Believing that p, assuming that p, and imagining that p involve regarding p as true—or, as we shall call it, accepting p. What distinguishes belief from the other modes of acceptance? We claim that conceiving of an attitude as a belief, rather than an assumption or an instance of imagining, entails conceiving of it as an acceptance that is regulated for truth, while also applying to it the standard of being correct if and only if it is true. We argue (...) that the second half of this claim, according to which the concept of belief includes a standard of correctness, is required to explain the fact that the deliberative question whether to believe that p is transparent to the question whether p. This argument raises various questions. Is there such a thing as deliberating whether to believe? Is the transparency of the deliberative question whether to believe that p the same as the transparency of the factual question whether I do believe that p? We will begin by answering these questions and then turn to a series of possible objections to our argument. (shrink)

Why, when asking oneself whether to believe that p, must one immediately recognize that this question is settled by, and only by, answering the question whether p is true? Truth is not an optional end for first-personal doxastic deliberation, providing an instrumental or extrinsic reason that an agent may take or leave at will. Otherwise there would be an inferential step between discovering the truth with respect to p and determining whether to believe that p, involving a bridge premise that (...) it is good (in whichever sense of good one likes, moral, prudential, aesthetic, allthings-considered, etc.) to believe the truth with respect to p. But there is no such gap between the two questions within the first-personal deliberative perspective; the question whether to believe that p seems to collapse into the question whether p is true. (shrink)

When we deliberate whether to believe some proposition, we feel immediately compelled to look for evidence of its truth. Philosophers have labelled this feature of doxastic deliberation 'transparency'. I argue that resolving the disagreement in the ethics of belief between evidentialists and pragmatists turns on the correct explanation of transparency. My hypothesis is that it reflects a conceptual truth about belief: a belief that p is correct if and only if p. This normative truth entails that only evidence can be (...) a reason for belief. Although evidentialism does not follow directly from the mere psychological truth that we cannot believe for non-evidential reasons, it does follow directly from the normative conceptual truth about belief which explains why we cannot do so. (shrink)

In this paper, we show that equation image is a equation image-conservative extension of BΣ1 + exp, thus it does not imply IΣ1.

The purpose of this paper is to present a commentary on the current state of contemporary African philosophy and to offer some criticisms and recommendations. The question concerning African philosophy has been debated for some years now and one has witnessed a number of interesting works on this topic.

Why, when asking oneself whether to believe that p, must one immediately recognize that this question is settled by, and only by, answering the question whether p is true? Truth is not an optional end for first-personal doxastic deliberation, providing an instrumental or extrinsic reason that an agent may take or leave at will. Otherwise there would be an inferential step between discovering the truth with respect to p and determining whether to believe that p, involving a bridge premise that (...) it is good to believe the truth with respect to p. But there is no such gap between the two questions within the first-personal deliberative perspective; the question whether to believe that p seems to collapse into the question whether p is true. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce the systems ns-ACA₀ and ns-WKL₀ of non-standard second-order arithmetic in which we can formalize non-standard arguments in ACA₀ and WKL₀, respectively. Then, we give direct transformations from non-standard proofs in ns-ACA₀ or ns-WKL₀ into proofs in ACA₀ or WKL₀.

Why can't deliberation conclude in an intention except by considering whether to perform the intended action? I argue that the answer to this question entails that reasons for intention are determined by reasons for action. Understanding this feature of practical deliberation thus allows us to solve the toxin puzzle.

have extremely harmful impacts on an individual’s physical, social and mental health throughout their life-span. Recently, it has been reported that maternal ACEs increase the risk of developmental delay in the offspring across generations. This mini review focuses on the direct relationship between maternal ACEs and child developmental delay, and potential mediators/moderators that associate their relationship. Six studies were identified using three search engines. The results indicated that four out of six studies reported at least one significant direct association between (...) maternal ACEs and child development. Additionally, maternal biological, psychological, and social factors were identified as mediators or moderators. In summary, we identified that maternal ACEs increased the risk of developmental delay in children via biological and psychosocial pathways. Future research should examine potential buffering factors and identify when it is crucial to break the intergenerational transmission. (shrink)

It is often emphasized that the Athenians viewed philosophy as essentially apolitical or anti-political. Placed in this context, Aristotle’s Politics 7.1–7.3 deserves special attention because here Aristotle presents his argument on the best life for ‘each human being and commonly for cities and human beings ’, which culminates in his conclusion that ‘the same life ’ is the best for them. This paper attempts to show that ‘the same life’ does not mean a life consisting of activity of the same (...) content but rather of the same type or kind, and that Aristotle semantically differentiates between ἑκάστῳ τε τῶν ἀνθρώπων and τοῖς ἀνθρώποις and assigns a sphere of philosophy to the former and a sphere of politics to the latter, which helps him mitigate the tension between the philosophical life and the political life. (shrink)

On account of the impressive yield of empirical science since the dawn of modern era, theorists of human behavior have sought eagerly to adopt its methodology to explain and predict behavior in the same way that natural science does with respect to natural phenomena. Thus, the positivist principle endorsed the unity of science approach to both the natural and social worlds. Modern social science, in its specific forms of sociology, economics, and so on, confidently embraced the positivist principle. In a (...) short period of time, political economy was transformed into economic science. The goal was to purge the social sciences of their supposedly evaluative content. In due course, the idea of objective scientific truth came to be questioned along with the positivist paradigm. Epistemological relativism _à la_ Kuhn is to be credited with this intellectual shift. But this novel theoretical approach was more easily accommodated by epistemologists of science than scientists themselves. Scientists hardly questioned their methodologies of research and the cognitive field of successful theories. Similarly, in the social sciences, neoclassical economics remained dominant. The neoclassical motto was that economics as science answered only questions of efficiency, not evaluative questions of social justice. The _Human Project and the Temptations of Science_ argues that the model of epistemological unity, at one time embracing positivism, at another time supporting epistemological relativism, is questionable. While empirical science does yield knowledge of the natural world, knowledge of the social world - the world of humans - is necessarily value-laden. Despite the quantitative veneer of neoclassical economics - the dominant paradigm in economics - economic analysis cannot avoid questions of value. The reason is that its foundational concepts, such as rationality and the maximization of expected utility, reflect the necessary value-oriented nature of human behavior. The question posed, then, by _The Human Project and the Temptations of Science_ is what sort of optimal values should humans adopt. (shrink)

Neoclassical economic theory in its pretensions to scientific status is founded on one of the variants of a now discredited positivism. Neoclassical economic theory claims that there are two distinct areas of economic research: positive economics and normative economics. The former is assumed to deal with the cognitive as scientific content of economics while the later focuses on welfare or equity issues. I argue that the reliance of the whole theoretical structure of economics on the normative postulate of rationality renders (...) neoclassical economics a normative discipline. I also argue that neoclassical economics should thus be viewed as an instance of applied ethics rather than as applied mathematics, say. Finally, it is suggested that neoclassical economics, if its scientific pretensions are to be taken seriously, should be absorbed theoretically into general anthropology. (shrink)

In prior research, signal detection theory has been widely utilized to assess metacognitive ability. However, the SDT metacognitive model requires the use of a two-alternative forced-choice task, while confidence must also be measured discretely. In our model, participants’ cognitive ability and their confidence in the cognitive task were used to estimate their metacognitive abilities. Therefore, in this study, a metacognitive model that can be applied to various cognitive tasks was developed. This model implements the item response theory and Q-learning models (...) to estimate cognitive ability; participants’ metacognitive ability is defined as the discrepancy between their confidence in their cognitive ability and their actual cognitive ability. The entire procedure was divided into two experiments. In experiment 1, two different cognitive tasks were used to estimate metacognitive ability and to examine overall discriminative and convergent validity. Notably, the parameters representing metacognitive ability did not correlate with cognitive ability but were positively correlated between the two tasks. In experiment 2, we performed a similar analysis using a different task to test the replicability of experiment 1. The results for experiment 2 were replicated for discriminative and convergent validity, albeit with weak results. Our metacognitive model exhibited high interpretability and versatility. (shrink)

Right-ear advantage refers to the observation that when two different speech stimuli are simultaneously presented to both ears, listeners report stimuli more correctly from the right ear than the left. It is assumed to result from prominent projection along the auditory pathways to the contralateral hemisphere and the dominance of the left auditory cortex for the perception of speech elements. Our study aimed to investigate the role of attention in the right-ear advantage. We recorded magnetoencephalography data while participants listened to (...) pairs of Japanese two-syllable words. The amplitudes of the stimuli were modulated at 35 Hz in one ear and 45 Hz in the other. Such frequency-tagging allowed the selective quantification of left and right auditory cortex responses to left and right ear stimuli. Behavioral tests confirmed the right-ear advantage, with higher accuracy for stimuli presented to the right ear than to the left. The amplitude of the auditory steady-state response was larger when attending to the stimuli compared to passive listening. We detected a correlation between the attention-related increase in the amplitude of the auditory steady-state response and the laterality index of behavioral accuracy. The right-ear advantage in the free-response dichotic listening was also found in neural activities in the left auditory cortex, suggesting that it was related to the allocation of attention to both ears. (shrink)

This research is motivated by the program of reverse mathematics and non-standard arguments in second-order arithmetic. Within a weak subsystem of second-order arithmetic ACA0, we investigate some aspects of non-standard analysis related to sequential compactness. Then, using arguments of non-standard analysis, we show the equivalence of the Riemann mapping theorem and ACA0 over WKL0. (© 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim).

It is common for philosophers to claim that doxastic voluntarism, the view that an agent can form beliefs voluntarily, is false, and therefore that agents do not have the kind of control over their beliefs required for a straightforward application of deontological concepts such as obligation or duty in the domain of epistemology. The role that the denial of doxastic voluntarism plays in an argument to the effect that agents do not have obligations with respect to belief is simply this.

Kuhn's theory of scientific change is founded on the idea that there are minimal defensible grounds for the claim that the history of science is characterized by the cumulative growth of knowledge. According to Kuhn, revolutionary theories in the history of science cannot be perceived as logical and empirical derivations from their predecessors since, quite often, the research methods, theoretical assumptions and the empirical findings of the former are incompatible with the latter. Thus, the analysis of each novel scientific theory (...) must begin with a recognition of the epistemological and ontological independence of that theory's paradigm. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world. After liberalization in 1991, microfinance became a panacea for poor people without collateral and information asymmetry. The higher cost of microfinance and debt traps highlighted the need for the state to intervene in resource redistribution. In addition, national lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions have made it difficult for emerging economies like India to achieve this sustainable development goal. The Reserve Bank of India introduced self-help group (SHG) bank linkage to ensure the financial inclusion of (...) the poor. The difference-in-difference method examined how SHGs affect entrepreneur households’ income. CMIE Consumer Pyramid dx data were used for analysis. The data establish that SHGs have increased the income of the households, and demographic factors such as education, income level and gender also impact the financial inclusion of the poor. (shrink)

This research is motivated by the program of Reverse Mathematics. We investigate basic part of complex analysis within some weak subsystems of second order arithmetic, in order to determine what kind of set existence axioms are needed to prove theorems of basic analysis. We are especially concerned with Cauchy’s integral theorem. We show that a weak version of Cauchy’s integral theorem is proved in RCAo. Using this, we can prove that holomorphic functions are analytic in RCAo. On the other hand, (...) we show that a full version of Cauchy’s integral theorem cannot be proved in RCAo but is equivalent to weak König’s lemma over RCAo. (shrink)

Contemporary Kantianism is often regarded as both a position within normative ethics and as an alternative to metaethical moral realism. We argue that it is not clear how contemporary Kantianism can distinguish itself from moral realism. There are many Kantian positions. For reasons of space we focus on the position of one of the most prominent, contemporary Kantians, Christine Korsgaard. Our claim is that she fails to show either that Kantianism is different or that it is better than realism. Our (...) strategy is to argue that what are supposed to be claims that conflict with realism in fact do not. (shrink)

Two prejudices have hampered our understanding of John Stuart Mill’s central argument for free speech. One prejudice is that arguments for free speech can only be made in terms of values or rights. This prejudice causes us to miss the depth of Mill’s argument. He does not argue that silencing speech is harmful or violates rights, but instead that silencing speech is a uniquely self-undermining act; it undermines the ground upon which it is based. But even if we overcome this (...) prejudice and appreciate the self-undermining character of Mill’s argument, the prejudice that epistemic justification is a completable task blinds us to the role of open-mindedness in his argument; and failing to see this leads us to wrongly conclude that his argument is invalid. It is only once we have overcome both prejudices that we can appreciate the depth and power of Mill’s argument for free speech. (shrink)

Mark Schroeder has recently presented apparent counterexamples to the standard account of the distinction between the right and the wrong kinds of reasons. We argue that these examples appear to refute the standard account only because they blur the distinction between two kinds of reasoning: reasoning about whether to intend or believe that p and reasoning about whether to take up the question of whether to intend or believe that p.

In this paper, we show within ${\mathsf{RCA}_0}$ that both the Jordan curve theorem and the Schönflies theorem are equivalent to weak König’s lemma. Within ${\mathsf {WKL}_0}$ , we prove the Jordan curve theorem using an argument of non-standard analysis based on the fact that every countable non-standard model of ${\mathsf {WKL}_0}$ has a proper initial part that is isomorphic to itself (Tanaka in Math Logic Q 43:396–400, 1997).

George, feeling stressed and anxious about the criminal investigation into his firm’s accounting practices, decides that it would do him good to get away and take a long, relaxing vacation in Bermuda. According to popular informed-desire accounts of a person’s good, if George would desire to take a vacation to Bermuda upon being made fully aware of what his experience of the vacation would be like and of all the consequences therein, then this course of action would benefit him. This (...) does not mean that George must actually be privy to whether his fully informed self would desire to travel to Bermuda, but whether he would, according to such an account, determines whether going to Bermuda would benefit George, whether he or anyone else is capable of knowing it. (shrink)

We examined amygdala subregion volumes in patients with a first episode of major depression and in healthy subjects. Covariate-adjusted linear regression was performed to compare the MD and healthy groups, and adjustments for age, gender, and total estimated intracranial volume showed no differences in amygdala subregion volumes between the healthy and MD groups. Within the MD group, we examined the association between amygdala subregion volume and the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression score and the HAMD subscale score, and found (...) no association in the left amygdala. In the right amygdala, however, there was an inverse linear association between the HAMD total and the HAMD core and lateral nucleus and anterior-amygdaloid-regions. Furthermore, an inverse linear association was seen between the HAMD psychic and the lateral nucleus, anterior-amygdaloid-regions, transition, and whole amygdala. The findings of this study suggest that the severity of MD and some symptoms of MD are associated with right amygdala volume. There have been few reports on the relationship between MD and amygdala subregional volume, and further research is needed to accumulate more data for further validation. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between a firm’s strategy and consumers’ decisions in the presence of the paradox of choice and sharing personal information. The paradox of choice implies that having too many choices does not necessarily ensure happiness and sometimes having less is more. A new model is constructed introducing a factor of information sharing into the model of a previous study that embedded the paradox of choice only (Kinjo and Ebina in AI Soc (...) 30(2):291–297, 2015). A key feature of the model is its disutility function. It is demonstrated that if the sign of the cross derivative of the function is positive (negative) at the optimum, there is a positive (negative) correlation between the degree of sharing personal information chosen by the consumers and the number of products offered by the firm in its recommendation systems. It is also numerically indicated that the profit function of the firm becomes convex or concave depending on the shape of the disutility function. These results suggest that firms should carefully investigate the shape of the disutility function, under the paradox of choice and sharing personal information. (shrink)

As Descartes famously pointed out in the Second Meditation, the thought that someone is thinking is true anytime anyone thinks it. Furthermore, thinking it makes it true. Conversely, anytime anyone thinks that it is not the case that someone is thinking, this thought is false, and thinking it makes it false.l will argue that the propositions ‘There is at least one true normative proposition’ and ‘There are no true normative propositions’ have very similar properties. The proposition ‘There is at least (...) one true normative proposition,’ like the proposition ‘Someone is thinking,’ is true anytime anyone believes it, and, in an important sense, it is made true by someone's believing it. Conversely, anytime anyone believes that there are no true normative propositions, the proposition he believes is false and his believing it makes it false. (shrink)