Belief, Evidence, and Uncertainty

Belief, Evidence, and Uncertainty
Author: Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2016-03-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319277723

This work breaks new ground by carefully distinguishing the concepts of belief, confirmation, and evidence and then integrating them into a better understanding of personal and scientific epistemologies. It outlines a probabilistic framework in which subjective features of personal knowledge and objective features of public knowledge have their true place. It also discusses the bearings of some statistical theorems on both formal and traditional epistemologies while showing how some of the existing paradoxes in both can be resolved with the help of this framework.This book has two central aims: First, to make precise a distinction between the concepts of confirmation and evidence and to argue that failure to recognize this distinction is the source of certain otherwise intractable epistemological problems. The second goal is to demonstrate to philosophers the fundamental importance of statistical and probabilistic methods, at stake in the uncertain conditions in which for the most part we lead our lives, not simply to inferential practice in science, where they are now standard, but to epistemic inference in other contexts as well. Although the argument is rigorous, it is also accessible. No technical knowledge beyond the rudiments of probability theory, arithmetic, and algebra is presupposed, otherwise unfamiliar terms are always defined and a number of concrete examples are given. At the same time, fresh analyses are offered with a discussion of statistical and epistemic reasoning by philosophers. This book will also be of interest to scientists and statisticians looking for a larger view of their own inferential techniques.The book concludes with a technical appendix which introduces an evidential approach to multi-model inference as an alternative to Bayesian model averaging.

Uncertain Belief

Uncertain Belief
Author: David J. Bartholomew
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 1996-03-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191584738

The certainties which once underpinned Christian belief have crumbled in a world where science sets the standard for what is true. A rational case for belief must therefore be constructed out of uncertainties. Probability theory provides the tools for measuring and combining uncertainties and is thus the key to progress. This book examines four much debated topics where the logic of uncertain inference can be brought to bear. These are: miracles, the paranormal, God's existence, and the Bible. Given the great diversity of evidence, it is not surprising that opposite conclusions have been drawn by supposedly rational people. An assessment of the state of argument from a probabilistic perspective is overdue. In this book Professor Bartholomew examines and refutes some of the more extravagent claims, evaluates the weight of some of the quantitive evidence, and provides an answer to the fundamental question: is it rational to be a Christian?

Uncertainty

Uncertainty
Author: Kostas Kampourakis
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190871660

Anti-evolutionists, climate denialists, and anti-vaxxers, among others, question some of the best-established scientific findings by referring to the uncertainties in these areas of research. Uncertainty: How It Makes Science Advance shows that uncertainty is an inherent feature of science that makes it advance by motivating further research.

The Virtue of Uncertainty

The Virtue of Uncertainty
Author: Eugene R Moutoux
Publisher: Butler Book Publishing
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2018-02
Genre:
ISBN: 9781941953624

The Virtue of Uncertainty examines Christianity's origin, its purported revelations, its sacred book, its moral principles, its doctrines, its theology, its history, and its effects on society. The purpose of the book is to show that religious certainty flies in the face of evidence and rational thought, and that doubt ought to be a sine qua non for Christians. The author, Eugene R. Moutoux, spent nine years (1953-1962) preparing for the Catholic priesthood; however, finding it increasingly difficult to believe, and wanting a wife and family, he dropped out of the seminary two months before scheduled ordination. Gene has a Ph.D. in German from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He lives in New Albany, Indiana.

Uncertainty-Based Information

Uncertainty-Based Information
Author: George J. Klir
Publisher: Physica
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2013-06-05
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3790818690

Information is precious. It reduces our uncertainty in making decisions. Knowledge about the outcome of an uncertain event gives the possessor an advantage. It changes the course of lives, nations, and history itself. Information is the food of Maxwell's demon. His power comes from know ing which particles are hot and which particles are cold. His existence was paradoxical to classical physics and only the realization that information too was a source of power led to his taming. Information has recently become a commodity, traded and sold like or ange juice or hog bellies. Colleges give degrees in information science and information management. Technology of the computer age has provided access to information in overwhelming quantity. Information has become something worth studying in its own right. The purpose of this volume is to introduce key developments and results in the area of generalized information theory, a theory that deals with uncertainty-based information within mathematical frameworks that are broader than classical set theory and probability theory. The volume is organized as follows.

Surfing Uncertainty

Surfing Uncertainty
Author: Andy Clark
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2016
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0190217014

Exciting new theories in neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence are revealing minds like ours as predictive minds, forever trying to guess the incoming streams of sensory stimulation before they arrive. In this up-to-the-minute treatment, philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark explores new ways of thinking about perception, action, and the embodied mind.

Normative Externalism

Normative Externalism
Author: Brian Weatherson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2019-03-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192576895

Normative Externalism argues that it is not important that people live up to their own principles. What matters, in both ethics and epistemology, is that they live up to the correct principles: that they do the right thing, and that they believe rationally. This stance, that what matters are the correct principles, not one's own principles, has implications across ethics and epistemology. In ethics, it undermines the ideas that moral uncertainty should be treated just like factual uncertainty, that moral ignorance frequently excuses moral wrongdoing, and that hypocrisy is a vice. In epistemology, it suggests we need new treatments of higher-order evidence, and of peer disagreement, and of circular reasoning, and the book suggests new approaches to each of these problems. Although the debates in ethics and in epistemology are often conducted separately, putting them in one place helps bring out their common themes. One common theme is that the view that one should live up to one's own principles looks less attractive when people have terrible principles, or when following their own principles would lead to riskier or more aggressive action than the correct principles. Another common theme is that asking people to live up to their principles leads to regresses. It can be hard to know what action or belief complies with one's principles. And now we can ask, in such a case should a person do what they think their principles require, or what their principles actually require? Both answers lead to problems, and the best way to avoid these problems is to simply say people should follow the correct principles.

The Geometry of Uncertainty

The Geometry of Uncertainty
Author: Fabio Cuzzolin
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 850
Release: 2020-12-17
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3030631532

The principal aim of this book is to introduce to the widest possible audience an original view of belief calculus and uncertainty theory. In this geometric approach to uncertainty, uncertainty measures can be seen as points of a suitably complex geometric space, and manipulated in that space, for example, combined or conditioned. In the chapters in Part I, Theories of Uncertainty, the author offers an extensive recapitulation of the state of the art in the mathematics of uncertainty. This part of the book contains the most comprehensive summary to date of the whole of belief theory, with Chap. 4 outlining for the first time, and in a logical order, all the steps of the reasoning chain associated with modelling uncertainty using belief functions, in an attempt to provide a self-contained manual for the working scientist. In addition, the book proposes in Chap. 5 what is possibly the most detailed compendium available of all theories of uncertainty. Part II, The Geometry of Uncertainty, is the core of this book, as it introduces the author’s own geometric approach to uncertainty theory, starting with the geometry of belief functions: Chap. 7 studies the geometry of the space of belief functions, or belief space, both in terms of a simplex and in terms of its recursive bundle structure; Chap. 8 extends the analysis to Dempster’s rule of combination, introducing the notion of a conditional subspace and outlining a simple geometric construction for Dempster’s sum; Chap. 9 delves into the combinatorial properties of plausibility and commonality functions, as equivalent representations of the evidence carried by a belief function; then Chap. 10 starts extending the applicability of the geometric approach to other uncertainty measures, focusing in particular on possibility measures (consonant belief functions) and the related notion of a consistent belief function. The chapters in Part III, Geometric Interplays, are concerned with the interplay of uncertainty measures of different kinds, and the geometry of their relationship, with a particular focus on the approximation problem. Part IV, Geometric Reasoning, examines the application of the geometric approach to the various elements of the reasoning chain illustrated in Chap. 4, in particular conditioning and decision making. Part V concludes the book by outlining a future, complete statistical theory of random sets, future extensions of the geometric approach, and identifying high-impact applications to climate change, machine learning and artificial intelligence. The book is suitable for researchers in artificial intelligence, statistics, and applied science engaged with theories of uncertainty. The book is supported with the most comprehensive bibliography on belief and uncertainty theory.

Confronting the Predicament of Belief

Confronting the Predicament of Belief
Author: James W. Walters
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2020-09-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 172528362X

Instead of suppressing doubts about religious claims, what if we engage them head-on? Imagine theologians who welcome the uncomfortable questions rather than immunizing their proposals from criticisms. What happens when discussions of the deepest issues—God and science, faith and doubt, suffering and evil, death and resurrection—are guided by the real-life challenges of believing and living in today’s world? The probing queries and constructive replies published here for the first time invite you into the living experience of doubt and faith, the spiritual quest of our age. They invite readers to consider not only what they believe, but also how they hold their beliefs . . . and what they do with them in everyday life.