In this paper I draw from Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology of the 1920s to outline some basic features of his theory of intentionality that I believe have not been fully appreciated or utilized, and that allow for both novel and fruitful interventions in questions about meaning, the relationship between mind and the world, and epistemic justification, principally as they appear in John McDowell’s synoptic project in Mind and World. I argue that while elements of McDowell’s picture are ultimately unsatisfying and problematic, (...) much of his conceptual framework can and should be put into dialogue with Heidegger’s, and that in so doing we make available powerful resources for amending the McDowellian account. Moreover, these emendations have attractive implications for his distinctive desiderata. In particular, they provide original conceptions of normativity’s place in nature, of the boundaries of the space of reasons, and of the relationship between the answerability of thought both to the world and to human beings as a rational community. (shrink)

Classical fractal dimensions have recently been effectivized by characterizing them in terms of real-valued functions called gales, and imposing computability and complexity constraints on these gales. This paper surveys these developments and their applications in algorithmic information theory and computational complexity theory.

Resource Bounded Agents Resource bounded agents are persons who have information processing limitations. All persons and other cognitive agents who have bodies are such that their sensory transducers have limited resolution and discriminatory ability; their information processing speed and power is bounded by some threshold; and their memory and … Continue reading Resource Bounded Agents →.

The AGM paradigm for belief revision provides a very elegant and powerful framework for reasoning about idealized agents. The paradigm assumes that the modeled agent is a perfect reasoner with infinite memory. In this paper we propose a framework to reason about non-ideal agents that generalizes the AGM paradigm. We first introduce a structure to represent an agent's belief states that distinguishes different status of beliefs according to whether or not they are explicitly represented, whether they are currently active and (...) whether they are fully accepted or provisional. Then we define a set of basic operations that change the status of beliefs and show how these operations can be used to model agents with different capacities. We also show how different operations of belief change described in the literature can be seen as special cases of our theory. (shrink)

This paper presents statistical default logic, an expansion of classical (i.e., Reiter) default logic that allows us to model common inference patterns found in standard inferential statistics, including hypothesis testing and the estimation of a populations mean, variance and proportions. The logic replaces classical defaults with ordered pairs consisting of a Reiter default in the first coordinate and a real number within the unit interval in the second coordinate. This real number represents an upper-bound limit on the probability of accepting (...) the consequent of an applied default and that consequent being false. A method for constructing extensions is then defined that preserves this upper bound on the probability of error under a (skeptical) non-monotonic consequence relation. (shrink)

Agents need to be able to change their beliefs; in particular, they should be able to contract or remove a certain belief in order to restore consistency to their set of beliefs, and revise their beliefs by incorporating a new belief which may be inconsistent with their previous beliefs. An influential theory of belief change proposed by Alchourron, G¨ardenfors and Makinson (AGM) [1] describes postulates which a rational belief revision and contraction operations should satisfy. The AGM postulates have been perceived (...) as characterising idealised rational reasoners, and the corresponding belief change operations are considered unsuitable for implementable agents due to their high computational cost [3]. The main result of this paper is showing that an efficient (linear time) belief contraction operation nevertheless satisfies all but one of the AGM postulates for contraction. This contraction operation is defined for a realistic rule-based agent which can be seen as a reasoner in a very weak logic; although the agent’s beliefs are deductively closed with respect to this logic, checking consistency and tracing dependencies between beliefs is not computationally expensive. Finally, we give a non-standard definition of belief revision in terms of contraction for our agent. (shrink)

In the Newcomb problem, the standard arguments for taking either one box or both boxes adduce what seem to be relevant considerations, but they are not complete arguments, and attempts to complete the arguments rely upon incorrect principles of rational decision making. It is argued that by considering how the predictor is making his prediction, we can generate a more complete argument, and this in turn supports a form of causal decision theory.

Syntactic logics do not suffer from the problems of logical omniscience but are often thought to lack interesting properties relating to epistemic notions. By focusing on the case of rule-based agents, I develop a framework for modelling resource-bounded agents and show that the resulting models have a number of interesting properties.

There have been two major lines of research aimed at capturing resource-bounded players in game theory. The first, initiated by Rubinstein (), charges an agent for doing costly computation; the second, initiated by Neyman (), does not charge for computation, but limits the computation that agents can do, typically by modeling agents as finite automata. We review recent work on applying both approaches in the context of decision theory. For the first approach, we take the objects of choice in a (...) decision problem to be Turing machines, and charge players for the “complexity” of the Turing machine chosen (e.g., its running time). This approach can be used to explain well-known phenomena like first-impression-matters biases (i.e., people tend to put more weight on evidence they hear early on) and belief polarization (two people with different prior beliefs, hearing the same evidence, can end up with diametrically opposed conclusions) as the outcomes of quite rational decisions. For the second approach, we model people as finite automata, and provide a simple algorithm that, on a problem that captures a number of settings of interest, provably performs optimally as the number of states in the automaton increases. (shrink)

We here describe research into the formal specification and implementation of resource-bounded agents. In particular, we provide an overview of our work on incorporating resource limitations into executable agent specifications. In addition, we outline future directions, highlighting both their promise and their problems.

We propose a framework for modelling situated resource-bounded agents. The framework is based on an objective ascription of intentional modalities and can be easily tailored to the system we want to model and the properties we wish to specify. As an elaboration of the framework, we introduce a logic, OBA, for describing the observations, beliefs, goals and actions of simple agents, and show that OBA is complete, decidable and has an efficient model checking procedure, allowing properties of agents specified in (...) OBA to be verified using standard theorem proving or model checking techniques. (shrink)

Classical propositional logic plays a prominent role in industrial applications, and yet the complexity of this logic is presumed to be non-feasible. Tractable systems such as depth-bounded boolean logics approximate classical logic and can be seen as a model for resource-bounded agents whose reasoning style is nonetheless classical. In this paper we first study a hierarchy of tractable logics that is not defined by depth. Then we extend it into a modal logic where modalities make explicit the assumptions discharged in (...) propositional proofs, thereby expressing blueprints for proofs. A natural deduction system is provided that permits to reason about and manage such proof blueprints. (shrink)

This article presents two theorems: a generalization of Löb’s Theorem that applies to formal proof systems operating with bounded computational resources, such as formal verification software or theorem provers, and a theorem on the robust cooperation of agents that employ proofs about one another’s source code as unexploitable criteria for cooperation. The latter illustrates a capacity for outperforming classical Nash equilibria and correlated equilibria, attaining mutually cooperative program equilibrium in the Prisoner’s Dilemma while remaining unexploitable, i.e., sometimes achieving the outcome, (...) and never receiving the outcome as player 1. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to construct an implementable theory of rational decision-making for cognitive agents subject to realistic resource constraints. It is argued that decision-making should select actions indirectly by selecting plans that prescribe them. It is also argued that although expected values provide the tool for evaluating plans, plans cannot be compared straightforwardly in terms of their expected values, and the objective of a realistic agent cannot be to find optimal plans. The theory of Locally Global planning (...) is proposed as a realistic alternative to standard "maximizing" theories of rational decision-making. (shrink)

We exhibit a structural difference between the truth-table degrees of the sets which are truth-table above 0′ and the PTIME-Turing degrees of all sets. Though the structures do not have the same isomorphism type, demonstrating this fact relies on developing their common theory.

The paper presents a new logic for reasoning about the formation of beliefs through perception or through inference in non-omniscient resource-bounded agents. The logic distinguishes the concept of explicit belief from the concept of background knowledge. This distinction is reflected in its formal semantics and axiomatics: we use a non-standard semantics putting together a neighborhood semantics for explicit beliefs and relational semantics for background knowledge, and we have specific axioms in the logic highlighting the relationship between the two concepts. Mental (...) operations of perceptive type and inferential type, having effects on epistemic states of agents, are primitives in the object language of the logic. At the semantic level, they are modelled as special kinds of model-update operations, in the style of dynamic epistemic logic. Results about axiomatization, decidability and complexity for the logic are given in the paper. (shrink)

Many problems in Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) research are formulated in terms of the abilities of a coalition of agents. Existing approaches to reasoning about coalitional ability are usually focused on games or transition systems, which are described in terms of states and actions. Such approaches however often neglect a key feature of multi-agent systems, namely that the actions of the agents require resources. In this paper, we describe a logic for reasoning about coalitional ability under resource constraints in the probabilistic (...) setting. We extend Resource-bounded Alternating-time Temporal Logic (RB-ATL) with probabilistic reasoning and provide a standard algorithm for the model-checking problem of the resulting logic Probabilistic resource-bounded ATL (pRB-ATL). We implement model-checking algorithms and present experimental results using simple multi-agent model-checking problems of increasing complexity. (shrink)

There are several areas in applied logic where deletion from databases is involved in one way or another:Belief contraction Triggers of the form ‘If condition then remove A’, which are extensively used in database management systemsResource considerations as in relevance and linear logics, where addition or removal of resource can affect provabilityFree logic and the like, where existence and non-existence of individuals affects quantification.All of these areas have certain logical difficulties relating to the removal of elements. These difficulties are normally (...) overcome by working on the meta-level. This paper offers a comprehensive model in which the various forms of removal are treated on the object level, i.e., as connectives of the object language. (shrink)

The effective reasoning capability of an agent can be defined as its capability to infer, within a given space and time bound, facts that are logical consequences of its knowledge base. In this paper we show how to determine the effective reasoning capability of an agent with limited memory by encoding the agent as a transition system and automatically verifying whether a state where the agent believes a certain conclusion is reachable from the start state. We present experimental results using (...) the Model Based Planner (MBP) which illustrates how the length of the deduction varies for different memory sizes. (shrink)

There are several areas in applied logic where deletion from databases is involved in one way or another:Belief contraction Triggers of the form ‘If condition then remove A’, which are extensively used in database management systemsResource considerations as in relevance and linear logics, where addition or removal of resource can affect provabilityFree logic and the like, where existence and non-existence of individuals affects quantification.All of these areas have certain logical difficulties relating to the removal of elements. This paper points out (...) the difficulties and offers a comprehensive logical model. (shrink)

Based on an endorsement of the hypothesis of extended cognition , this paper proposes a criticism of the representationalist assumptions that still pertain to these contemporary models of cognition. I first rehearse some basic problems akin to any representationalist model of cognition, before proposing some more specific arguments directed against the necessity, the plausibility, and the coherence of the marriage between extended cognition and contemporary representationalism . Extended and distributed models of cognition have the resources to get rid of representationalism, (...) and they should better do it. Their adherence to representationalism might be an by-product of the extended character of the scientific study of cognition. (shrink)

Based on an endorsement of the hypothesis of extended cognition, this paper proposes a criticism of the representationalist assumptions that still pertain to these contemporary models of cognition. I first rehearse some basic problems akin to any representationalist model of cognition, before proposing some more specific arguments directed against the necessity, the plausibility, and the coherence of the marriage between extended cognition and contemporary representationalism. Extended and distributed models of cognition have the resources to get rid of representationalism, and they (...) should better do it. Their adherence to representationalism might be an by-product of the extended character of the scientific study of cognition. (shrink)

There exists a considerable body of work on epistemic logics for resource-bounded reasoners. In this paper, we concentrate on a less studied aspect of resource-bounded reasoning, namely, on the ascription of beliefs and inference rules by the agents to each other. We present a formal model of a system of bounded reasoners which reason about each other’s beliefs, and investigate the problem of belief ascription in a resource-bounded setting. We show that for agents whose computational resources and memory are bounded, (...) correct ascription of beliefs cannot be guaranteed, even in the limit. We propose a solution to the problem of correct belief ascription for feasible agents which involves ascribing reasoning strategies , or preferences on formulas, to other agents, and show that if a resource-bounded agent knows the reasoning strategy of another agent, then its ascription of beliefs to the other agent is correct in the limit. (shrink)

Using a dialogue form, Mac Iver portrays a series of discussions among an intelligent group of specialists. The topics discussed include the nature of life, creation, sex, sensitivity, as well as the responsibility of the modern scholar to confront fundamental problems that extend beyond his limited field of inquiry. Mac Iver does catch the spirit of an informal discussion among specialists, but one wishes that he might have included a philosopher to help order the discussion and to clear up conceptual (...) confusions.--R. J. B. (shrink)

What is the role of attention in the dialectics of memory and communication? How far is attention functioning as a medium? Which role does attention play in the information management practices? Attention is not only fundamental to human existence but also to the process of understanding. If understanding is mediated by memory and communication then attention can be identified with the medium. So whenever you search to explain the role and mechanisms of memory in the information society, the question of (...) attention is asked immediately. Furthermore, attention can be analyzed under the following topics: as cognitive process, as subjective, intersubjective and cultural phenomenon, and as resource and medium within an 'Attention Economy'. Whereas the first aspect has to be seen in the context of empirical studies in psychology and cognitive sciences, the phenomenological, cultural, and economic aspects seem to have common points and similar implications in their theoretical approaches. In the last twenty years, the notion of attention has been the central core of several discourses in German phenomenology, economy and cultural studies. Similar to Georg Franck's theory of mental capitalism, the idea of an attention economy also was followed up in the American discourse. This article is supposed to explore the role of attention and its function as a medium within communication, cultural memory and science. (shrink)

For a significant number of patients, there exists no, or only little, interest in developing a treatment for their disease or condition. Especially with regard to rare diseases, the lack of commercial interest in drug development is a burning issue. Several interventions have been made in the regulatory field in order to address the commercial disinterest in these conditions. However, existing regulations mainly focus on the provision of incentives to the sponsors of clinical trials of orphan drugs, and leave unanswered (...) the overarching question about the rightful place of orphan drugs in resource allocation systems. In this article, we analyse the ethical aspects of funding research and development in the field of rare diseases. We then propose an ethical framework that can help health policy makers move forward in the difficult matter of fairly allocating resources for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce a new type of nets with bounded types of distributed resources . Linear Logic to describe the behaviour of BR-nets is defined. It is based on Girard's Linear Logic but captures not only consumption of resources but their presence as well. Theorem of soundness and completeness of the proposed axiomatization is proved and the complexity of the provability problem is established for the general case and some particular ones.

The purpose of the article is the analysis of the causes of the systemic crisis that hit modern civilization through the description of its main structures, identifying the relationship between its elements, assessments of their heuristic potential. This will open up opportunities for finding ways to resolve this crisis, new directions of civilizational development. Theoretical basis of the research are the systems analysis, socio-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological approaches as well as the analysis of scientific developments in the field of global studies. (...) Originality lies in the fact that this article is the first to show the connection between the main structural elements of human civilization as a system. Change in one of the parameters leads to a change in all the others, together with a change in civilization as a whole. Conclusions. The reason for the deep crisis that hit modern civilization is its imbalance as a system. The most important elements of this system are population size, resources and technology, and the core is consciousness in its individual and collective forms. The perception, processing, and use of information, which is a defining civilizational resource, as well as the stability of the entire system depend on the state of consciousness. Consciousness, based on old, obsolete principles and stereotypes, is unable to cope with the most acute challenges of time. New consciousness, since it is formed, will mark the transition to a new theoretical picture of the world and a model of human behavior, in which people will act, driven by proven knowledge, and not willfulness and prejudice. The idea of forming a productive information environment where the ideas of constructiveness and creative work will dominate rather than consumerism and destruction, as is the case at present, must become the categorical imperative of the new consciousness. (shrink)

An account of the virtues of limitation management: intellectual virtues of adapting to the fact that we cannot solve many of the problems that we can describe. I argue that the best response to many problems depends not on the most rationally promising solution, but on the most likely route to success. I argue against techniques that assume that one will fulfil ones intentions, and distinguish between failures of rationality and failures of intelligence. I describe the trap of supposing that (...) one will be capable of following the plan that would best exploit ones limited resources. (shrink)

I analyse the meaning of a popular idiom among consciousness researchers, in which an individual's consciousness is described as a 'field'. I consider some of the contexts where this idea appears, in particular discussions of attention and the unity of consciousness. In neither case, I argue, do authors provide the resources to cash out all the implications of field-talk: in particular, they do not give sense to the idea of conscious elements being arrayed along multiple dimensions. I suggest ways to (...) extend and generalize the attentional construal of 'field-talk' to provide a genuine multiplicity of dimensions, through the notions of attentional proximity and causal proximity: the degree to which two experiential elements are disposed to bring one another into attention when attended, or to interact in other distinctively mental ways. I conclude that if consciousness is a field, it is one organized by attentional and/or causal proximity. (shrink)

When information grows abundant, attention becomes a scarce resource. As a result, agents must plan wisely how to allocate their attention in order to achieve epistemic efficiency. Here, we present a framework for multi-agent epistemic planning with attention, based on Dynamic Epistemic Logic. We identify the framework as a fragment of standard DEL, and consider its plan existence problem. While it is undecidable in the general case, we show that when attention is required for learning, all instances of the problem (...) are decidable. (shrink)

A proof is given for the theorem that at least one bound state exists in a one-dimensional attractive potential however weak it may be. The proof is constructive in that it provides a method to explicitly solve the eigenvalue problem for the eigenvalues as well as the eigenfunctions. The method is well suited to precise numerical calculations.

In an attempt to give a unified account of common properties of various resource bounded reducibilities, we introduce conditions on a binary relation ≤r between subsets of the natural numbers, where ≤r is meant as a resource bounded reducibility. The conditions are a formalization of basic features shared by most resource bounded reducibilities which can be found in the literature. As our main technical result, we show that these conditions imply a result about exact pairs which has been previously shown (...) by Ambos-Spies [2] in a setting of polynomial time bounds: given some recursively presentable ≤r-ideal I and some recursive ≤r-hard set B for I which is not contained in I, there is some recursive set C, where B and C are an exact pair for I, that is, I is equal to the intersection of the lower ≤r-cones of B and C, where C is not in I. In particular, if the relation ≤r is in addition transitive and there are least sets, then every recursive set which is not in the least degree is half of a minimal pair of recursive sets. (shrink)

The bounded confidence model has become a popular tool for studying communities of epistemically interacting agents. The model makes the idealizing assumption that all agents always have access to all other agents’ belief states. We draw on resources from network epistemology to do away with this assumption. In the model to be proposed, we impose an explicit communication network on a community, due to which each agent has access to the beliefs of only a selection of other agents. A much-discussed (...) result from network epistemology shows that densely connected communication networks are not always preferable to sparser networks. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether there are any noteworthy network effects in a version of the bounded confidence model augmented with communication networks, and in particular whether the aforementioned result from network epistemology can be replicated in that version. (shrink)

Theories of rational decision making often abstract away from computational and other resource limitations faced by real agents. An alternative approach known as resource rationality puts such matters front and center, grounding choice and decision in the rational use of finite resources. Anticipated by earlier work in economics and in computer science, this approach has recently seen rapid development and application in the cognitive sciences. Here, the theory of rationality plays a dual role, both as a framework for normative assessment (...) and as a source of scientific hypotheses about how mental processes in fact work. The latter project, often called rational analysis, depends for its success on a fine-grained characterization of the computational problem facing a decision maker, which may in turn depend on realistic assumptions about what the relevant agent is like. As a consequence, resource rationality involves a delicate, but often fruitful interplay between the normative and the descriptive. (shrink)

We introduce a three-tiered framework for modelling and reasoning about agents who (i) can use possibly complete reasoning systems without any restrictions but who nevertheless are (ii) bounded in the sense that they never reach infinitely many results and, finally, who (iii) perform their reasoning in time. This last aspect does not concern so much the time it takes for agents to actually carry out their reasoning, as the time which can bring about external changes in the agents’ states such (...) as arriving of new information or discarding previously available information due to bounds of the agent’s resources. These three aspects are treated with the maximal possible degree of independence from each other. The treatment of layer (iii) can be combined with arbitrary logic at level (ii) which, in turn, can be combined with arbitrary agent logic at level (i). At the level (iii), we discuss briefly the duality (or rather, complementarity) of system descriptions based on actions and transitions, on the one hand, and states and their changes, on the other. We settle for the latter and present a simple language, for describing state changes, which is parameterized by an arbitrary language for describing properties of the states. The language can be viewed as a simple fragment of step logic, admitting however various extensions by appropriate choices of the underlying logic. Alternatively, it can be seen as a very specific fragment of temporal logic (with a variant of ‘until’ or ‘chop’ operator), and is interpreted over dense linear time. The reasoning system presented here is sound, as well as strongly complete and decidable (provided that so is the parameter logic for reasoning about single states). We give the main idea of the completeness proof and suggest a wide range of possible applications, which is a simple consequence of the parametric character of both the language and the reasoning system. We address then in more detail the case of non-omniscient rational agents, (ii). Their models are syntactic structures (sets of available formulae) similar in spirit, though not in the technical formulation, to the models used in other syntax oriented approaches and in active logic. We give a new sound, complete and decidable system for reasoning about such agents. Finally, we illustrate its extensions with the internal reasoning of agents, (i), by equipping them with some example logics. (shrink)

This paper examines heterogeneous impacts of gendered household headship and control of resources on food security in rural Tanzania. Analysis with minimal attention to heterogeneity in gender considerations indicates no differences in household food security between male and female-headed households. But with a more differentiated household headship variable and accounting for gendered differences in resource ownership, the results differ markedly. Using more gender-disaggregated variables, our results show significant differences between female-headed and male-headed households. In these results we find support for (...) the claim that gender norms in the study villages often restrict women’s access to resources, resulting in more vulnerable female-headed households. Female-headed households with no male adults present are particularly vulnerable. The study also points to specific opportunities for enhanced food security with attention to female and joint ownership of livestock. These results represent a hopeful sign that efforts to enhance female livestock ownership could be a useful strategy to address lower levels of food consumption in these Tanzanian villages. (shrink)

The human enhancement debate is fundamentally based on divergent ideals of human flourishing. Using the complementary, though often contrasting, foci of creaturehood and deification as fundamental to the good life, we examine these visions of human flourishing inherent in transhumanist, secular humanist and critical posthumanist positions on human enhancement. We argue that the theological anthropologies that respond to human enhancement and these other ideologies tend to emphasise either creaturehood or deification to the neglect or detriment of the other. We propose (...) in response that understanding humans as creatures bound for glory integrates both dimensions of the human being into the one grand vision of flourishing God has for humanity. (shrink)

The complementary properties and functions of cognitive artifacts and other external resources are integrated into the human cognitive system to varying degrees. The goal of this paper is to develop some of the tools to conceptualize this complementary integration between agents and artifacts. It does so by proposing a multidimensional framework, including the dimensions of information flow, reliability, durability, trust, procedural transparency, informational transparency, individualization, and transformation. The proposed dimensions are all matters of degree and jointly they constitute a multidimensional (...) space in which situated cognitive systems can be located and have certain dimensional configurations. These dimensions provide a new perspective on the conditions for cognitive extension. They are, however, not meant to provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but to provide a toolbox for investigating the degree and nature of the integration of agent and artifact into “new systemic wholes”. The higher a situated system scores on the proposed dimensions, the more functional integration occurs, and the more tightly coupled the system is. (shrink)