Learning from Conditionals

Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 129 (514) ◽  
pp. 461-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Eva ◽  
Stephan Hartmann ◽  
Soroush Rafiee Rad
Keyword(s):  
Bayesian Epistemology ◽  
Indicative Conditional ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Core Set ◽  
Updating Procedure ◽  
Outstanding Question ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Judy Benjamin Problem ◽  
Number Of Authors ◽  
The Way

Abstract In this article, we address a major outstanding question of probabilistic Bayesian epistemology: how should a rational Bayesian agent update their beliefs upon learning an indicative conditional? A number of authors have recently contended that this question is fundamentally underdetermined by Bayesian norms, and hence that there is no single update procedure that rational agents are obliged to follow upon learning an indicative conditional. Here we resist this trend and argue that a core set of widely accepted Bayesian norms is sufficient to identify a normatively privileged updating procedure for this kind of learning. Along the way, we justify a privileged formalization of the notion of ‘epistemic conservativity’, offer a new analysis of the Judy Benjamin problem, and emphasize the distinction between interpreting the content of new evidence and updating one’s beliefs on the basis of that content.

Anthropocentrism without a centre?

1997 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Being And Time ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Unusual Structure ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Unique Relationship ◽  
Made In ◽  
Number Of Authors ◽  
The Way

I am grateful to Håkan Karlsson for his thoughtful commentary on some of the issues concerning Heidegger and archaeology which were raised in a previous issue of this journal, and find myself fascinated by his project of a ‘contemplative archaeology’. However, one or two points of clarification could be made in relation to Karlsson's contribution. Firstly, as a number of authors have pointed out (e.g. Anderson 1966, 20; Olafson 1993), the gulf between Heidegger's early work and that which followed the Kehre may have been more apparent than real. While his focus may have shifted from the Being of one particular kind of being (Dasein) to a history of Being (Dreyfus 1992), the continuities in his thought are more striking. Throughout his career, Heidegger was concerned with the category of Being, and the way in which it had been passed over by the western philosophical tradition. It is important to note that in Being and time the analysis of Dasein essentially serves as an heuristic: the intention is to move from an understanding of the Being of one kind of being to that of Being in general. What complicates the issue is the very unusual structure of this specific kind of being, for Heidegger did not choose to begin his analysis with the Being of shoes or stones, but with a kind of creature which has a unique relationship with all other worldly entities. ‘Dasein’ serves as a kind of code for ‘human being’ which enables Heidegger to talk about the way in which human beings exist on earth, rather than becoming entangled in biological or psychological definitions of humanity. In this formulations, what is distinctive about human beings is that their own existence is an issue for them; Dasein cares, and this caring is fundamentally temporal.

Conditionals and Abduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-166
Author(s):  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Cognitive Differences ◽  
Indicative Conditional ◽  
Counterfactual Conditional ◽  
Counterfactual Conditionals ◽  
The Past ◽  
Testing Of Hypotheses ◽  
New Evidence

The chapter gives a preliminary sketch of some cognitive differences between indicative conditionals and counterfactual conditionals relevant to the testing of hypotheses by experiment. They especially concern cases where the indicative conditional can be decided without new evidence while the counterfactual conditional cannot. They also show that the antecedent of a ‘counterfactual’ conditional need not be presupposed to be false. Differences connected with the past tense morphology of ‘would’ are explored. Cases are given where the morphology should be understood as expressing a ‘fake past’, modal rather than temporal.

scholarly journals Coverture and the Marital Partnership in Late Medieval Nottingham: Women's Litigation at the Borough Court, ca. 1300–ca.1500

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 768-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Phipps
Keyword(s):  
Marital Status ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Court Records ◽  
The Law ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Experiences Of Women ◽  
The Way

AbstractWomen engaged in litigation in Nottingham's borough court as both plaintiffs and defendants for a variety of reasons relating to trade, household provisioning, misbehavior and interpersonal disputes. This article examines how women's litigation was determined by the doctrine of coverture and the way that women's marital status shaped and defined their experience of the law. In doing so, it explores how these pleas reveal the workings of the marital partnership within a late medieval English town. In order to contextualize the experiences of women “under coverture,” the article first traces the ways in which all manner of female marital and household identities were documented in the court records, analyzing the descriptors that court scribes attached to individual women's names. The article highlights inconsistency in the way that women's identities were recorded and in the way that the marital partnership was represented through the litigation of spouses in the borough court. The dual focus of this article not only adds new evidence to ongoing discussions of the nature of medieval coverture but also interrogates how we identify coverture and women's marital statuses based on the evidence of court records.

scholarly journals Independent Directors and Organizational Performance: New Evidence from A Meta-Analytic Regression Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (24) ◽  
pp. 7121
Author(s):  
Eugenio Zubeltzu-Jaka ◽  
Eduardo Ortas ◽  
Igor Álvarez-Etxeberria
Keyword(s):  
Financial Performance ◽  
Organizational Performance ◽  
Independent Directors ◽  
Corporate Financial Performance ◽  
Board Independence ◽  
Financial Success ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Way

This study not only revisits, from a meta-analytic perspective, the influence of firms’ boardroom independence on corporate financial performance, but also addresses the way that countries’ social and institutional contexts moderate that connection. A meta-regression covering 126 independent samples reveals that firms’ boardroom independence has a positive and negative effect on accounting and market-based measures of corporate financial performance, respectively. Further analyses reveal that while the firms’ board independence-financial performance connection is stronger in non-communitarian societies, that relationship becomes weaker in countries with greater developed mechanisms to protect the interest of minority investors. These results are robust to different model specifications and to the presence of a set of methodological control variables. Our results are of outstanding relevance for companies’ board composition processes by suggesting the way that corporations should actively re-balance the proportion of independent directors across different social and institutional contexts to ensure their financial success.

PERSPECTIVES, NORMS, AND AGENCY

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 260-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Muldoon
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Economic Modeling ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Independence Assumption ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Core Set ◽  
The Standard Model ◽  
The World ◽  
Informal Coercion ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

Abstract:A core set of assumptions in economic modeling is that rational agents, who have a defined preference set, assess their options and determine which best satisfies their preferences. The rational actor model supposes that the world provides us with a menu of options, and we simply choose what’s best for us. Agents are independent of one another, and they can rationally assess which of their options they wish to pursue. This gives special authority to the choices that people make, since they are understood to be the outcomes of the agent’s considered judgments. However, we have come to see that the independence assumption does not always hold in the way that we may have initially thought. Social norms can govern our choices even when we disagree with them. Here we can begin to see how the standard model of choice and agency begins to weaken: no longer are my choices wholly mine, but instead there is a subset of choices that are governed by the broader culture that I live in. Social norms constrain my behavior with informal coercion — my desire to remain a community member in good standing requires me to behave in accordance with the community’s social norms. What I wish to challenge more substantively is the claim that the menu of choices agents “see” is in fact the objective set of options that is transparently provided by the world. Instead, I argue that the options that people perceive and the evidence they use to make choices are mediated by perspectives. Perspectives can importantly interact with social norms to make some norms more resilient to change, and others harder to adopt. This further shapes both our descriptive and normative understanding of agency. Our choices are not over all of the objectively available options, but over the options that we can see. The evidence we marshal to support our choices is not the full set of evidence, but the evidence that we recognize as salient. This is not to deny that individuals have agency, but rather we need a more nuanced understanding of the nature of this agency.

scholarly journals Experiences of receiving and providing maternity care during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia: A five-cohort cross-sectional comparison

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0248488
Author(s):  
Zoe Bradfield ◽  
Karen Wynter ◽  
Yvonne Hauck ◽  
Vidanka Vasilevski ◽  
Lesley Kuliukas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Maternity Care ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Service Redesign ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Way

Introduction The global COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed the way health care is delivered in many countries around the world. Evidence on the experience of those receiving or providing maternity care is important to guide practice through this challenging time. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in Australia. Five key stakeholder cohorts were included to explore and compare the experiences of those receiving or providing care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Women, their partners, midwives, medical practitioners and midwifery students who had received or provided maternity care from March 2020 onwards in Australia were recruited via social media and invited to participate in an online survey released between 13th May and 24th June 2020; a total of 3701 completed responses were received. Findings While anxiety related to COVID-19 was high among all five cohorts, there were statistically significant differences between the responses from each cohort for most survey items. Women were more likely to indicate concern about their own and family’s health and safety in relation to COVID-19 whereas midwives, doctors and midwifery students were more likely to be concerned about occupational exposure to COVID-19 through working in a health setting than those receiving care through attending these environments. Midwifery students and women’s partners were more likely to respond that they felt isolated because of the changes to the way care was provided. Despite concerns about care received or provided not meeting expectations, most respondents were satisfied with the quality of care provided, although midwives and midwifery students were less likely to agree. Conclusion This paper provides a unique exploration and comparison of experiences of receiving and providing maternity care during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. Findings are useful to support further service changes and future service redesign. New evidence provided offers unique insight into key stakeholders’ experiences of the rapid changes to health services.

Full Belief and Loose Speech

2019 ◽  
Vol 128 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Moss
Keyword(s):  
Rational Beliefs ◽  
Preface Paradox ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Full Belief ◽  
The Preface Paradox ◽  
Probabilistic Theories ◽  
The Way

This paper defends an account of full belief, including an account of its relationship to credence. Along the way, I address several familiar and difficult questions about belief. Does fully believing a proposition require having maximal confidence in it? Are rational beliefs closed under entailment, or does the preface paradox show that rational agents can believe inconsistent propositions? Does whether you believe a proposition depend partly on your practical interests? My account of belief resolves the tension between conflicting answers to these questions that have been defended in the literature. In addition, my account complements fruitful probabilistic theories of assertion and knowledge.

Jusepe de Ribera's Five Senses and the Practice of Prudence

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 1111-1161
Author(s):  
Hannah Joy Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Social Performance ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Way ◽  
A Performance

Painted in Rome around 1615, Jusepe de Ribera's series of half figures personifying the five senses invites a diplomatic audience associated with the Lincean Academy to a performance of prudence, a virtue meant to characterize the judgment of both art and of sensory experience. Ribera's series is new evidence for how the demonstration of prudence in conversation motivated ownership and display of art and shaped art's contribution to natural philosophy. Ribera's “Five Senses” articulates the distinction between sense and prudence, and reveals the importance of discussion, dissimulation, and social performance to the way early Seicento art was produced and consumed.

Learning Conditional Evidence

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-130
Author(s):  
Jan Sprenger ◽  
Stephan Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Probability Distribution ◽  
Bayesian Network ◽  
Conditional Independence ◽  
Degrees Of Belief ◽  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Indicative Conditional ◽  
Posterior Probability Distribution ◽  
Judy Benjamin Problem ◽  
Bayesian Conditionalization ◽  
Conditional Evidence

Learning indicative conditionals and learning relative frequencies have one thing in common: they are examples of conditional evidence, that is, evidence that includes a suppositional element. Standard Bayesian theory does not describe how such evidence affects rational degrees of belief, and natural solutions run into major problems. We propose that conditional evidence is best modeled by a combination of two strategies: First, by generalizing Bayesian Conditionalization to minimizing an appropriate divergence between prior and posterior probability distribution. Second, by representing the relevant causal relations and the implied conditional independence relations in a Bayesian network that constrains both prior and posterior. We show that this approach solves several well-known puzzles about learning conditional evidence (e.g., the notorious Judy Benjamin problem) and that learning an indicative conditional can often be described adequately by conditionalizing on the associated material conditional.

scholarly journals Restructuring Sovereign Debt

2003 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 75-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Eichengreen
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Financial Markets ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Emerging Market ◽  
International Community ◽  
Collective Action Clauses ◽  
Debt Crises ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Way

This paper provides new empirical evidence relevant to the debate over the desirability of reforms to the way that financial markets and the international community deal with sovereign debt crises. In particular, given the ongoing opposition of investors and some sovereigns to greater use of collective action clauses (CACs) in emerging market bonds, we present new evidence on the way that financial markets have priced the use or non-use of CACs.

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