Extended Theory of Rationality

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
Sergio Tenenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Extended Theory ◽  
Instrumental Reasoning ◽  
Supervenience Thesis ◽  
The Given

Chapter 2 presents the main tenets of the extended theory of rationality (ETR). According to ETR, both the given attitudes (“inputs”) and the conclusion of practical reasoning (“outputs”) are actions (more particularly, the intentional pursuit of ends). The principle of instrumental reasoning, which tells us (roughly) to adopt means to our ends, is the only principle of derivation, and a principle (roughly) requiring agents not to pursue incompatible ends is the only principle of coherence. The chapter also presents one of the main theses of ETR; namely that the rationality of an agent through an interval t1-tn does not supervene on the rationality of the agent at each moment t1-tn (what I call the “non-supervenience thesis”). In other words, someone may be irrational over a period of time without there being any moment during that time at which they were irrational.

Extended Action and Instrumental Rationality

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Sergio Tenenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
General Structure ◽  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Extended Theory ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
Extended Action ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
The Given

Chapter 1 presents the general structure of a theory of instrumental rationality, as well as laying down some of the main ideas and motivations for the extended theory of instrumental rationality (ETR) developed in the book. It characterizes the content of a theory of instrumental rationality in terms of its given attitudes (the “inputs” for a theory of instrumental rationality), its principles of coherence, its principles of derivation, and what counts as the conclusion of practical reasoning or the exercise of our rational powers (the “outputs”) of instrumental rationality. On ETR, intentional actions are both the given attitudes and the exercises of our instrumental, rational powers.

Forms of Instrumental Reasoning

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dancy
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Instrumental Reasoning ◽  
Recent Account

This chapter considers the strengths and weaknesses of John Broome’s recent account of practical reasoning as instrumental reasoning. It outlines more flexible alternative accounts, both of instrumental reasoning and of practical reasoning more generally, which supposedly cover the ground rather better.

Practical reason and ethics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onora O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Ethical Judgment ◽  
Direct Methods ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Theoretical Reason ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Instrumental Reasoning ◽  
Working Out

Practical reason is reasoning which is used to guide action, and is contrasted with theoretical reason, which is used to guide thinking. Sometimes ‘practical reason’ refers to any way of working out what to do; more usually it refers to proper or authoritative, hence reasoned, ways of working out what to do. On many accounts practical reasoning is solely instrumental: it identifies ways of reaching certain results or ends, but has nothing to say about which ends should be pursued or which types of action are good or bad, obligatory or forbidden. Instrumental reasoning is important not only for ethics and politics, but for all activities, for example, in working out how to travel to a given destination. Other accounts of practical reason insist that it is more than instrumental reasoning: it is concerned not only with working out how to achieve given ends, but with identifying the ethically important ends of human activity, or the ethically important norms or principles for human lives, and provides the basis for all ethical judgment. No account of objective ethical values can be established without showing how we can come to know them, that is, without showing that some form of ethical cognitivism is true. However, ethical cognitivism is not easy to establish. Either we must show that some sort of intuition or perception provides direct access to a realm of values; or we must show that practical reasoning provides less direct methods by which objective ethical claims can be established. So anybody who thinks that there are directly objective values, but doubts whether we can intuit them directly, must view a plausible account of practical reason as fundamental to philosophical ethics.

Practical Reasoning

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antti Kauppinen
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Instrumental Reasoning ◽  
Reasons Responsiveness ◽  
To Come ◽  
Apparent Reasons

This chapter discusses two contemporary pictures of practical reasoning. According to the Rule-Guidance Conception, roughly, practical reasoning is a rule-guided operation of acquiring (or retaining or giving up) intentions to come to meet synchronic requirements of rationality. According to the Reasons-Responsiveness Conception, practical reasoning is, roughly, a process of responding to apparent reasons. Its standards of correctness derive from what we objectively have reason to do, if things are as we suppose them to be. I argue that a version of the latter has some significant advantages. This has some surprising consequences for how we should conceive of the structure and process of instrumental reasoning in particular.

Pursuing Ends as the Fundamental Given Attitude

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-82
Author(s):  
Sergio Tenenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Decision Theory ◽  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Extended Theory ◽  
Instrumental Reasoning

The extended theory of instrumental rationality (ETR) takes the intentional pursuit of ends to be the only relevant attitude for the theory of instrumental rationality, and takes the principle of instrumental reasoning, a non-comparative principle, to be the only principle of derivation. However, it seems that if the agent has more than one end, we’ll need to introduce comparative or graded attitudes, such as the preference orderings in orthodox decision theory, in order to explain the rationality of choices among competing ends. In fact, ETR can provide a significantly better account of how a rational agent pursues multiple indeterminate ends through time than theories that make use of comparative and graded attitudes. ETR proposes that in the pursuit of such ends a rational agent must inevitably “satisfice” rather than maximize. At the same time, the chapter explains how some comparative attitudes, such as preferences, can be incorporated into ETR.

Personal Problem Solving of Partners in Divorce Proceedings

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tereza Soukupova ◽  
Petr Goldmann
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Thematic Apperception Test ◽  
Scoring Systems ◽  
Personal Control ◽  
Personality Characteristics ◽  
Personal Problem ◽  
Thematic Apperception ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Given

Abstract. The Thematic Apperception Test is one of the most frequently administered apperceptive techniques. Formal scoring systems are helpful in evaluating story responses. TAT stories, made by 20 males and 20 females in the situation of legal divorce proceedings, were coded for detection and comparison of their personal problem solving ability. The evaluating instrument utilized was the Personal Problem Solving System-Revised (PPSS-R) as developed by G. F. Ronan. The results indicate that in relation to card 1, men more often than women saw the cause of the problem as removable. With card 6GF, women were more motivated to resolve the given problem than were men, women had a higher personal control and their stories contained more optimism compared to men’s stories. In relation to card 6BM women, more often than men, used emotions generated from the problem to orient themselves within the problem. With card 13MF, the men’s level of stress was less compared to that of the women, and men were more able to plan within the context of problem-solving. Significant differences in the examined groups were found in those cards which depicted significant gender and parental potentials. The TAT can be used to help identify personality characteristics and gender differences.

Pattern Recognition in Histo-Pathology: Basic Considerations

1982 ◽  
Vol 21 (01) ◽  
pp. 15-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Schlegel ◽  
K. Kayser
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Recognition ◽  
Graph Theory ◽  
Normal Tissue ◽  
Diagnostic Procedures ◽  
Minimal Distance ◽  
Malignant Growth ◽  
Colon Tissue ◽  
First Results ◽  
Tissue Structures ◽  
The Given

A basic concept for the automatic diagnosis of histo-pathological specimen is presented. The algorithm is based on tissue structures of the original organ. Low power magnification was used to inspect the specimens. The form of the given tissue structures, e. g. diameter, distance, shape factor and number of neighbours, is measured. Graph theory is applied by using the center of structures as vertices and the shortest connection of neighbours as edges. The algorithm leads to two independent sets of parameters which can be used for diagnostic procedures. First results with colon tissue show significant differences between normal tissue, benign and malignant growth. Polyps form glands that are twice as wide as normal and carcinomatous tissue. Carcinomas can be separated by the minimal distance of the glands formed. First results of pattern recognition using graph theory are discussed.

Coordinating Medical Literature with Patient Care

1977 ◽  
Vol 16 (04) ◽  
pp. 234-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joann Gustafson ◽  
J. Nelson ◽  
Ann Buller
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Medical Staff ◽  
Medical Information ◽  
Medical Literature ◽  
Medical Information System ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Information Displays ◽  
Medical Displays ◽  
Computerized Medical Information ◽  
The Given

The contribution of a special library project to a computerized problem-oriented medical information system (PROMIS) is discussed. Medical information displays developed by the PROMIS medical staff are accessible to the health care provider via touch screen cathode terminals. Under PROMIS, members of the library project developed two information services, one concerned with the initial building of the medical displays and the other with the updating of this information. Information from 88 medical journals is disseminated to physicians involved in the building of the medical displays. Articles meeting predetermined selection criteria are abstracted and the abstracts are made available by direct selective dissemination or via a problem-oriented abstract file. The updating service involves comparing the information contained in the selected articles with the computerized medical displays on the given topic. Discrepancies are brought to the attention of PROMIS medical staff members who evaluate the information and make appropriate changes in the displays. Thus a feedback loop is maintained which assures the completeness, accuracy, and currency of the computerized medical information. The development of this library project and its interface with the computerized health care system thus attempts to deal with the problems in the generation, validation, dissemination, and application of medical literature.

Identification and Transformation of Terminal Morphemes in Medical English

1969 ◽  
Vol 8 (02) ◽  
pp. 84-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Pratt ◽  
M. Pacak
Keyword(s):  
Word Form ◽  
Subsequent Transformation ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Morphological Segmentation ◽  
Medical English ◽  
Nominal Form ◽  
Admissible Path ◽  
Near Future ◽  
The Given ◽  
Admissible Sequences

The system for the identification and subsequent transformation of terminal morphemes in medical English is a part of the information system for processing pathology data which was developed at the National Institutes of Health.The recognition and transformation of terminal morphemes is restricted to classes of adjectivals including the -ING and -ED forms, nominals and homographic adjective/noun forms.The adjective-to-noun and noun-to-noun transforms consist basically of a set of substitutions of adjectival and certain nominal suffixes by a set of suffixes which indicate the corresponding nominal form(s).The adjectival/nominal suffix has a polymorphosyntactic transformational function if it has the property of being transformed into more than one nominalizing suffix (e.g., the adjectival suffix -IC can be substituted by a set of nominalizing suffixes -Ø, -A, -E, -Y, -IS, -IA, -ICS): the adjectival suffix has a monomorphosyntactic transformational property if there is only one admissible transform (e.g., -CIC → -X).The morphological segmentation and the subsequent transformations are based on the following principles:a. The word form is segmented according to the principle of »double consonant cut,« i.e., terminal characters following the last set of double consonants are analyzed and treated as a potential suffix. For practical purposes only such terminal suffixes of a maximum length of four have been analyzed.b. The principle that the largest segment of a word form common to both adjective and noun or to both noun stems is retained as a word base for transformational operations, and the non-identical segment is considered to be a »suffix.«The backward right-to-left character search is initiated by the identification of the terminal grapheme of the given word form and is extended to certain admissible sequences of immediately preceding graphemes.The nodes which represent fixed sequences of graphemes are labeled according to their recognition and/or transformation properties.The tree nodes are divided into two groups:a. productive or activatedb. non-productive or non-activatedThe productive (activated) nodes are sequences of sets of graphemes which possess certain properties, such as the indication about part-of-speech class membership, the transformation properties, or both. The non-productive (non-activated) nodes have the function of connectors, i.e., they specify the admissible path to the productive nodes.The computer program for the identification and transformation of the terminal morphemes is open-ended and is already operational. It will be extended to other sub-fields of medicine in the near future.

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