Value withdrawal explanations: a theoretical tool for programming environments

Constraint logic programming combines declarativity and efficiency thanks to constraint solvers implemented for specific domains. Value withdrawal explanations have been efficiently used in several constraints programming environments but there does not exist any formalization of them. This paper is an attempt to fill this lack. Furthermore, we hope that this theoretical tool could help to validate some programming environments. A value withdrawal explanation is a tree describing the withdrawal of a value during a domain reduction by local consistency notions and labeling. Domain reduction is formalized by a search tree using two kinds of operators: operators for local consistency notions and operators for labeling. These operators are defined by sets of rules. Proof trees are built with respect to these rules. For each removed value, there exists such a proof tree which is the withdrawal explanation of this value.Comment: 14 pages; Alexandre Tessier, editor; WLPE 2002, http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/cs.SE/020705

Development, underdevelopment, and the state in Ghana

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 5

(WP 2020-01) The Sea Battle Tomorrow: The Identity of Reflexive Economic Agents

This paper develops a conception of reflexive economic agents as an alternative to the standard utility conception, and explains individual identity in terms of how agents adjust to change in a self-organizing way, an idea developed from Herbert Simon. The paper distinguishes closed equilibrium and open process conceptions of the economy, and argues the former fails to explain time in a before-and-after sense in connection with Aristotle’s sea battle problem. A causal model is developed to represent the process conception, and a structure-agency understanding of the adjustment behavior of reflexive economic agents is illustrated using Merton’s self-fulfilling prophecy analysis. Simon’s account of how adjustment behavior has stopping points is then shown to underlie how agents’ identities are disrupted and then self-organized, and the identity analysis this involves is applied to the different identity models of Merton, Ross, Arthur, and Kirman. Finally, the self-organization idea is linked to the recent ‘preference purification’ debate in bounded rationality theory regarding the ‘inner rational agent trapped in an outer psychological shell,’ and it is argued that the behavior of self-organizing agents involves them taking positions toward their own individual identities

Naturalizing Dasein and other (Alleged) Heresies

First paragraph: To my mind, being wrong is nowhere near as disheartening as being boring, so I am encouraged by the fact that, in the four chapters immediately preceding this one, four thinkers for whom I have nothing but the utmost intellectual respect have found my ongoing project to articulate the philosophical groundwork for a genuinely Heideggerian cognitive science interesting enough that they have taken the trouble to explain precisely why it is flawed. Just how deep the supposed flaws go depends on which set of criticisms one chooses to read. For Ratcliffe and Rehberg they go very deep indeed, since, for these thinkers, there is a sense in which the very idea of a Heideggerian cognitive science borders on the incoherent. Dreyfus and Rietveld, on the other hand, seem to agree with me that something worth calling a Heideggerian cognitive science is certainly possible; it's just that my version of it is seriously defective

Science Friction: Phenomenology, Naturalism and Cognitive Science

Recent years have seen growing evidence of a fruitful engagement between phenomenology and cognitive science. This paper confronts an in-principle problem that stands in the way of this (perhaps unlikely) intellectual coalition, namely the fact that a tension exists between the transcendentalism that characterizes phenomenology and the naturalism that accompanies cognitive science. After articulating the general shape of this tension, I respond as follows. First, I argue that, if we view things through a kind of neo-McDowellian lens, we can open up a conceptual space in which phenomenology and cognitive science may exert productive constraints on each other. Second, I describe some examples of phenomenological cognitive science that illustrate such constraints in action. Third, I use the mutually constraining relationship at work here as the platform from which to bring to light a domesticated version of the transcendental and a minimal form of naturalism that are compatible with each other