9,257 research outputs found

    Reasoning about strategies and rational play in dynamic games

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    We discuss a number of conceptual issues that arise in attempting to capture, in dynamic games, the notion that there is "common understanding" among the players that they are all rational.Belief revision, common belief, counterfactual, dynamic game, model of a game, rationality

    The philosophy of logic

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    Postprin

    What is Reasoning?

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    Reasoning is a certain kind of attitude-revision. What kind? The aim of this paper is to introduce and defend a new answer to this question, based on the idea that reasoning is a goodness-fixing kind. Our central claim is that reasoning is a functional kind: it has a constitutive point or aim that fixes the standards for good reasoning. We claim, further, that this aim is to get fitting attitudes. We start by considering recent accounts of reasoning due to Ralph Wedgwood and John Broome, and argue that, while these accounts contain important insights, they are not satisfactory: Wedgwood’s rules out too much, and Broome’s too little. We then introduce and defend our alternative account, discuss some of its implications and attractions, and, finally, consider objections

    Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will take you anywhere

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    Funding: H2020 European Research Council. Grant Number: 681404.There is some consensus on the claim that imagination as suppositional thinking can have epistemic value insofar as it's constrained by a principle of minimal alteration of how we know or believe reality to be – compatibly with the need to accommodate the supposition initiating the imaginative exercise. But in the philosophy of imagination there is no formally precise account of how exactly such minimal alteration is to work. I propose one. I focus on counterfactual imagination, arguing that this can be modeled as simulated belief revision governed by Laplacian imaging. So understood, it can be rationally justified by accuracy considerations: it minimizes expected belief inaccuracy, as measured by the Brier score.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

    Non-Locality and Theories of Causation

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    The aim of the paper is to investigate the characterization of an unambiguous notion of causation linking single space-llike separated events in EPR-Bell frameworks. This issue is investigated in ordinary quantum mechanics, with some hints to no collapse formulations of the theory such as Bohmian mechanics.Comment: Presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Modality, Probability and Bell's Theorems, Cracow, Poland, August 19-23, 200

    Counterfactual Skepticism and Multidimensional Semantics

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    It has recently been argued that indeterminacy and indeterminism make most ordinary counterfactuals false. I argue that a plausible way to avoid such counterfactual skepticism is to postulate the existence of primitive modal facts that serve as truth-makers for counterfactual claims. Moreover, I defend a new theory of ‘might’ counterfactuals, and develop assertability and knowledge criteria to suit such unobservable ‘counterfacts’

    How a Randall-Sundrum Brane-World Effective Potential Influences Inflation Physics

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    In string theory, even when there are ten to the thousand power vacuum states, does inflation produce overwhelmingly one preferred type of vacuum state? We respond affirmatively to questions whether existence of graviton production is confirmable using present detector methodology. We use an explcity Randall-Sundrum brane world effective potential as congruent with an inflationary quadratic potential start. This occurs after the Bogomolnyi inequality eliminates the need for the ad hoc assumption of axion wall mass high temperature related dissapearance. Graviton production has explicit links with a five-dimensional brane-world negavit cosmological constant and a four dimensional positive valued cosmological constant, whose temperature dependence permits an early universe graviton production activyt burst. We show how di quarks, wave functions, and various geometrical forms tien into the WHeeler-De Witt equation. This permits investigating a discrete quantum bounce and a possible link to the initial phase of the present universe's evolution as a converse to a prior universe's collapse to the bounce point-the initial starting point to inflationary expansion. This opens a possibility of realstically investigating gravitons as part of a space propusion systme and deal iwth problems resulting from a beam of gravity waves, which would create a g-force because the geodestic structure is near field. It can be applied to existing and to new space propulsion concepts.Comment: 12 pages, 0 figures. AIP record entry into forecoming STAIF conference proceedings, as of February 2007, in the "new frontiers " section of STAIF headed by Tony Roberson of NASA, and Paul Murad of the Defense departmen

    Ramsey's conditionals

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    In this paper, we propose a unified account of conditionals inspired by Frank Ramsey. Most contemporary philosophers agree that Ramsey's account applies to indicative conditionals only. We observe against this orthodoxy that his account covers subjunctive conditionals as well-including counterfactuals. In light of this observation, we argue that Ramsey's account of conditionals resembles Robert Stalnaker's possible worlds semantics supplemented by a model of belief. The resemblance suggests to reinterpret the notion of conditional degree of belief in order to overcome a tension in Ramsey's account. The result of the reinterpretation is a tenable account of conditionals that covers indicative and subjunctive as well as qualitative and probabilistic conditionals

    The phyogenetic principles of mma: A hypothetical biostratigraphic model

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    Two erectoid hominids from Sarstedt prompted a detailed examination of the course of the impressions of the Arteria meningea media and their characteristics within the line of hominidae
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