Probability And Rationality
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| Author | : Maria Carla Galavotti |
| Publisher | : Center for the Study of Language and Information Publica Tion |
| Total Pages | : 326 |
| Release | : 2008 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : |
This volume broadens our concept of reasoning and rationality to allow for a more pluralistic and situational view of human thinking as a practical activity. Drawing on contributors across disciplines including philosophy, economics, psychology, statistics, computer science, engineering, and physics, Reasoning, Rationality, and Probability argues that the search for strong theories should leave room for the construction of context-sensitive conceptual tools. Both science and everyday life, the authors argue, are too complex and multifaceted to be forced into ready-made schemata.
| Author | : Mike Oaksford |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 342 |
| Release | : 2007-02-22 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 0198524498 |
For almost 2,500 years, the Western concept of what is to be human has been dominated by the idea that the mind is the seat of reason - humans are, almost by definition, the rational animal. In this text a more radical suggestion for explaining these puzzling aspects of human reasoning is put forward.
| Author | : David Papineau |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 260 |
| Release | : 2006-01-26 |
| Genre | : Mathematics |
| ISBN | : 9780199288717 |
David Papineau presents a controversial view of human reason, portraying it as a normal part of the natural world, and drawing on the empirical sciences to illuminate its workings. In these six interconnected essays he offers a fresh approach to some long-standing problems.Papineau rejects the contemporary orthodoxy that genuine thought hinges on some species of non-natural normativity. He explores the evolutionary histories of theoretical and practical rationality, indicating ways in which capacities underlying human reasoning have been selected for their biological advantages. He then looks at the connection between decision and probability, explaining how good decisions need to be informed by causal as well as probabilistic facts. Finally he defends theradical view that a satisfactory understanding of decision-making is only possible within a specific interpretation of quantum mechanics.By placing the subject in its scientific context, Papineau shows how human rationality plays an explicable role in the functioning of the natural world.
| Author | : Lara Buchak |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 273 |
| Release | : 2013-11 |
| Genre | : Business & Economics |
| ISBN | : 0199672164 |
Lara Buchak sets out a new account of rational decision-making in the face of risk. She argues that the orthodox view (expected utility theory) is too narrow, and suggests an alternative, more permissive theory: one that allows individuals to pay attention to the worst-case or best-case scenario, and vindicates the ordinary decision-maker.
| Author | : Hannes Leitgeb |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 368 |
| Release | : 2017-03-24 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 0191047015 |
In everyday life we normally express our beliefs in all-or-nothing terms: I believe it is going to rain; I don't believe that my lottery ticket will win. In other cases, if possible, we resort to numerical probabilities: my degree of belief that it is going to rain is 80%; the probability that I assign to my ticket winning is one in a million. It is an open philosophical question how all-or-nothing belief and numerical belief relate to each other, and how we ought to reason with them simultaneously. The Stability of Belief develops a theory of rational belief that aims to answer this question. Hannes Leitgeb develops a joint normative theory of all-or-nothing belief and numerical degrees of belief. While rational all-or-nothing belief is studied in traditional epistemology and is usually assumed to obey logical norms, rational degrees of belief constitute the subject matter of Bayesian epistemology and are normally taken to conform to probabilistic norms. One of the central open questions in formal epistemology is what beliefs and degrees of belief have to be like in order for them to cohere with each other. The answer defended in this book is a stability account of belief: a rational agent believes a proposition just in case the agent assigns a stably high degree of belief to it. Leitgeb determines this theory's consequences for, and applications to, learning, suppositional reasoning, decision-making, assertion, acceptance, conditionals, and chance. The volume builds new bridges between logic and probability theory, traditional and formal epistemology, theoretical and practical rationality, and synchronic and diachronic norms for reasoning.
| Author | : the late Wesley C. Salmon |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 304 |
| Release | : 2005-06-09 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 0190292261 |
This volume of articles (most published, some new) is a follow-up to the late Wesley C. Salmon's widely read collection Causality And Explanation (OUP 1998). It contains both published and unpublished articles, and focuses on two related areas of inquiry: First, is science a rational enterprise? Secondly, does science yield objective information about our world, even the aspects that we cannot observe directly? Salmon's own take is that objective knowledge of the world is possible, and his work in these articles centers around proving that this can be so. Salmon's influential standing in the field ensures that this volume will be of interest to both undergraduates and professional philosophers, primarily in the philosophy of science.
| Author | : James F. Sennett |
| Publisher | : Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers |
| Total Pages | : 216 |
| Release | : 1992 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : |
This work examines several major projects in Plantinga's career, particularly as they relate to his defense of the rationality of theistic belief. Chapters are dedicated to his modal ontological argument, his free will defense, his attacks on inductive arguments from evil, and his «Reformed epistemology» program, in which he argues that theistic belief can be rational without reliance on propositional evidence. Along the way the book deals with important issues in possible worlds semantics, probability theory, and the theory of knowledge. Account is taken of Plantinga's most recent work, including his forthcoming books in epistemology. Though some portions of the work deal with technical concepts of modal and probabilistic logics, all professional philosophers and many professional theologians should find the book accessible, understandable, and informative.
| Author | : Steven Pinker |
| Publisher | : Penguin UK |
| Total Pages | : 272 |
| Release | : 2021-09-28 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 0241380308 |
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 'Punchy, funny and invigorating ... Pinker is the high priest of rationalism' Sunday Times 'If you've ever considered taking drugs to make yourself smarter, read Rationality instead. It's cheaper, more entertaining, and more effective' Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing? In Rationality, Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cursed with biases, fallacies and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives and set the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains, we think in ways that suit the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, causal inference, and decision-making under uncertainty. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book - until now. Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight and humour, Rationality will enlighten, inspire and empower. 'A terrific book, much-needed for our time' Peter Singer
| Author | : John Eatwell |
| Publisher | : Springer |
| Total Pages | : 330 |
| Release | : 1990-02-23 |
| Genre | : Business & Economics |
| ISBN | : 1349205680 |
This is an excerpt from the 4-volume dictionary of economics, a reference book which aims to define the subject of economics today. 1300 subject entries in the complete work cover the broad themes of economic theory. This extract concentrates on utility and probability.
| Author | : Ralph Wedgwood |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 278 |
| Release | : 2017 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 0198802692 |
Ralph Wedgwood gives a general account of the concept of rationality. The Value of Rationality is designed as the first instalment of a trilogy - to be followed by accounts of the requirements of rationality that apply specifically to beliefs and choices. The central claim of the book is that rationality is a normative concept. This claim is defended against some recent objections. Normative concepts are to be explained in terms of values (not in terms of 'ought' or reasons). Rationality is itself a value: rational thinking is in a certain way better than irrational thinking. Specifically, rationality is an internalist concept: what it is rational for you to think now depends solely on what is now present in your mind. Nonetheless, rationality has an external goal - the goal of thinking correctly, or getting things right in one's thinking. The connection between thinking rationally and thinking correctly is probabilistic: if your thinking is irrational, that is in effect bad news about your thinking's degree of correctness. This account of rationality explains how we should set about giving a theory of what it is for beliefs and choices to be rational. Wedgwood thus unifies practical and theoretical rationality, and reveals the connections between formal accounts of rationality (such as those of formal epistemologists and decision theorists) and the more metaethics-inspired recent discussions of the normativity of rationality. He does so partly by drawing on recent work in the semantics of normative and modal terms (including deontic modals like 'ought').
