Partial belief and flat-out belief

About the book: The idea that belief comes in degrees is based on the observation that we are more certain of some things than of others. Various theories try to give accounts of how measures of this confidence do or ought to behave, both as far as the internal mental consistency of the agent as well as his betting, or other, behaviour is concerned. This anthology is the first book to give a balanced overview of these theories. It also explicitly relates these debates to more traditional concerns of the philosophy of language and mind, and epistemic logic, namely how belief simpliciter does or ought to behave. The paradigmatic theory, probabilism (which holds that degrees of belief ought to satisfy the axioms of probability theory) is given most attention, but competing theories, such as Dempster-Shafer theory, possibility theory, and AGM belief revision theory are also considered. Each of these approaches is represented by one of its major proponents. The papers are specifically written to target advanced undergraduate students with a background in formal methods and beginning graduate students, but they will also serve as first point of reference for academics new to the area

UNMAS Gaza Emergency Response Report

From 7 July to 26 August 2014, significant quantities of explosive ordnance were used during hostilities between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Gazan armed groups. It is reported that approximately 72,000 items of ordnance were fired and launched during this period. This presented a significant risk for civilians and hampered humanitarian and reconstruction operations. Many unexploded aircraft bombs, tank projectiles, mortar shells and other munitions from both sides of the conflict were reported in civilian areas. Based on a 10 percent fail rate, it was assumed there are approximately 7,200 items of explosive remnants of war (ERW) in Gaza, including a significant number of air delivered bombs. The ERW contamination has interrupted the lives of entire communities in Gaza, where simply gaining access to homes, schools, health facilities, etc. is challenging and dangerous. Livelihoods are also directly affected when small industries and farmlands are destroyed and littered with ERW

A matter of opinion

This paper sets out the case for a two-level theory of human psychology. It takes its start from Daniel Dennett's distinction between belief and opinion, arguing that it has the power to account for a number of tensions within our commonsense concept of belief. It argues, however, that Dennett's account is seriously inadequate, particularly in its treatment of the role of opinion in practical reasoning. The paper goes on to sketch an alternative proposal which retains the virtues of Dennett's suggestion, while providing a richer and more satisfying account of the cognitive role of opinion

Enterprise profiles in deprived areas: Are they distinctive?

This paper examines the extent to which segmenting business activity on the basis of the relative deprivation of a given area provides additional understanding (in terms of analysis and policy) that is not obtained by alternative divisions, e.g., by sector, size, etc. The paper is primarily motivated by the explicit inclusion of a deprived area dimension to many UK small business/enterprise policies introduced since 1997. We use two datasets drawn from the customer records of Barclays Bank PLC to obtain an initial analysis of the business stocks and dynamics in deprived and non-deprived areas of England. The data indicate that the deprived areas of England vary systematically from the wider economy in terms of several business stock characteristics and associated dynamics. These differences include a lower proportion of business service firms, lower female involvement in the owner-manager base and a poorer risk profile. The analysis supports the view that there are likely to be benefits from the tailoring of small business/ enterprise policies to sub-national levels

Evaluating the Impact of Providing Training for Direct Care Staff in how to Provide an Emotionally Nurturing Environment for People with Intellectual Disability and Complex Needs

The service is providing supported living for a number of people, male and female, age 21 to 55, who all have intellectual disability and a range of extra needs. These include physical disability, communication difficulties, trauma related personality difficulties, self-harming behaviour and aggression towards others. They are all perceived to have emotional developmental needs, all having suffered traumatic experiences in early childhood, causing developmental delay. All have difficulties with relationships associated with attachment disorders.All direct support staff are trained in models of emotional development and how to assess the emotional level, which leads to identifying the needs. Managers of services are alto trained to support the staff to provide the level of support needed, and to understand the systemic effects of trauma so as to be able to provide trauma-informed-care.The training, supervision, support and individual therapy for clients, where needed, is provided by psychologists and psychotherapists trained in Disability Psychotherapy. The comprehensive approach allows people with very complex and distressed behaviour to live in ordinary housing in the community.Data is provided on 10 people, the history, the initial problem behaviour and the present position after being provided with the emotionally nurturing environment

The anti-zombie argument

The zombie argument has come to occupy a central role in the case for a non-physicalist view of consciousness. This paper seeks to turn the tables on defenders of the argument ('zombists') by showing that a parallel argument can be run for physicalism. The argument invokes what I call anti-zombies – purely physical creatures that are nonetheless conscious. I show that, using the same resources as those employed by zombists, it is possible to construct an argument from the conceivability of anti-zombies to the truth of physicalism. l go on to defend the claim that anti-zombies are conceivable and to argue that the anti-zombie argument can be defeated only at the cost of rendering the zombie argument itself redundant. The moral of the paper is that dualists should not be zombists

Language, consciousness, and cross-modular thought

Carruthers suggests that natural language, in the form of inner speech, may be the vehicle of conscious propositional thought, but he argues that its fundamental cognitive role is as the medium of cross-modular thinking, both conscious and nonconscious. I argue that there is no evidence for nonconscious cross-modular thinking and that the most plausible view is that cross-modular thinking, like conscious propositional thinking, occurs only in inner speech

How we know our conscious minds: Introspective access to conscious thoughts

Carruthers considers and rejects a mixed position according to which we have interpretative access to unconscious thoughts, but introspective access to conscious ones. I argue that this is too hasty. Given a two-level view of the mind, we can, and should, accept the mixed position, and we can do so without positing additional introspective mechanisms beyond those Carruthers already recognizes

(1S)-1-phenylethanaminium 4-{[(1S,2S)-1-hydroxy-2,3-dihydro-1H,1'H-[2,2'-biinden]-2-yl]methyl}benzoate

Copyright 2012 © International Union of Crystallography.The title molecular salt, C8H12N+·C26H21O3-, contains a dimeric indane pharmacophore that demonstrates potent anti-inflammatory activity. The indane group of the anion exhibits some disorder about the [alpha]-C atom, which appears common to many structures containing this group. A model to account for the slight disorder was attempted, but this was deemed unsuccessful because applying bond-length constraints to all the bonds about the [alpha]-C atom led to instability in the refinement. The absolute configuration was determined crystallographically as S,S,S by anomalous dispersion methods with reference to both the Flack parameter and Bayesian statistics on Bijvoet differences. The configuration was also determined by an a priori knowledge of the absolute configuration of the (1S)-1-phenylethanaminium counter-ion. The molecules pack in the crystal structure to form an infinite two-dimensional hydrogen-bond network in the (100) plane of the unit cell