This is a textbook on quantum mechanics. It is addressed to graduates and advanced undergraduates. The book presents quantum theory as a logically coherent system, placing stronger emphasis on the theory' s probabilistic structure and on the role of symmetries. It makes students aware of foundational problems from the very beginning, but at the same time, it urges them to adopt a pragmatic attitude towards the quantum formalism. The book consists of five parts. Part I is a review of classical (...) physics, including probability theory, and a historical introduction to quantum theory. Part II presents quantum theory in terms of six fundamental principles. The principles are presented together with the necessary mathematical background and with applications to simple systems. Part III analyses the properties of quantum particles. It starts with the description of symmetries, continues to non-relativistic particles, the introduction of spin, and particle statistics. It concludes with a symmetries-based introduction to relativistic quantum systems and with the first steps towards relativistic quantum field theory. Part IV presents techniques adapted to specific problems: the structure and spectra of composite systems, decays and transitions, particle scattering, and open quantum systems. Finally, Part V revisits quantum foundations: quantum measurement theory, the major interpretations of quantum theory, and the frontiers of quantum theory in contemporary research. (shrink)

This volume bridges contemporary philosophical conceptions of risk and responsibility and offers an extensive examination of the topic. It shows that risk and responsibility combine in ways that give rise to new philosophical questions and problems. Philosophical interest in the relationship between risk and responsibility continues to rise, due in no small part due to environmental crises, emerging technologies, legal developments, and new medical advances. Despite such interest, scholars are just now working out how to conceive of the links between (...) risk and responsibility, the implications that risks may have to conceptions of responsibility (and vice versa), as well as how such theorizing might play out in applied cases. With contributions from leading scholars, this volume brings together new work examining the interplay between risk and responsibility, exploring its varied philosophical aspects and applications to contemporary issues in law, bioethics, technology, and environmental ethics. Risk and Responsibility in Context will be of interest to philosophers working in ethics, bioethics, philosophy of law, and philosophy of technology, as well as scholars and practitioners in law, health and science management, public policy, and environmental studies. (shrink)

The primary aim of this chapter is to explain the nature of evidential reasoning, the characteristic difficulties encountered, and the tools to address these difficulties. Our focus is on evidential reasoning in criminal cases. There is an extensive scholarly literature on these topics, and it is a secondary aim of the chapter to provide readers the means to find their way in historical and ongoing debates.

The epistemic probability of A given B is the degree to which B evidentially supports A, or makes A plausible. This paper is a first step in answering the question of what determines the values of epistemic probabilities. I break this question into two parts: the structural question and the substantive question. Just as an object’s weight is determined by its mass and gravitational acceleration, some probabilities are determined by other, more basic ones. The structural question asks what probabilities are (...) not determined in this way—these are the basic probabilities which determine values for all other probabilities. The substantive question asks how the values of these basic probabilities are determined. I defend an answer to the structural question on which basic probabilities are the probabilities of atomic propositions conditional on potential direct explanations. I defend this against the view, implicit in orthodox mathematical treatments of probability, that basic probabilities are the unconditional probabilities of complete worlds. I then apply my answer to the structural question to clear up common confusions in expositions of Bayesianism and shed light on the “problem of the priors.”. (shrink)

The inaugural title in the new, Open Access series BSPS Open, The Material Theory of Induction will initiate a new tradition in the analysis of inductive inference. The fundamental burden of a theory of inductive inference is to determine which are the good inductive inferences or relations of inductive support and why it is that they are so. The traditional approach is modeled on that taken in accounts of deductive inference. It seeks universally applicable schemas or rules or a single (...) formal device, such as the probability calculus. After millennia of halting efforts, none of these approaches has been unequivocally successful and debates between approaches persist. The Material Theory of Induction identifies the source of these enduring problems in the assumption taken at the outset: that inductive inference can be accommodated by a single formal account with universal applicability. Instead, it argues that that there is no single, universally applicable formal account. Rather, each domain has an inductive logic native to it. Which that is, and its extent, is determined by the facts prevailing in that domain. Paying close attention to how inductive inference is conducted in science and copiously illustrated with real-world examples, The Material Theory of Induction will initiate a new tradition in the analysis of inductive inference. (shrink)

The formal definition of species as explanatory hypotheses presented by Fitzhugh is emended. A species is an explanatory account of the occurrences of the same character among gonochoristic or cross-fertilizing hermaphroditic individuals by way of character origin and subsequent fixation during tokogeny. In addition to species, biological systematics also employs hypotheses that are ontogenetic, tokogenetic, intraspecific, and phylogenetic, each of which provides explanatory hypotheses for distinctly different classes of causal questions. It is suggested that species hypotheses can not be applied (...) to organisms with obligate asexual, parthenogenetic, and self-fertilizing modes of reproduction. Hypotheses explaining shared characters among such organisms are, instead, strictly phylogenetic. Several implications of this emended definition are examined, especially the relations between species, intraspecific, and phylogenetic hypotheses, as well as the limitations of species names to be applied to temporally different characters within populations. (shrink)

This is book l of three philosophy books in international language; formal academic philosophy source in Kurdish language Given overall view on classic epistemology for university student in non English language philosophy departments and philosophy schools .

It is easy to construct pairs of sentences X, Y that lead many people to ascribe higher probability to the conjunction X-and-Y than to the conjuncts X, Y. Whether an error is thereby committed depends on reasoners’ interpretation of the expressions “probability” and “and.” We report two experiments designed to clarify the normative status of typical responses to conjunction problems. © 2004 Cognitive Science Society, Inc. All rights reserved.

Because the conjunction pandq implies p, the value of a bet on pandq cannot exceed the value of a bet on p at the same stakes. We tested recognition of this principle in a betting paradigm that (a) discouraged misreading p as pandnotq, and (b) encouraged genuinely conjunctive reading of pandq. Frequent violations were nonetheless observed. The findings appear to discredit the idea that most people spontaneously integrate the logic of conjunction into their assessments of chance.

This article describes some potential uses of Bayesian estimation for time-series and panel data models by incorporating information from prior probabilities in addition to observed data. Drawing on econometrics and other literatures we illustrate the use of informative “shrinkage” or “small variance” priors while extending prior work on the general cross-lagged panel model. Using a panel dataset of national income and subjective well-being we describe three key benefits of these priors. First, they shrink parameter estimates toward zero or toward each (...) other for time-varying parameters, which lends additional support for an income → SWB effect that is not supported with maximum likelihood. This is useful because, second, these priors increase model parsimony and the stability of estimates and thus improve out-of-sample predictions and interpretability, which means estimated effect should also be more trustworthy than under ML. Third, these priors allow estimating otherwise under-identified models under ML, allowing higher-order lagged effects and time-varying parameters that are otherwise impossible to estimate using observed data alone. In conclusion we note some of the responsibilities that come with the use of priors which, departing from typical commentaries on their scientific applications, we describe as involving reflection on how best to apply modeling tools to address matters of worldly concern. (shrink)

This editorial offers new ways to ethically practice, evaluate, and use quantitative research. Our central claim is that ready-made formulas for QR, including ‘best practices’ and common notions of ‘validity’ or ‘objectivity,’ are often divorced from the ethical and practical implications of doing, evaluating, and using QR for specific purposes. To focus on these implications, we critique common theoretical foundations for QR and then recommend approaches to QR that are ‘built for purpose,’ by which we mean designed to ethically address (...) specific problems or situations on terms that are contextually relevant. For this, we propose a new tool for evaluating the quality of QR, which we call ‘relational validity.’ Studies, including their methods and results, are relationally valid when they ethically connect researchers’ purposes with the way that QR is oriented and the ways that it is done—including the concepts and units of analysis invoked, as well as what its ‘methods’ imply more generally. This new way of doing QR can provide the liberty required to address serious worldly problems on terms that are both practical and ethically informed in relation to the problems themselves rather than the confines of existing QR logics and practices. (shrink)

The Dutch Book Argument shows that an agent will lose surely in a gamble (a Dutch Book is made) if his degrees of belief do not satisfy the laws of the probability. Yet a question arises here: What does the Dutch Book imply? This paper firstly argues that there exists a utility function following Ramsey’s axioms. And then, it explicates the properties of the utility function and degree of belief respectively. The properties show that coherence in partial beliefs for Subjective (...) Bayesianism means that the degree of belief, representing a belief ordering, satisfies the laws of probability, and that coherence in preferences means that the preferences are represented by expected utilities. A coherent belief ordering and a utility scale induce a coherent preference ordering; a coherent preference ordering induces a coherent belief ordering which can be uniquely represented by a degree-of-belief function. The preferences (values) and beliefs are both incoherent or disordered if a Dutch Book is made. (shrink)

Laurence BonJour has recently proposed a novel and interesting approach to the problem of induction. He grants that it is contingent, and so not a priori, that our patterns of inductive inference are reliable. Nevertheless, he claims, it is necessary and a priori that those patterns are highly likely to be reliable, and that is enough to ground an a priori justification induction. This paper examines an important defect in BonJour's proposal. Once we make sense of the claim that inductive (...) inference is "necessarily highly likely" to be reliable, we find that it is not knowable a priori after all. (shrink)

The problem of induction belongs to the most controversial issues in philosophy of science. If induction is understood widely, it covers every fallible inference, that is, such that its conclusion is not logically entailed by its premises. This paper analyses so-called reductive induction, that is, reasoning in which premises follow from the conclusion, but the reverse relation does not hold. Two issues are taken into account, namely the definition of reductive inference and its justification. The analysis proposed in the paper (...) employs metalogical tools. The author agrees with the view that a quantitative account of degree of confirmation for universal theories via logical probability is problematic. However, prospect for a qualitative approach look as more promising. Using the construction of maximally consistent sets allows to distinguish good and worthless induction as well as shows how to understand induction in a semantic way. A closer analysis of deductivism in the theory of justification shows that it is a hidden inductivism. (shrink)

I aim to provide some evidence that Husserl’s description of perceptual updating actually fits very nicely into the Bayesian Brain paradigm, articulated by Karl Friston and others, and that that paradigm, in turn, can be taken as an excellent example of “Neurophenomenology”. The apparently un-phenomenological Helmholtzian component of the Bayesian Brain paradigm, according to which what one consciously seems to see is a product of unconscious causal reasoning to the best explanation of one’s sensory stimulations, can be finessed, I claim, (...) in a way that makes it compatible with a phenomenological orientation. I begin by roughly characterizing the Bayesian Brain paradigm as it relates to perceptual cognition. I then show how Husserl’s descriptions of the conscious perceptual process relate to the paradigm. I conclude with some considerations about how to understand the relation between conscious and unconscious brain process in the present case and in relation to Neurophenomenology generally. (shrink)

Most foundationalists allow that relations of coherence among antecedently justified beliefs can enhance their overall level of justification or warrant. In light of this, some coherentists ask the following question: if coherence can elevate the epistemic status of a set of beliefs, what prevents it from generating warrant entirely on its own? Why do we need the foundationalist’s basic beliefs? I address that question here, drawing lessons from an instructive series of attempts to reconstruct within the probability calculus the classical (...) problem of independent witnesses who corroborate each other’s testimony. Starred section headings indicate sections omitted here, but available on the author’s USC website. (shrink)

Contrary to common views that philosophy is extraneous to cognitive science, this paper argues that philosophy has a crucial role to play in cognitive science with respect to generality and normativity. General questions include the nature of theories and explanations, the role of computer simulation in cognitive theorizing, and the relations among the different fields of cognitive science. Normative questions include whether human thinking should be Bayesian, whether decision making should maximize expected utility, and how norms should be established. These (...) kinds of general and normative questions make philosophical reflection an important part of progress in cognitive science. Philosophy operates best, however, not with a priori reasoning or conceptual analysis, but rather with empirically informed reflection on a wide range of findings in cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper is about teaching probability to students of philosophy who don’t aim to do primarily formal work in their research. These students are unlikely to seek out classes about probability or formal epistemology for various reasons, for example because they don’t realize that this knowledge would be useful for them or because they are intimidated by the material. However, most areas of philosophy now contain debates that incorporate probability, and basic knowledge of it is essential even for philosophers whose (...) work isn’t primarily formal. In this paper, I explain how to teach probability to students who are not already enthusiastic about formal philosophy, taking into account the common phenomena of math anxiety and the lack of reading skills for formal texts. I address course design, lesson design, and assignment design. Most of my recommendations also apply to teaching formal methods other than probability theory. (shrink)

The aim of this contribution is to provide a rather general answer to Hume’s problem. To this end, induction is treated within a straightforward formal paradigm, i.e., several connected levels of abstraction. Within this setting, many concrete models are discussed. On the one hand, models from mathematics, statistics and information science demonstrate how induction might succeed. On the other hand, standard examples from philosophy highlight fundamental difficulties. Thus it transpires that the difference between unbounded and bounded inductive steps is crucial: (...) while unbounded leaps of faith are never justified, there may well be reasonable bounded inductive steps. In this endeavour, the twin concepts of information and probability prove to be indispensable, pinning down the crucial arguments, and, at times, reducing them to calculations. Essentially, a precise study of boundedness settles Goodman’s challenge. Hume’s more profound claim of seemingly inevitable circularity is answered by obviously non-circular hierarchical structures. (shrink)

The present paper deals with the problem of evaluating empirical evidence for therapeutic decisions in medicine. The article discusses the views of Nancy Cartwright and John Worrall on the function that randomization plays in ascertaining causal relations with reference to the therapies applied. The main purpose of the paper is to present a general idea of alternative method of evaluating empirical evidence. The method builds on data analysis that makes use of rough set theory. The first attempts to apply the (...) method show that it is an interesting alternative to randomized controlled trials. (shrink)

Quine taught us the difference between a theory’s ontology and its ideology. Ontology is the things a theory’s quantifiers must range over if it is true, Ideology is the primitive concepts that must be used to state the theory. This allows us to split the theoretical virtue of parsimony into two kinds: ontological parsimony and ideological parsimony. My goal is help illuminate the virtue of ideological parsimony by giving a criterion for ideological innocence—a rule for when additional ideology does not (...) count against parsimony. I propose the expressive power innocence criterion: if the ideology of theory one is expressively equivalent to that of theory two, then neither is ideologically simpler than the other. In its favor I offer the argument from accuracy, showing that any account of a theoretical virtue that is supposed to make theories that have it more likely to be true than theories that do not must respect it. Next I consider its ramifications, eliminating rival views and passing judgment on some arguments from parsimony that can be found in the literature. Finally, I consider two objections. First: I address an objection arising from the possibility of languages with a ‘primitive’ operator that allows us to list a theory’s primitives in the object-language. Second: I address an objection raised by Nelson Goodman against attempts to reckon simplicity by expressive power. Both objections fail. (shrink)

Precautionary Principles are often said to be appropriate for decision-making in contexts of uncertainty such as climate policy. Contexts of uncertainty are contrasted to contexts of risk depending on whether we have probabilities or not. Against this view, I argue that the risk-uncertainty distinction is practically irrelevant. I start by noting that the history of the distinction between risk and uncertainty is more varied than is sometimes assumed. In order to examine the distinction, I unpack the idea of having probabilities, (...) in particular by distinguishing three interpretations of probability: objective, epistemic, and subjective probability. I then claim that if we are concerned with whether we have probabilities at all—regardless of how low their epistemic credentials are—then we almost always have probabilities for policy-making. The reason is that subjective and epistemic probability are the relevant interpretations of probability and we almost always have subjective and epistemic probabilities. In contrast, if we are only concerned with probabilities that have sufficiently high epistemic credentials, then we obviously do not always have probabilities. Climate policy, for example, would then be a case of decision-making under uncertainty. But, so I argue, we should not dismiss probabilities with low epistemic credentials. Rather, when they are the best available probabilities our decision principles should make use of them. And, since they are almost always available, the risk-uncertainty distinction remains irrelevant. (shrink)

In this paper a new use case for legal argumentation support tools is considered: supporting discussions about analyses of complex criminal cases with the help of Bayesian probability theory. By way of a case study, two actual discussions between experts in court cases are analysed on their argumentation structure. In this study the usefulness of several recognised argument schemes is confirmed, a new argument scheme for arguments from statistics are proposed, and an analysis is given of debates between experts about (...) the validity of their arguments. From a practical point of view the case study yields insights into the design of support software for discussions about Bayesian analyses of complex criminal cases. (shrink)

Science seems to develop by inducing new knowledge from observation. However, it is hard to find a rational justification for induction. Popper offers one attempt to resolve this problem. Nursing theorists have tended to ignore or reject Popper, often on the false belief that he is a logical positivist (and hence hostile to qualitative research). Logical positivism claims that meaningful sentences containing any empirical content should ultimately be reducible to simple, observation statements. Popper refutes positivism by showing that there are (...) no such simple statements. He is not a positivist. For Popper, the scientist begins with problems and puts forward trial solutions. These are subjected to rigorous testing aimed at falsifying them. A new theoretical position is then reached in which the scientist knows either that the trial solutions are false or that they have not yet been falsified. Science is characterized by the fact that it tests its ideas through attempted falsification. Nonscience tests its ideas through attempted refutation. Nursing theory is a mixture of science and non-science. Popper’s method requires rigorous testing of theory in both realms. As such, some nursing theory should be discarded. Popper’s view faces at least two important criticisms. One is that a scientist can always reject an apparent falsification by instead altering some auxiliary hypothesis (e.g. denying the accuracy of the falsifying observation). Popper can deal with this argument by saying that defence of a theory in this way will eventually break down if the theory is false. The second criticism is that Popper’s method does ultimately draw upon induction. This criticism is true, but his method can be usefully adapted. An adapted from of Popper’s philosophy of science provides a good basis for nursing theory. (shrink)

A moral-pragmatic argument for a proposition is an argument intended to establish that believing the proposition would be morally beneficial. Since such arguments do not adduce epistemic reasons, i.e., reasons that support the truth of a proposition, they can seem at best to be irrelevant epistemically. At worst, believing on the basis of such reasoning can seem to involve wishful thinking and intellectual dishonesty of a sort that that precludes such beliefs from being epistemically unjustified. Inspired by an argument from (...) William James’ classic, “The Will to Believe”, I argue that there is a way of making sense of moral-pragmatic arguments such that they are epistemically relevant. I develop and argue for a theory of epistemic justification that I dub the “moral encroachment theory” (emphasizing its connection to recent pragmatic encroachment views). According to the theory, moral considerations can raise or lower epistemic standards from where they would be in morally neutral settings. The moral encroachment theory, I contend, denotes a normative property that is at once distinctively epistemic and valuable. The theory also allows a legitimate role for moral-pragmatic reasoning under certain conditions. The upshot is that moral-pragmatic reasoning can be epistemically as well as morally appropriate. (shrink)

Interest in the Keynesian concept of evidential weight has led to divergent views concerning the burden of proof in adjudication. It is argued that Keynes's concept is properly engaged only in the context of one special kind of decision, the decision whether or not the evidence is ripe for a decision on the underlying merits, whether the latter decision is based on probability, relative plausibility, coherence or otherwise. As a general matter, this question of ripeness is appropriately assigned to the (...) judiciary for resolution as part of the burden of production, rather than to the jury or other factfinder as part of the burden of persuasion. (shrink)

In this work, we present a mathematical model for the emergence of descriptive norms, where the individual decision problem is formalized with the standard Bayesian belief revision machinery. Previous work on the emergence of descriptive norms has relied on heuristic modeling. In this paper we show that with a Bayesian model we can provide a more general picture of the emergence of norms, which helps to motivate the assumptions made in heuristic models. In our model, the priors formalize the belief (...) that a certain behavior is a regularity. The evidence is provided by other group members’ behavior and the likelihood by their reliability. We implement the model in a series of computer simulations and examine the group-level outcomes. We claim that domain-general belief revision helps explain why we look for regularities in social life in the first place. We argue that it is the disposition to look for regularities and react to them that generates descriptive norms. In our search for rules, we create them. (shrink)

The analysis here is an attempt to show how the current epistemological theory of response‐dependence (R‐D) may be relevant to understanding putative ontological claims of the empirical social sciences. To this end I argue that the constitutive features of human response, central to R‐D theory, can be made explicit for social science. I conclude that for the empirical social sciences the implication of combining R‐D and certain forms of statistical analyses leads to the possibility of an events‐based ontology.

Logicians disagree on (1) criteria for the presence of an argument, (2) criteria for adding implicit premises and (3) criteria for linking premises. I attempt to resolve all three problems, and in the process to remove the main obstacles to teaching diagramming. The first problem is resolved by working with real discourse that students find on their own, rather than the artificial examples and problems found in logic texts; it is further reduced by examining the different uses of argument and (...) understanding the extent to which the basic rules of diagramming are the same for the various uses. The other disagreements persist because logicians neglect to clarify the principal type of eakness we remedy by adding implicit premises and linking premises: in real discourse we do so to block substantive counterexamples, an idea correlated with that of substantive deduction, discussed by Govier, Wright and others. (shrink)

The word ‘probability’ in ordinary language has two different senses, here called inductive and physical probability. This paper examines the concept of inductive probability. Attempts to express this concept in other words are shown to be either incorrect or else trivial. In particular, inductive probability is not the same as degree of belief. It is argued that inductive probabilities exist; subjectivist arguments to the contrary are rebutted. Finally, it is argued that inductive probability is an important concept and that it (...) is a mistake to try to replace it with the concept of degree of belief, as is usual today. (shrink)

I conceive of inductive logic as a project of explication. The explicandum is one of the meanings of the word `probability' in ordinary language; I call it inductive probability and argue that it is logical, in a certain sense. The explicatum is a conditional probability function that is specified by stipulative definition. This conception of inductive logic is close to Carnap's, but common objections to Carnapian inductive logic (the probabilities don't exist, are arbitrary, etc.) do not apply to this conception.

When Ian Hacking won the Holberg International Memorial Prize 2009 his candidature was said to strengthen the legitimacy of the prize after years of controversy. Ole Jacob Madsen, Johannes Servan and Simen Andersen Øyen have talked to Ian Hacking about current questions in the philosophy and history of science.

Abstract: The article presents and critically discusses Walton's (and Reed's and Macagno's) argument scheme approach to a theory of good argumentation. In particular, four characteristics of Walton's approach are presented: 1. It presents normative requirements for argumentation in the form of argument schemes, i.e. relatively concrete type descriptions. 2. These schemata are enthymematic, i.e. they omit some of the premises required by other approaches. 3. The actual argument schemes are usually supplemented by critical questions. 4. The method is inductive, bottom-up, (...) gaining the normative schemata by abstraction from empirically collected groups of similar arguments. These characteristics, among others, are then discussed on the basis of four adequacy conditions: AC1: effectiveness in achieving the epistemic goal of obtaining and communicating justified acceptable opinions; AC2: completeness in capturing the good argument types; AC3: efficiency in achieving the goals; AC4: justification of the argument schemes. The discussion then reveals a number of weaknesses in Walton's argument schemes; among other things, they are neither effective (in the defined sense) nor truly justified. Contributing factors to these problems include the schema approach, i.e. not looking at the form of arguments, and the lack of epistemological foundations in the development of good types of arguments. However, the critical analyses reveal a better alternative: an epistemological approach based on epistemological principles. The article concludes with a detailed analysis of the scheme Practical Inference, which confirms the general criticism in detail. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine frequently uses statistical hypothesis testing. In this paradigm, data can only disconfirm a research hypothesis’ competitors: One tests the negation of a statistical hypothesis that is supposed to correspond to the research hypothesis. In practice, these hypotheses are often misaligned. For instance, directional research hypotheses are often paired with non-directional statistical hypotheses. Prima facie, one cannot gain proper evidence for one’s research hypothesis employing a misaligned statistical hypothesis. This paper sheds lights on the nature of and the reasons (...) for such misalignments and it provides a thorough analysis of whether they pose a threat to evidence-based medicine. The upshots are that the misalignments are often hidden for clinicians and that although some cases of misalignments can be partially counterbalanced, the overall threat is non-negligible. The counterbalances either lead to methodological inadequacy, loss of statistical power, or involve a lack of information that could be crucial for decision making. This result casts doubt on various findings of medical studies in addition to issues associated with under-powered studies or the replication crisis. (shrink)

Insurance is pervasive in many social settings. As a cooperative device based on risk pooling, it serves to attenuate the adverse consequences of various risks by offering policyholders coverage against the losses implied by adverse events in exchange for the payment of premiums. In the insurance industry, the concept of actuarial fairness serves to establish what could be adequate, fair premiums. Accordingly, premiums paid by policyholders should match as closely as possible their risk exposure. Such premiums are the product of (...) the probabilities of losses and the expected losses. This article presents a discussion of the fairness of actuarial fairness through three steps: defining the concept based on its formulation within the insurance industry; determining in which sense it may be about fairness; and raising some objections to the actual fairness of actuarial fairness. The necessity of a normative evaluation of actuarial fairness is justified by the influence of the concept on the current reforms of public insurance systems and the fact that it highlights the question of the repartition of the gains and burdens of social cooperation. (shrink)

Despite the ubiquity of uncertainty, scientific attention has focused primarily on probabilistic approaches, which predominantly rely on the assumption that uncertainty can be measured and expressed numerically. At the same time, the increasing amount of research from a range of areas including psychology, economics, and sociology testify that in the real world, people’s understanding of risky and uncertain situations cannot be satisfactorily explained in probabilistic and decision-theoretical terms. In this article, we offer a theoretical overview of an alternative approach to (...) uncertainty developed in the framework of the ecological rationality research program. We first trace the origins of the ecological approach to uncertainty in Simon’s bounded rationality and Brunswik’s lens model framework and then proceed by outlining a theoretical view of uncertainty that ensues from the ecological rationality approach. We argue that the ecological concept of uncertainty relies on a systemic view of uncertainty that features it as a property of the organism–environment system. We also show how simple heuristics can deal with unmeasurable uncertainty and in what cases ignoring probabilities emerges as a proper response to uncertainty. (shrink)

Cílem této práce je rozebrat možnosti argumentu holandské sázky ve prospěch probabilismu a stanovit jeho meze. Existuje mnoho podob argumentu, proto se nejprve budu věnovat popisu argumentu v jeho klasické podobě. Následně je podroben kritice ve třech oblastech: (1) problémy behaviorismu, (2) užitku peněz, (3) vztah koherence, jisté ztráty a racionality. Zásadní je dle mého především třetí oblast týkající se neschopnosti jednoduše propojit probabilistickou nekoherenci stupňů přesvědčení s jistou ztrátou a pragmatickou racionalitou. Věnuji se třem současným reinterpretacím argumentu ve prospěch (...) probabilistických norem (Armendt, Howson, Christensen), přičemž v textu docházím k závěru, že ani jedna z nich není uspokojivá. Selhávají v řešení problémů (Armendt, Christensen), nebo neříkají nic zajímavého ve prospěch probabilismu (Howson). Proto se domnívám, že rozbor argumentu především ukazuje, že pragmatická obhajoba epistemických norem racionality, jako je ta v argumentu holandské sázky, není pro probabilismus schůdnou cestou. Závěr se snaží nastínit, proč tomu tak je. (shrink)

Eyewitness testimony is both an important and a notoriously unreliable type of criminal evidence. How should investigators, lawyers and decision-makers evaluate eyewitness reliability? In this article, I argue that Testimonial Inference to the Best Explanation is a promising, but underdeveloped prescriptive account of eyewitness evaluation. On this account, we assess the reliability of eyewitnesses by comparing different explanations of how their testimony came about. This account is compatible with, and complementary to both the Bayesian framework of rational eyewitness evaluation and (...) with prescriptive methods for eyewitness assessment developed by psychologists. Compared to these frameworks, the distinctive value of thinking in terms of competing explanations is that it helps us select, interpret and draw conclusions from the available evidence about the witness’s reliability. (shrink)

Citizens in wealthy liberal democracies are typically expected to see to basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter out of their own income, and those without the means to do so usually receive assistance in the form of cash transfers. Things are different with health care. Most liberal societies provide their citizens with health care or health care insurance in kind, either directly from the state or through private insurance companies that are regulated like public utilities. Except perhaps for small (...) co-pays or deductibles, citizens are not expected to see to their health needs out-of-pocket, at least for some basic level of care. Instead, when a citizen gets sick, the state or her insurance company foots the... (shrink)

Many hold that distributing healthcare according to medical need is a requirement of equality. Most egalitarians believe, however, that people ought to be equal on the whole, by some overall measure of well-being or life-prospects; it would be a massive coincidence if distributing healthcare according to medical need turned out to be an effective way of promoting equality overall. I argue that distributing healthcare according to medical need is important for reducing individuals' uncertainty surrounding their future medical needs. In other (...) words, distributing healthcare according to medical need is a natural feature of healthcare insurance; it is about indemnity, not equality. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 165-189, May 2022. It is generally acknowledged that a certain amount of state intervention in health and health care is needed to address the significant market failures in these sectors; however, it is also thought that the primary rationale for state involvement in health must lie elsewhere, for example in an egalitarian commitment to equalizing access to health care for all citizens. This paper argues that a complete theory of justice in (...) health can be derived from a commitment to correcting market failure, or in other words promoting Pareto-efficiency, in the domain of health. This approach can address familiar problems around access to care, as well as problems related to resource allocation and rationing, the control of health care costs, and the foundations of public health. Egalitarian theories of justice in health cannot make sense of the depth and pervasiveness of state involvement in health and health care; only a theory rooted in the need to correct market failure can. (shrink)

We defend, from a contractarian perspective, that the fair price of an insurance policy is the amount that the contracting parties agree when they are both equally uncertain about the insured event. Drawing on the approach developed by R. Sugden in _The Community of Advantage_, we answer two standard objections raised against contractarianism in the actuarial sciences: (1) people are not wise enough to assess their actuarial risks; (2) they are not rational enough to decide which insurance policy suits them (...) better. We show under which circumstances people can make fair actuarial agreements, without presupposing any objective risk or rationality benchmarks. (shrink)

This paper provides a conceptual exploration of the implication of Jeffrey’s rule of belief revision to account for rule-following behavior in a game-theoretic framework. Jeffrey’s rule reflects the fact that in many cases learning something new does not imply that one has full assurance about the true content of the information. In other words, the same information may be both perceived and interpreted in several different ways. I develop an account of rule-following behavior according to which, in the context of (...) strategic interactions, following a rule is defined by two conditions. First, that agents must frame the interaction in a sufficiently similar way and be aware of the same salient properties, i.e. they must have the same partition of the event. Second, they must ascribe to others the same revised probabilities to what they take to be the common partition. In a game-theoretic framework, this also indicates that rule-following behavior cannot be identified merely to the existence of a common prior. (shrink)