REAL WORLD PROBLEMS

Episteme ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. A. Paul ◽  
John Quiggin

ABSTRACTIn the real world, there can be constraints on rational decision-making: there can be limitations on what I can know and on what you can know. There can also be constraints on my ability to deliberate or on your ability to deliberate. It is useful to know what the norms of rational deliberation should be in ideal contexts, for fully informed agents, in an ideal world. But it is also useful to know what the norms of rational deliberation should be in the actual world, in non-ideal contexts, for imperfectly informed agents, especially for big, life-changing decisions. That is, we want to know how to deliberate as best we can, given the real-world limitations on what we can know, and given real-world limitations on how we are able to deliberate. In this paper, our concern is with the norms of rational deliberation in certain, important, non-ideal contexts, where the reasoning occurs from the agent's first person, subjective point of view. The norms governing the process of deliberation for real people in the sorts of non-ideal contexts we'll consider need to reflect the way that real agents, with an incomplete grasp on the facts and an imperfect ability to deliberate, can be expected to proceed. Our central contention is that framing and exploring the deliberative process from the first person perspective allows us to uncover and explore important, real-world constraints on boundedly rational agents deliberating from the subjective perspective.

Author(s):  
Martin Rublík

Cryptographic key distribution and management is one of the most important steps in the process of securing data by utilizing encryption. Problems related to cryptographic key distribution and management are hard to solve and easy to exploit, and therefore, they are appealing to the attacker. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the topics of cryptographic key distribution and management, especially with regards to asymmetric keys. The chapter describes how these topics are handled today, what the real-world problems related to cryptographic key distribution and management are, and presents existing solutions as well as future directions in their solving. The authors present the cryptographic key management and distribution problems from a multidisciplinary point of view by looking at its economic, psychological, usability, and technological aspects.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Göttlich ◽  
Sven Spieckermann ◽  
Stephan Stauber ◽  
Andrea Storck

AbstractThe visualization of conveyor systems in the sense of a connected graph is a challenging problem. Starting from communication data provided by the IT system, graph drawing techniques are applied to generate an appealing layout of the conveyor system. From a mathematical point of view, the key idea is to use the concept of stress majorization to minimize a stress function over the positions of the nodes in the graph. Different to the already existing literature, we have to take care of special features inspired by the real-world problems.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (s1) ◽  
pp. s146-s171
Author(s):  
Michał Mrugalski

AbstractConsidering that enacitivsm emerged in rebellion against the representativism of first-generation cognitive science, an enactivist approach to narrative, which after all does relate events, situations, people, necessitates a directly realistic (i. e. anti-representationalist) concept of perspective on literary objects. Ingarden’s description of the spatio-temporal properties of the cognizing of the literary work, in the process of which the reader transgresses the realm of signs (representation) toward embodied and culturally embedded cognition of objects and events in a presented world, may serve as a prototype for an enactive approach narrative, provided the theory in question is situated in its original context, for example that of Ingarden’s ongoing discussion with structuralism regarded at this juncture as a representationist stance. In the first step, I am referring to the philosophical tradition of direct realism, which was apparently invigorated by the theories of embodied and enactive cognition, to propose a way of conceiving first-person perspective on literary objects and events, first-person and temporal perspective on objects being the royal road to all sorts of enaction. In the second step, I am tackling the issue of point of view in East and Central European structuralism by recalling its most general context of the dialectical relationship between synchrony and diachrony. The interpretation of linguistic signs by the receiver is a space in which structuralism and Ingarden’s phenomenology concur as they share a similar model of receptive temporality, rooted in Husserl’s description of the inner consciousness of time and aiming to reduce the ambiguity of linguistic units and increase the predictability of meaning. In Ingarden, however, there is a threshold between the linguistic and the extralinguistic elements of the literary work, which are conceived in a directly realistic manner. I specifically recall the notion of “objectification,” which was suppressed by that of “concretization,” as a borderland between indirect (semiotic) and indirect (objectual and enactive) representation. In the conclusion, I point to the major differences between present-day cognitivist aesthetics and Ingarden’s approach, which was immersed in the culture of his time, and ask whether these differences impede us to achieve as interesting results as Ingarden’s.


2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronique G. Frucot ◽  
Leland G. Jordan ◽  
Marc I. Lebow

Accounting for goodwill has long been a theoretical problem for accountants. Although most businesses possess some goodwill, accountants record it only when a premium is paid in the acquisition of another company. Subsequent to acquisition, valuing goodwill becomes a problem. Statement of Financial Accounting No. 142, Goodwill and Other Intangible Assets (FASB 2001), is the current standard for testing goodwill for impairment. This case is designed to introduce you to the “real-world” problems that many practitioners are likely to encounter while implementing this new standard. The case involves two antagonists: an auditor eager to record an impairment of goodwill and a client even more eager to avoid recording any impairment. You must tactfully address both individuals' arguments and determine the correct method for accounting for goodwill and the standard for testing for impairment per SFAS No. 142.


spontaneously invented a name for the creature derived from the most prominent features of its anatomy: kamdopardalis [the normal Greek word for ‘giraffe*]. (10.27.1-4) It is worth spending a little time analysing what is going on in this passage. The first point to note is that an essential piece of information, the creature’s name, is not divulged until the last possible moment, after the description is completed. The information contained in the description itself is not imparted directly by the narrator to the reader. Instead it is chan­ nelled through the perceptions of the onlooking crowd. They have never seen a giraffe before, and the withholding of its name from the reader re-enacts their inability to put a word to what they see. From their point of view the creature is novel and alien: this is conveyed partly by the naive wonderment of the description, and partly by their attempts to control the new phenomenon by fitting it into familiar categories. Hence the comparisons with leopards, camels, lions, swans, ostriches, eyeliner and ships. Eventually they assert conceptual mastery over visual experience by coining a new word to name the animal, derived from the naively observed fea­ tures of its anatomy. However, their neologism is given in Greek (kamdopardalis), although elsewhere Heliodoros is scrupulously naturalistic in observing that Ethiopians speak Ethiopian. The reader is thus made to watch the giraffe from, as it were, inside the skull of a member of the Ethiopian crowd. The narration does not objectively describe what they saw but subjectively re­ enacts their ignorance, their perceptions and processes of thought. This mode of presentation, involving the suppression of an omniscient narrator in direct communication with the reader, has the effect that the reader is made to engage with the material with the same immediacy as the fictional audience within the frame of the story: it becomes, in imagination, as real for him as it is for them. But there is a double game going on, since the reader, as a real person in the real world, differs from the fictional audience inside the novel precisely in that he does know what a giraffe is. This assumption is implicit in the way the description is structured. If Heliodoros* primary aim had been to describe a giraffe for the benefit of an ignorant reader, he would surely have begun with the animal’s name, not withheld it. So for the reader the encounter


1999 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 267-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Laughton ◽  
Roger Ottewill

As part of their attempt to embed their teaching more firmly in the ‘real world’ of business, some university tutors have incorporated ‘commissioned’ or ‘live’ projects into their learning and teaching strategies. These projects enable students to make a direct contribution to their business clients while simultaneously fulfilling key educational objectives. Drawing on their experience of the use of commissioned projects on an MSc in International Business (MSclB) course, the authors analyse in detail both the potential benefits and the problems that arise in implementing such schemes. In this paper, they outline some of the key features of the MSclB course, focusing on the commissioned project component; indicate the reasons for using commissioned projects from the point of view of both tutors and students; describe and evaluate the methodology used to generate data for informing the identification and discussion of issues; and explore a number of key factors for tutors and students in the use of commissioned projects. The paper thus raises awareness of the nature of commissioned projects as a pedagogic tool and of what needs to be done if their contribution to the enhancement of students' understanding of the business world is to be maximized.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document