Surprise and change are the way of the world. Philosophers have known this at least since Thales, and practical men knew it long before. Variety and the continual flux of one thing into another is, for Peirce, a central notion. A very similar conception underlies the information-gap theory of uncertainty and its application to decisions with severely deficient understanding which I have argued for earlier. For Haack, whose treatment of warrant is strongly non-probabilistic, info-gap theory is a natural context. The (...) connection between Peirce, Haack and info-gap theory is explored in this paper. (shrink)

Most decisions in life involve ambiguity, where probabilities can not be meaningfully specified, as much as they involve probabilistic uncertainty. In such conditions, the aspiration to utility maximization may be self-deceptive. We propose “robust satisficing” as an alternative to utility maximizing as the normative standard for rational decision making in such circumstances. Instead of seeking to maximize the expected value, or utility, of a decision outcome, robust satisficing aims to maximize the robustness to uncertainty of a satisfactory outcome. That is, (...) robust satisficing asks, “what is a ‘good enough’ outcome,” and then seeks the option that will produce such an outcome under the widest set of circumstances. We explore the conditions under which robust satisficing is a more appropriate norm for decision making than utility maximizing. (shrink)

Modern engineering has included the basic sciences and their accompanying mathematical theories among its primary tools. The theory of probability is one of the more recent entries into standard engineering practice in various technological disciplines. Probability and statistics serve useful functions in the solution of many engineering problems. However, not all technological manifestations of uncertainty are amenable to probabilistic representation. In this paper we identify the conceptual limitations of probabilistic and related theories as they occur in a wide range of (...) engineering tasks. We discuss the structure and properties of an alternative, non-probabilistic, method — convex modelling — for quantitatively representing uncertain phenomena. (shrink)

We investigate the connection between $\triangle^1_3$-stability for random and Cohen forcing notions and the measurability and categoricity of the $\triangle^1_3$-sets. We show that Shelah's model for $\triangle^1_3$-measurability and categoricity satisfies $\triangle^1_3$-random-stability while it does not satisfy $\triangle^1_3$-Cohen-stability. This gives an example of measure-category asymmetry. We also present a result concerning finite support iterations of Suslin forcing.

Ḥeleḳ Rishon, kerekh 1. Teshuvot ha-shayakhot le-Miḳra Midrash ṿe-deʻot ṿe-tsoraf la-hen Sefer Minḥat ḳenaʼot le-R. Aba Mari de-Lunil [Haḳdamah-pereḳ 37] -- Ḥeleḳ Rishon, kerekh 2. Miḳra Midrash ṿe-deʻot Teshuvot ha-shayakhot le-Miḳra Midrash ṿe-deʻot ṿe-tsoraf la-hen Sefer Minḥat ḳenaʼot le-R. Aba Mari de-Lunil [pereḳ 38-pereḳ 127] -- Ḥeleḳ sheni. Teshuvot ha-shayakhot le-Masekhet Berakhot ṿe-Seder Zeraʻim -- Ḥeleḳ shelishi. Teshuvot ha-shayakhot le-Masekhet Shabat ṿe-ʻEruvin.

"מהדורה מוערת ומבוארת של ספר מגלה טמירין על פי דפוס ראשון, כתבי יד מפוזרים, והשוואה לנוסח הספר ביידיש. לספר נלווה כרך מיוחד של נספחים שנוגעים להתהוות הספר ולתכניו, וכלולים בו דיונים עקרוניים שקשורים לכמה סוגיות שעולות בו: מדרש השמות המוצפנים, מקורותיו החסידיים של המחבר, הנוסחים השונים בכתב-יד, והנוסח המיוחד של הספר ביידיש" -- מעטפת אחורית.

Wishful thinking (WT) of Israeli voters was measured in the unprecedented event of three failing national elections repeated within one year. WT is considered as Type 1 fast/intuitive thinking leading to bias. A novel method for measuring WT – including relevant campaign information and distinguishing between “WT for self” and “WT for others” – was introduced. WT components of voters in leading and trailing camps were compared across the three elections to examine whether patterns would be consistent or haphazard. Despite (...) the presumed uncontrolled nature of WT, the patterns were not haphazard but rather consistent. We also tried to debias WT by applying a novel variation of incentive intervention to shift respondents from fast thinking to slow, rational Type 2 thinking. Unlike past studies, the method was extremely effective in debiasing WT and leading to realistic predictions. However, this was true only for self-WT and not for WT for others. (shrink)

本书指出科学的伦理学有三个组成部分:一、道德实体,即伦理行为事实如何;二、道德主体,即道德目的,社会为何制定道德;三、道德价值,即伦理行为应该如何。本书一方面揭示了人类伦理行为的类型及其所遵循的四大规 律;另一方面从社会创建道德的目的中推导出了人类伦理行为的善恶六原则以及公平、平等、自由、异化等治理社会的道德原则和幸福、贵生等善待自己的道德原则。.

Chinese Philosophy provides a clear, accessible conception of the Chinese philosophical sensibility and its evolution throughout history.

This article seeks to establish that the social sciences have an important contribution to make to the study of ethics. The discussion is framed around three questions: (i) what theoretical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? (ii) what empirical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? And (iii) how does this theoretical and empirical work combine, to enhance the understanding of how ethics, as a field of analysis and debate, is socially (...) constituted and situated? Through these questions the argument goes beyond the now commonly cited objection to the over‐simplistic division between normative and descriptive ethics (that assigns the social sciences the ‘handmaiden’ role of simply providing the ‘facts’). In extending this argument, this article seeks to establish, more firmly and in more detail, that: (a) the social sciences have a longstanding theoretical interest analysing the role that a concern with ethics plays in explanations of social change, social organisation and social action; (b) the explanations that are based on the empirical investigations conducted by social scientists exemplify the interplay of epistemological and methodological analyses so that our understanding of particular substantive issues is extended beyond the conventional questions raised by ethicists, and (c) through this combination of theoretical and empirical work, social scientists go beyond the specific ethical questions of particular practices to enquire further into the social processes that lie behind the very designation of certain matters as being ‘ethical issues’. (shrink)

Naïve realism is the view that veridical experiences are fundamentally relations of acquaintance to external objects and their features, and multidisjunctivism is the conjunction of naïve realism and the view that hallucinatory experiences don’t share a common fundamental kind. Multidisjunctivism allegedly removes the screening-off worry over naïve realism, and the relevant literature suggests that multidisjunctivism is one of the naïve realist responses to the worry. The present paper argues that the multidisjunctive solution is implicitly changing the subject, so the impression (...) that the multidisjunctivist is addressing the screening-off problem is illusory. (shrink)

If we try to evaluate the sentence on line 1 we ¯nd ourselves going in an unending cycle. For this reason alone we may conclude that the sentence is not true. Moreover we are driven to this conclusion by an elementary argument: If the sentence is true then what it asserts is true, but what it asserts is that the sentence on line 1 is not true. Consequently the sentence on line 1 is not true. But when we write this (...) true conclusion on line 2 we ¯nd ourselves repeating the very same sentence. It seems that we are unable to deny the truth of the sentence on line 1 without asserting it at the same time. (shrink)

We present experimental evidence that supports the thesis :602–625, 2015, Br J Philos Sci 70:77–102, 2019; Bradley in Decisions theory with a human face, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017; Goldschmidt and Nissan-Rozen in Synthese 198:7553–7575, 2021) that people might positively or negatively desire risky prospects conditional on only some of the prospects’ outcomes obtaining. We argue that this evidence has important normative implications for the central debate in normative decision theory between two general approaches on how to rationalize several common (...) patterns of preference, which are ruled out as irrational by orthodox decision theory, namely the re-individuation approach and the non-expected utility approach. (shrink)

This article argues that standard causal and functionalist definitions of realization fail to account for the realization of entities that cannot be individuated in causal or functional terms. By modifying such definitions to require that realizers also logically suffice for any historical properties of the entities they realize, one can provide for the realization of entities whose resistance to causal/functional individuation stems from their possession of individuative historical properties. But if qualia cannot be causally or functionally individuated, then qualia can (...) be physically realized only if the thesis that all things are physical or physically realized is insufficient for physicalism. (shrink)

Many philosophers in the field of meta-ethics believe that rational degrees of confidence in moral judgments should have a probabilistic structure, in the same way as do rational degrees of belief. The current paper examines this position, termed “moral Bayesianism,” from an empirical point of view. To this end, we assessed the extent to which degrees of moral judgments obey the third axiom of the probability calculus, ifP(A∩B)=0thenP(A∪B)=P(A)+P(B), known as finite additivity, as compared to degrees of beliefs on the one (...) hand and degrees of desires on the other. Results generally converged to show that degrees of moral judgment are more similar to degrees of belief than to degrees of desire in this respect. This supports the adoption of a Bayesian approach to the study of moral judgments. To further support moral Bayesianism, we also demonstrated its predictive power. Finally, we discuss the relevancy of our results to the meta-ethical debate between moral cognitivists and moral non-cognitivists. (shrink)

In this book, best-selling author and mathematician Haim Shapira presents an introduction to mathematical theories which deal with the most beautiful concept ever invented by humankind: infinity. Written in clear, simple language and aimed at a lay audience, this book also offers some strategies that will allow readers to try their ability at solving truly fascinating mathematical problems. Infinity is a deeply counter-intuitive concept that has inspired many great thinkers. In this book we will meet many sages, both familiar (...) and unfamiliar: Zeno and Pythagoras, Georg Cantor and Bertrand Russell, Sofia Kovalevskaya and Emmy Noether, al-Khwarizmi and Euclid, Sophie Germain and Srinivasa Ramanujan. The world of infinity is inhabited by many paradoxes, and so is this book: Zeno paradoxes, Hilbert's "Infinity Hotel", Achilles and the gods paradox, the paradox of heaven and hell, the Ross-Littlewood paradox involving tennis balls, the Galileo paradox and many more. Aimed at the curious but non-technical reader, this book refrains from using any fearsome mathematical symbols. It uses only the most basic operations of mathematics: adding, subtracting, multiplication, division, powers and roots - that is all. But that doesn't mean that a bit of deep thinking won't be necessary and rewarding. Writing with humour and lightness of touch, Haim Shapira banishes the chalky pallor of the schoolroom and offers instead a truly thrilling intellectual journey. Fasten your seatbelt - we are going to Infinity, and beyond! (shrink)

This article seeks to establish that the social sciences have an important contribution to make to the study of ethics. The discussion is framed around three questions: (i) what theoretical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? (ii) what empirical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? And (iii) how does this theoretical and empirical work combine, to enhance the understanding of how ethics, as a field of analysis and debate, is socially (...) constituted and situated? Through these questions the argument goes beyond the now commonly cited objection to the over‐simplistic division between normative and descriptive ethics (that assigns the social sciences the ‘handmaiden’ role of simply providing the ‘facts’). In extending this argument, this article seeks to establish, more firmly and in more detail, that: (a) the social sciences have a longstanding theoretical interest analysing the role that a concern with ethics plays in explanations of social change, social organisation and social action; (b) the explanations that are based on the empirical investigations conducted by social scientists exemplify the interplay of epistemological and methodological analyses so that our understanding of particular substantive issues is extended beyond the conventional questions raised by ethicists, and (c) through this combination of theoretical and empirical work, social scientists go beyond the specific ethical questions of particular practices to enquire further into the social processes that lie behind the very designation of certain matters as being ‘ethical issues’. (shrink)

The semantic paradoxes, whose paradigm is the Liar, played a crucial role at a crucial juncture in the development of modern logic. In his 1908 seminal paper, Russell outlined a system, soon to become that of the Principia Mathematicae, whose main goal was the solution of the logical paradoxes, both semantic and settheoretic. Russell did not distinguish between the two and his theory of types was designed to solve both kinds in the same uniform way. Set theoreticians, however, were content (...) to treat only the set-theoretic paradoxes, putting aside the semantic ones as a non-mathematical concern. This separation was explicitly proposed, eighteen years after Russell’s paper, by Ramsey, though he, like Russell, advocated a system that addresses both kinds. Since then, the semantic paradoxes have been viewed within the perspective of the theory of truth, where they have occupied a respectable niche, but one of rather specialized interest. (shrink)

Consistent with numerous electrophysiological studies, we recently reported that conscious perception is associated with a widely distributed modulation of the P3 component . We also showed that correct objective performance in the absence of subjective awareness is associated with a spatially more restricted modulation of the P3. The relatively late occurrence of the P3 along with lack of control for post-perceptual processes suggests that this component might reflect processes related to stimulus evaluation or confidence rather than to visual awareness or (...) objective performance. The main aim of the current study was to test this hypothesis. While EEG was recorded, participants performed a forced-choice localization task and reported their subjective perception of the target on a 3-level scale that also indexed their confidence. The results showed that our previous findings are replicated when confidence is controlled for. (shrink)

John Forrester’s book Thinking in Cases does not provide one ultimate definition of what it means to ‘think in cases’, but rather several alternatives: a ‘style of reasoning’ (Hacking), ‘paradigms’ or ‘exemplars’ (Kuhn), and ‘language games’ (Wittgenstein), to mention only a few. But for Forrester, the stories behind each of the figures who suggested these different models for thinking (in cases) are as important as the models themselves. In other words, the question for Forrester is not only what ‘thinking in (...) cases’ is, but also who might be considered a ‘thinker in cases’. Who could serve as a case study for such a thinker? The major candidates that Forrester considers in his book to be ‘thinkers in cases’ are Kuhn, Foucault, Freud, and Winnicott. In what follows, I will argue that one name is missing from this list, as well as from Forrester’s book more generally: Michael Balint. This name is missing not only because Balint was a great ‘thinker in cases’, but also because we have some reasons to believe that Forrester himself thought so and wished to add him to the list. Forrester, I will argue, found in Balint an exemplar for a thinker in cases that combined elements from Winnicott’s psychoanalytic theory and Foucault’s philosophy of the case-based sciences. (shrink)

Non-standard models were introduced by Skolem, first for set theory, then for Peano arithmetic. In the former, Skolem found support for an anti-realist view of absolutely uncountable sets. But in the latter he saw evidence for the impossibility of capturing the intended interpretation by purely deductive methods. In the history of mathematics the concept of a nonstandard model is new. An analysis of some major innovations–the discovery of irrationals, the use of negative and complex numbers, the modern concept of function, (...) and non-Euclidean geometry–reveals them as essentially different from the introduction of non-standard models. Yet, non-Euclidean geometry, which is discussed at some length, is relevant to the present concern; for it raises the issue of intended interpretation. The standard model of natural numbers is the best candidate for an intended interpretation that cannot be captured by a deductive system. Next, I suggest, is the concept of a wellordered set, and then, perhaps, the concept of a constructible set. One may have doubts about a realistic conception of the standard natural numbers, but such doubts cannot gain support from non-standard models. Attempts to utilize non-standard models for an anti-realist position in mathematics, which appeal to meaning-as-use, or to arguments of the kind proposed by Putnam, fail through irrelevance, or lead to incoherence. Robinson’s skepticism, on the other hand, is a coherent position, though one that gives up on providing a detailed philosophical account. The last section enumerates various uses of non-standard models. (shrink)

This engaging work of comparative philosophy puts the Chinese and American philosophical traditions into a mutually informative and transformative philosophical dialogue on the way to developing a new form of Confucian pragmatism.