Judgement and Certainty

Judgement is the interiorisation of assertion: the inner\ud notion of judgement is to be explained in terms of the outer\ud notion of assertion. When someone asserts "Snow is\ud white", an interlocutor is entitled to ask "How do you know?"\ud If the asserter is not able to give grounds for his assertion,\ud it has to be withdrawn. In an assertion an illocutionary\ud claim that one has grounds is present; an assertion is thus\ud a claim to knowledge. Not all occurrences of declarative\ud sentences are asserted. In such cases the context should\ud make it clear that the declarative is, for example, used to\ud express mere opinion or conjecture. Whereas an assertion\ud made is correct or incorrect, other uses of the declarative\ud do not allow for this distinction. Just as for assertion, implicit\ud in every judgement is a claim to knowledge; judgement\ud is an epistemic notion

The Reduced Open Membrane Metric

We discuss the reduction of the open membrane metric and determine the (previously unknown) conformal factor. We also construct SL(2,R) invariant open string metrics and complex open string coupling constants by reducing the open membrane metric on a 2-torus. In doing so we also clarify some issues on manifest SL(2,R) symmetry of the D3-brane. We remark on the consequences of our results for the recently conjectured existence of decoupled (p,q) non-commutative open string theories in type IIB string theory.Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX, uses JHEP.cls and JHEP.bst style files, published JHEP version, note added change

Designing Incentive Schemes Based on Intervention: The Case of Imperfect Monitoring

We propose an incentive scheme based on intervention to sustain cooperation among self-interested users. In the proposed scheme, an intervention device collects imperfect signals about the actions of the users for a test period, and then chooses the level of intervention that degrades the performance of the network for the remaining time period. We analyze the problems of designing an optimal intervention rule given a test period and choosing an optimal length of the test period. The intervention device can provide the incentive for cooperation by exerting intervention following signals that involve a high likelihood of deviation. Increasing the length of the test period has two counteracting effects on the performance: It improves the quality of signals, but at the same time it weakens the incentive for cooperation due to increased delay.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur