Scientific discovery based on belief revision

1997 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1352-1370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Martin ◽  
Daniel Osherson
Keyword(s):  
Belief Revision ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Deductive Logic ◽  
Kernel Contraction ◽  
The Face ◽  
Belief Dynamics ◽  
Belief States

AbstractScientific inquiry is represented as a process of rational hypothesis revision in the face of data. For the concept of rationality, we rely on the theory of belief dynamics as developed in [5, 9]. Among other things, it is shown that if belief states are left unclosed under deductive logic then scientific theories can be expanded in a uniform, consistent fashion that allows inquiry to proceed by any method of hypothesis revision based on “kernel” contraction. In contrast, if belief states are closed under logic, then no such expansion is possible.

scholarly journals Task-evoked pupil responses reflect internal belief states

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Colizoli ◽  
J.W. de Gee ◽  
A.E. Urai ◽  
T.H. Donner
Keyword(s):  
Pupil Diameter ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
Decision Confidence ◽  
Uncertain Evidence ◽  
Recent Theoretical Work ◽  
The Face ◽  
Belief States ◽  
State Of The Environment ◽  
Made In

AbstractPerceptual decisions about the state of the environment are often made in the face of uncertain evidence. Internal uncertainty signals are considered important regulators of learning and decision-making. A growing body of work has implicated the brain’s arousal systems in uncertainty signaling. Here, we found that two specific computational variables, postulated by recent theoretical work, evoke boosts of arousal at different times during a perceptual decision: decision confidence (the observer’s internally estimated probability that a choice was correct given the evidence) before feedback, and prediction errors (deviations from expected reward) after feedback. We monitored pupil diameter, a peripheral marker of central arousal state, while subjects performed a challenging perceptual choice task with a delayed monetary reward. We quantified evoked pupil responses during decision formation and after reward-linked feedback. During both intervals, decision difficulty and accuracy had interacting effects on pupil responses. Pupil responses negatively scaled with decision confidence prior to feedback and scaled with uncertainty-dependent prediction errors after feedback. This pattern of pupil responses during both intervals was in line with a model using the observer’s graded belief about choice accuracy to anticipate rewards and compute prediction errors. We conclude that pupil-linked arousal systems are modulated by internal belief states.

Belief revision in the service of scientific discovery

1998 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Martin ◽  
Daniel Osherson
Keyword(s):  
Belief Revision ◽  
Scientific Discovery

scholarly journals 一個氣功科學工作者的札記: 氣功科學的問題與思考

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-121
Author(s):  
Peihua NI
Keyword(s):  
Human Health ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Scientific Attitude ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
Digital Commons ◽  
Scientific Experiments ◽  
Take All

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.修煉氣功大有益於人的健康。但對於氣功那些令人震撼的效應，還沒有提出一套比較完整的氣功科學理論來加以解釋。然而，無法用當代已接受的科學理論來說明的現象不應一概斥之為迷信。當我們說“氣功科學”時，我們並不是說氣功已經是一門科學，而是說要以科學的態度、方法、手段和精神來對待氣功，研究氣功，努力開創一個科學探索的新領域。在這一探索中，還要注意從氣功的理論、世界觀和方法論出發來設計氣功科學實驗，而不是以常規科學的方式為萬能的或唯一正確的研究方式。Many people have noticed that practicing qigong is beneficial to human health. However, how does it work is not quite clear. Especially, there is no way to use the contemporarily accepted scientific theories to explain some strikingly impressive effects and phenomena that qigong practitioners have brought out. But we should not take all of them as superstitious simply because they cannot be brought to light by currently accepted scientific theories. Instead, we should seriously explore qigong science.When we speak "qigong science", we do not mean qigong is already a science. Rather, we mean that we ought to study qigong through scientific methods and in scientific attitude and spirit in order to open a new area for scientific inquiry. The basic spirit of science is honesty: truth is truth, and false is false. Science is not static. It is always developing. In scientific investigations of qigong, we must take notice to the special characteristics of qigong: its own theories, worldviews as well as methodologies. In designing scientific experiments on qigong, we should not take currently common scientific designing procedures and rules as absolute and universal standards. Rather, we should adapt them in ways of suiting the peculiar features of qigong practice so that useful information and results can be brought about.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 46 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

Understanding

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Grimm ◽  
Michael Hannon
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Science Understanding

Understanding is a kind of cognitive accomplishment, and the objects of understanding—from people, to languages, to scientific theories, to logical proofs—are strikingly varied. As this variety suggests, debates about the nature and value of understanding occur across philosophy. In the philosophy of science, understanding is typically taken to be one of the main goods at which scientific inquiry aims; it is therefore intimately related to issues concerning scientific explanation and to debates about what it is that makes scientific inquiry distinctive. In epistemology, the interest lies in characterizing what kind of cognitive accomplishment understanding is, exactly, and how (if at all) it differs from other cognitive accomplishments such as knowledge and wisdom. In the philosophy of language, a central concern is characterizing what is involved in understanding (or grasping) linguistic items like words, sentences, or languages as a whole; similar questions about what is involved in our understanding or grasp of concepts are crucial to the philosophy of mind. Debates in additional areas will be discussed in this article, but one overarching question is whether the sort of understanding we have of scientific theories, languages, people, and the like are similar in name alone or whether they share certain essential traits. For example, one common thought is that across all of these areas understanding involves the discernment of structure of some kind. It is also commonly thought that to achieve understanding this structure must not be discerned in just any old way, but that it must be “seen” or “grasped.” Just how to understand the metaphors of “seeing” and “grasping” has been a central issue in work on understanding across disciplines.

The Process of Inference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Mole
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Belief Revision ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Belief States ◽  
Mental Events

The set of entities that serves as the domain for our discourse about the mind is metaphysically heterogenous. It includes processes, events, properties, modes, and states. In the latter part of the twentieth century, philosophers started to suppose that a philosophical theory of the mind should be primarily concerned with the explanation of mental states. Those states could be mentioned in the explanations that would need to be given for mental entities of other sorts. If, for example, we had a prior explanation of belief states, then those states could figure in our subsequent explanation of inferences: inferences, on this approach, are to be identified with certain processes of belief revision. This states-first approach was not favoured by earlier theorists of the mind, who tended to suppose that mental events and processes are explanatorily more basic than mental states. The current states-first approach faces insuperable difficulties, which the earlier approach avoids.

How Do You Feel?

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. D. (Bud) Craig
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Fluid Intelligence ◽  
William James ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Insular Cortex ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Mammalian Brain ◽  
Energy Needs

This book brings together startling evidence from neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry to present revolutionary new insights into how our brains enable us to experience the range of sensations and mental states known as feelings. Drawing on own cutting-edge research, the author has identified an area deep inside the mammalian brain—the insular cortex—as the place where interoception, or the processing of bodily stimuli, generates feelings. The book shows how this crucial pathway for interoceptive awareness gives rise in humans to the feeling of being alive, vivid perceptual feelings, and a subjective image of the sentient self across time. The book explains how feelings represent activity patterns in our brains that signify emotions, intentions, and thoughts, and how integration of these patterns is driven by the unique energy needs of the hominid brain. It describes the essential role of feelings and the insular cortex in such diverse realms as music, fluid intelligence, and bivalent emotions, and relates these ideas to the philosophy of William James and even to feelings in dogs. The book is also a compelling insider's account of scientific discovery, one that takes readers behind the scenes as the astonishing answer to this neurological puzzle is pursued and pieced together from seemingly unrelated fields of scientific inquiry. This book will fundamentally alter the way that neuroscientists and psychologists categorize sensations and understand the origins and significance of human feelings.

Imaginative Frames for Scientific Inquiry

2019 ◽  
pp. 304-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Camp
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Model Construction ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Scientific Representations ◽  
The World

Philosophers of science in the last half century have emphasized that scientific theories are not sets of transparently interpretable, logically connected true descriptions; rather, they involve implicit appeal to only partially articulated theoretical, practical, and empirical assumptions, and depart from stating the truth in various ways. One influential trend treats scientific theorizing as largely a process of model construction, and analyzes models as fictions. While this chapter embraces the increased role accorded to imagination and interpretation in scientific practice by the models-as-fictions view, it argues that different scientific representations relate to the world in importantly different ways. It distinguishes among a range of distinct representational tropes, or “frames,” all of which function to provide a perspective: an overarching intuitive principle for noticing, explaining, and responding to some subject. Starting with Max Black’s metaphor of metaphor as a pattern of etched lines on smoked glass, the chapter explains what makes frames in general powerful cognitive tools. It then distinguishes metaphor from some of its close cousins, especially telling details, just-so fictions, and analogies, first in the context of ordinary cognition and then in application to science, focusing on the different sorts of gaps that frames or models can open up between scientific representations and reality.

The Physiologist's Ethical Dilemmas

Physiology ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewald R. Weibel
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Living Matter ◽  
The Face ◽  
Living Organisms

Physiologists are bound to test their scientific theories in experiments on living matter and, ultimately, on living organisms—animals or humans. This confronts the physiologist with ethical dilemmas: can we engage in physiological eperiments in the face of possibly harming the interests of living beings, or should we refrain from such studies, thus preventing the good that can be derived from scientific progress?

scholarly journals Practical Methodological Reform Needs Good Theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 174569162097747
Author(s):  
Will M. Gervais
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Good Theory ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Face ◽  
Scientific Networks ◽  
Interdisciplinary Theory ◽  
Reform Needs

In the face of unreplicable results, statistical anomalies, and outright fraud, introspection and changes in the psychological sciences have taken root. Vibrant reform and metascience movements have emerged. These are exciting developments and may point toward practical improvements in the future. Yet there is nothing so practical as good theory. This article outlines aspects of reform and metascience in psychology that are ripe for an injection of theory, including a lot of excellent and overlooked theoretical work from different disciplines. I review established frameworks that model the process of scientific discovery, the types of scientific networks that we ought to aspire to, and the processes by which problematic norms and institutions might evolve, focusing especially on modeling from the philosophy of science and cultural evolution. We have unwittingly evolved a toxic scientific ecosystem; existing interdisciplinary theory may help us intelligently design a better one.

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