Experimental philosophers have gathered impressive evidence for the surprising conclusion that philosophers' intuitions are out of step with those of the folk. As a result, many argue that philosophers' intuitions are unreliable. Focusing on the Knobe Effect, a leading finding of experimental philosophy, we defend traditional philosophy against this conclusion. Our key premise relies on experiments we conducted which indicate that judgments of the folk elicited under higher quality cognitive or epistemic conditions are more likely to resemble those of the philosopher. We end by showing how our experimental findings can help us better understand the Knobe Effect.

In the context of the demonstration of the UREX (uranium extraction) process, a separation of uranium and technetium using an anion exchange resin was performed on a simulant solution containing 98.95 g/L of 238U and 130.2 mg/L of 99Tc. After sorption on the resin, TcO4 − was eluted with NH4OH, the eluting stream was treated, and the technetium converted to Tc metal (yield=52.5%). The purity of the compound was analyzed: it contains less than 23.8 μg of 238U per gram of 99Tc. Tc metal was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) spectroscopy; EXAFS analysis clearly confirms the hexagonal structure of the metal obtained after treatment. Uranium was converted to ammonium diuranate and to U3O8 in a yield of 88.2%, analysis indicates that the compound contains less than 0.16 μg of 99Tc per gram of ammonium diuaranate.

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Court-ordered apologies add very little of value to the meanings and functions already present in contemporary legal proceedings and punishments. They also present considerable costs. This article first evaluates Kant’s infamous advocacy for court-ordered apologies as retributive humiliation as well arguments from contemporary Kantians who support court-ordered apologies on somewhat less divisive grounds. It then considers various consequentialist arguments for and against court-ordered apologies. Throughout these discussions clean distinctions between voluntary and involuntary apologies deteriorate. Any value we might derive from court-ordered apologies can probably be better realized through less problematic means.

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