Practical reasoning, rule-following and belief revision: an account in terms of Jeffrey’s rule

Synthese ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyril Hédoin
2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyril Hédoin

Abstract:Most game-theoretic accounts of institutions reduce institutions to behavioural patterns the players are incentivized to implement. An alternative account linking institutions to rule-following behaviour in a game-theoretic framework is developed on the basis of David Lewis’s and Ludwig Wittgenstein's respective accounts of conventions and language games. Institutions are formalized as epistemic games where the players share some forms of practical reasoning. An institution is a rule-governed game satisfying three conditions: common understanding, minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality. Common understanding has a strong similarity with Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of lebensform while minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality capture the idea that rule-following is community-based.


1990 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Bix

Wittgenstein’s writings on “rule-following” remain an important—and sharply contested—part of his later thought. The reference to “rules” in those writings was both broader and more basic than the use of that term in most discussions of practical reasoning or legal theory. Wittgenstein’s use of “rule” refers to all normative constraints which apply over an indefinite variety of cases, to practices where our actions might be said to be guided, to situations where characterizing actions as “correct” or “incorrect” makes sense. However, “[h]e aimed not to write a book on rules but to examine specific problems arising out of insights into the normative nature of a language, of logic and of reasoning.” He focused in particular on normative practices that on the surface do not seem troubling or difficult to understand: for example, using a word correctly, understanding a signpost, and continuing a simple mathematical series. In such examples, the interesting question is not whether a particular response or continuation is right or wrong; Wittgenstein specifically chose examples where there would be consensus on that issue. Wittgenstein’s question is what is it about the rule or about ourselves which makes our responses right or wrong (or which justifies us in reaching that evaluation)?


2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 450-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Ogien

This paper first recalls the way the distinction John Rawls introduced between ‘summary’ and ‘practice’ conceptions of rules was presented and taken up in French thought in the 1990s. Then, expanding on Rawls’ characterization of Wittgenstein’s considerations on rule following and discussing several criticisms it aroused, it comes to the conclusion that ‘rule’ is a notion that is inadequate to explain either social action or the way people justify what they have done. It thus argues that to account for the emergence of the mutual intelligibility enabling action in common to emerge and develop, one should dispense with the notion of rule and substitute the notion of detail of ordinary action for it. To support this claim, the paper takes on a question: what does a detail do? The answer it offers suggests that each detail of an ongoing action — when empirically identified in actual circumstances of interaction — should be conceived of as a building block of practical reasoning allowing for a sociological inquiry of a phenomenon: coordination of action, that is, the sequential activity which makes an action the kind of action it is.


2010 ◽  
Vol 99 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salem Benferhat ◽  
Didier Dubois ◽  
Henri Prade ◽  
Mary-Anne AnneWilliams

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Bonawitz ◽  
Patrick Shafto ◽  
Yue Yu ◽  
Sophie Elizabeth Colby Bridgers ◽  
Aaron Gonzalez

Burgeoning evidence suggests that when children observe data, they use knowledge of the demonstrator’s intent to augment learning. We propose that the effects of social learning may go beyond cases where children observe data, to cases where they receive no new information at all. We present a model of how simply asking a question a second time may lead to belief revision, when the questioner is expected to know the correct answer. We provide an analysis of the CHILDES corpus to show that these neutral follow-up questions are used in parent-child conversations. We then present three experiments investigating 4- and 5-year-old children’s reactions to neutral follow-up questions posed by ignorant or knowledgeable questioners. Children were more likely to change their answers in response to a neutral follow-up question from a knowledgeable questioner than an ignorant one. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of common practices in legal, educational, and experimental psychological settings.


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