creation of probably non-stoichiometric intermediate states in the cuprite Cu₂O structure with the bulk values of the bond lengths.     

Phase dynamics of a detuned single-mode laser

We report measurements on the phase dynamics of a detuned single mode laser which has in the past shown correspondence to the complex Lorenz equation. The corresponding ranges of periodic pulsing, of detuned chaos and of windows within the chaotic domain are investigated.Invited paper     

Bases,spanning sets,and the axiom of choice

Two theorems are proved: First that the statement “there exists a field F such that for every vector space over F, every generating set contains a basis” implies the axiom of choice. This generalizes theorems of Halpern, Blass, and Keremedis. Secondly, we prove that the assertion that every vector space over ?₂ has a basis implies that every well‐ordered collection of two‐element sets has a choice function. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)