Sharif Digital Repository

According to current trend of energy production and consumption in the world, economic problems in various countries and too many eco-system disorders in which created by an unsustainable trend in development, recently, the concept of “sustainability” and in the following “sustainable development” has been featured by scientists, researchers and policy makers in different scientific disciplines specially energy system engineering. Therefore exact recognition of unsustainability of local and global energy supply and demand system is very essential. In this research after selection of five energy indicators for sustainable development by Delphi and MCDM methods, future perspective of Iranian... 

Think of an Alpine hiker who because of avalanche and a blinding blizzard, is stranded on a desolate, mountain path facing a chasm. The hiker cannot return the way he came because of the avalanche, yet, if he stays where he is, he will freeze as the temperature plummets. The hiker’s only real hope is to jump the chasm. Knowing that exertion generally follows belief, the hiker realizes that his attempt will be half-hearted, diminishing his chance of survival, unless he brings himself to the belief that he can make the jump. In circumstances like these, one is clearly justified both in forming beliefs motivated by pragmatic reasons, and in suppressing beliefs (I cannot make the jump) motivated... 

The thesis at hand provides a comparative study of Kantian and Fichtean ethics. In the course of this study, the ethical theory of these philosophers will be analyzed through three stages of “Foundation of Ethics,” “System of Ethics,” and “Application of Ethics”: Foundation of Ethics seeks out human will as the sole possible ground for ethical theory of both Kant and Fichte; System of Ethics follows the endeavors of the two thinkers in deducing concept of ethics from this sole ground; and lastly, Application of Ethics introduces the ethical thoughts resulting from a Fichtean account of ethics. This thesis is mostly based upon studies of Allen W. Wood of the ethical thoughts of Kant and... 

In this thesis a smart anticorrosive pH-responsive coat was developed with layer by layer (LbL) technique in the assembly of SiO2/CTAB/PSS/HMTA/PSS/PEI/PSS. SiO2 nanoparticles were prepared from Matland Company (Iran) with average size of 24 nm. At first, the corrosion inhibition of HMTA for API 5L Grade B steel in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution was investigated. Tafel polarization technique showed the optimum concentration of HMTA was 0.08 M with 92% corrosion inhibition efficiency as the morphology of coverage and adsorption on the steel surface was confirmed by SEM and EDS. AFM results showed the roughness of the surface decreased from 241 nm to 56 nm that is attributed to HMTA adsorption on the... 

In recent years, sparse representation has had a variety of applications in computer vision such as noise reduction, image reconstruction, classification and dimension reduction. In this project, we aim to provide a method of matching the keypoints obtained from the Scale Invariant feature Transform (SIFT) algorithm. In this algorithm is used descriptor instead of intensity . The proposed method, first, extracts the salient points from the images and learns a dictionary-based descriptors corresponding to the points. Then, using the dictionary, it obtains the sparse coefficients for each salient point by which, it determines the correspondence of the salient points in the two images using SVD... 

The search for an empirically proven quantum theory of gravity is one of the greatest open problems of fundamental physics. Obstacles are formal and conceptual in nature. Our goal is to find a theory that somehow unites general relativity (Einstein's classical field gravity theory) and quantum field theory. In this research work, the problem of quantum gravity and the reason for its importance are investigated, as well as the proposed solutions; and what philosophical issues do these approaches and the issue itself create. Research has been carefully selected to remain managed in terms of size and content, however, some basic formalism is introduced to enter physics and the philosophy of... 

By “Analysis of Epistemological Justification of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE)” I mean to examine whether the IBE argument can increase the probability of the truth of belief to the outcome of the argument or not. According to the Strong Version of IBE, this increase shows that the best explanation is more likely to be true, whereas according to the Weak Version the best explanation is more probable than its available rivals. The most influential arguments against these positions are: (1) The bad lot objection (BLO) according to which the idea that the best available explanations will be more likely to be true, presupposes that the truth is already more likely to be found among... 

Reducing water evaporation is one of the ways to overcome the low precipitation and drought conditions in water reservoirs. For this purpose, extensive studies have been investigated on physical and chemical coatings on lakes and reservoirs. Physical methods often involve the use of floating covers on the water surface to block evaporation by shading, most of which are only suitable for reservoirs with surface areas smaller than 5 hectares. In chemical methods, the evaporation can be decreased by nanomaterial coating, usually, containing long-chain molecules, which by spraying them on the surface, molecular monolayers are formed. In this study, the effect of nanometer coatings on the surface... 

Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (1912-1989) is an analytic philosopher whose philosophy is famous for being deep, systematic and extremely influential and notorious for being difficult to read. Although he has many original and interconnected ideas in different branches of philosophy- including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, philosophy of language and meta-philosophy- the place of science in his system is completely indispensable. In his meta-philosophy, Sellars defines his philosophical project as an attempt to reconcile two distinct world-views of humanity in the modern word; scientific image and manifest image. Approaching Sellars’ philosophy by placing science at the... 

Technological capabilities as one of the growth’s aspects in developing countries have gained focus for research in last years. This study attempt to analyze the pattern of technological capabilities in four different sectors including Optic, Aerospace, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology. In each sectors four Iranian companies as the case studies are selected. After deep interviews with key people in each company, required data is gathered. Data in each company is analyzed. The results of analysis for companies in one sector are gathered for analyzing each sector. In order to evaluate technological capabilities, the time required to improve, lead-lag relationship for gaining higher levels of... 

The idea that the intentional states are essentially normative has been much discussed in the philosophies of mind and cognitive sciences in the past few decades. The main idea is that some norms are essentially engaged in constituting the nature of the intentional states. Reaching an accurate formulation of this thesis and arguing for and against it has sparked much disagreements among the proponents and the opponents alike. This dissertation makes the case for a particular version of this thesis, according to which the intentional states, particularly beliefs and intentions, are construed as theoretical and practical commitments. This is the view which has already been defended by several... 

Semantic Holism is one of the most effective and wide spreading topics in philosophy of language. W.V.Quine with his “Two Dogmas” article has coined semantic holism with his name. After Quine, semantic holism absorbed many attentions in the philosophy of language and also other fields. Even, in neural networks and artificial intelligence, holistic presumptions about meaning are accepted. Nevertheless, arguments for meaning holism and their validation has not tended enough. Fodor and Lepore, in Semantic Holism; A Shopper’s Guide, are trying to reconstruct arguments for semantic holism that had been presented by philosophers like Quine, Davidson, Dennet, Lewis, and Churchland and then... 

The debate over the nature of perceptual states has been a significant part of the literature of philosophy of the mind during the past two decades. John Campbell's philosophical works on metaphysics and epistemology of sensory perception, according to many of his followers and critics, are among the most coherent contemporary philosophical works with recent advances in cognitive science. His research on the relationship between attention, reference, knowledge and spatial representations is to a large extent supported by scientific ideas in empirical psychology, and it can be said that most of his work is devoted to analyzing and solving the theoretical complexities deriving from empirical... 

One of the important problems in the history of philosophy of Mind &Science is to respond this question: whether our observations which are the basics of our experiences are theory laden or not? theory-ladenness of observation thesis has been endorsed by Duhem and hansen and thomas kuhn,generally theory-ladensess of observation devide in two concepts, firstly it means the affection of on the observable terms secondly it relates to the affection of theories on our perception and phenomenology of experience. fodor claims that theories has nothing to do with our observation and churchland claims vice versa, both of these philosophers mention their own reasons and in this thesis we are looking... 

This Thesis identifies the pattern of technological learning in developing complex products systems (CoPS). The experiences of Iran in missile development in the defense industry has been studied to explain the learning process in attaining indigenous technological capability. The case study of TOW missile development including international technology transfers has been explored to investigate the technological learning patterns. The role of policy initiatives had excessive importance through technological learning in the case study  

Among fundamental metaphysical quests, one might wonder: Why is there anything at all rather than just nothing? Many contemporary thinkers reject that question because they think it is meaningless, trivial, or necessarily unanswerable. So, most of them view the world’s existence as a brute fact. But I provide reasons for thinking that the Why question could make sense and one might even expect an answer to it. I begin by showing that the Why question could meaningfully ask why the world is not empty of all concrete things. One might regard this question as important if one accepts that it is, in some sense, possible for all concrete things to vanish, one-by-one. Next, against the traditional... 

Michael Zimmerman in his book Living with Uncertainty has objected to two views of moral obligation, namely objective and subjective view. Two overcome these problems he suggests a third view which he calls prospective view and tells us that our moral obligation is determined by the prospection that each of our choices give us. In this thesis first I review Zimmerman’s objections to objective and subjective view. Then I try to suggest a solution for the objective view  

In his Mind, Brain and Free Will, Swinburne introduces a new argument for substance dualism based on the synchronic unity of humans’ conscious experiences. He argues that the human body cannot be the substance of such a synchronic unity, and that this coexperiencing property, which is a mental property, is the essential property of the human substance: hence our substance is a mental substance. After providing a careful explanation of Swinburne’s subtle argument, I first try to demonstrate that it is metaphysically possible that the brain itself could instantiate such a synchronic unity without the need to presume another substance. Then I shall argue that it is unclear how to infer the...