scholarly journals Active Information, Learning, and Knowledge Acquisition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ola Hössjer ◽  
Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón ◽  
J. Sunil Rao
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Bayes Rule ◽  
Mathematical Framework ◽  
Degree Of Belief ◽  
False Proposition ◽  
Coin Tossing ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Right Reason ◽  
The Right

Philosophers frequently define knowledge as justified, true belief. In this paper we build a mathematical framework that makes possible to define learning (increased degree of true belief) and knowledge of an agent in precise ways. This is achieved by phrasing belief in terms of epistemic probabilities, defined from Bayes' Rule. The degree of true belief is then quantified by means of active information $I^+$, that is, a comparison between the degree of belief of the agent and a completely ignorant person. Learning has occurred when either the agent's strength of belief in a true proposition has increased in comparison with the ignorant person ($I^+>0$), or if the strength of belief in a false proposition has decreased ($I^+<0$). Knowledge additionally requires that learning occurs for the right reason, and in this context we introduce a framework of parallel worlds, of which one is true and the others are counterfactuals. We also generalize the framework of learning and knowledge acquisition to a sequential setting, where information and data is updated over time. The theory is illustrated using examples of coin tossing, historical events, future events, replication of studies, and causal inference.

scholarly journals Reducing future fears by suppressing the brain mechanisms underlying episodic simulation

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (52) ◽  
pp. E8492-E8501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland G. Benoit ◽  
Daniel J. Davies ◽  
Michael C. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Episodic Simulation ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal ◽  
Future Events ◽  
The Right ◽  
Development Of Anxiety ◽  
The Brain

Imagining future events conveys adaptive benefits, yet recurrent simulations of feared situations may help to maintain anxiety. In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that people can attenuate future fears by suppressing anticipatory simulations of dreaded events. Participants repeatedly imagined upsetting episodes that they feared might happen to them and suppressed imaginings of other such events. Suppressing imagination engaged the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which modulated activation in the hippocampus and in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Consistent with the role of the vmPFC in providing access to details that are typical for an event, stronger inhibition of this region was associated with greater forgetting of such details. Suppression further hindered participants’ ability to later freely envision suppressed episodes. Critically, it also reduced feelings of apprehensiveness about the feared scenario, and individuals who were particularly successful at down-regulating fears were also less trait-anxious. Attenuating apprehensiveness by suppressing simulations of feared events may thus be an effective coping strategy, suggesting that a deficiency in this mechanism could contribute to the development of anxiety.

The Medical Semantic Web

2014 ◽  
pp. 19-29
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ali H. Eljinini
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Disease ◽  
Semantic Web ◽  
Information Extraction ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Chronic Diseases ◽  
Precise Information ◽  
Continuous Work ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
The Right

In this paper, the need for the right information for patients with chronic diseases is elaborated, followed by some scenarios of how the semantic web can be utilised to retrieve useful and precise information by stakeholders. In previous work, the author has demonstrated the automation of knowledge acquisition from the current web is becoming an important step towards this goal. The aim was twofold; first to learn what types of information exist in chronic disease-related websites, and secondly how to extract and structure such information into machine understandable form. It has been shown that these websites exhibit many common concepts which resulted in the construction of the ontology to guide in extracting information for new unseen websites. Also, the study has resulted in the development of a platform for information extraction that utilises the ontology. Continuous work has opened many issues which are disussed in this paper. While further work is still needed, the experiments to date have shown encouraging results.

Making Decisions as A Student: Decision-Making Opportunities

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Nursing Education ◽  
Clinical Reasoning ◽  
Opportunity To Learn ◽  
Leadership Management ◽  
Professional Body ◽  
Right Reason ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right

This chapter introduces the underlying principles of decision making. You will be encouraged to consider decision making as a student in university together with decision making as a student nurse (see Chapter 1 ). In 2010, following a review of pre-registration nursing education, the professional body for nursing in the United Kingdom, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), published new Standards for Pre-Registration Nursing Education , including competencies that all students must achieve to qualify as a registered nurse. These competencies have to be met in four broad areas known as ‘domains’. 1. Professional values 2. Communication and interpersonal skills 3. Nursing practice and decision making 4. Leadership, management, and team working You will find reference to these domains throughout the book, and there will be an opportunity to learn how the competencies in each of these that relate to decision making can be linked to your clinical and university-based learning. There are a number of terms that can be found in the literature that are often used interchangeably; you may see terms such as ‘decision making’, ‘problem solving’, ‘clinical reasoning’ or ‘clinical judgement’, and others used when writers are discussing how and why nurses respond to clinical situations in a particular way (see Chapter 1 for more detail). For example, Levett-Jones et al. (2010: 515) provide a helpful definition of clinical reasoning as ‘the process by which nurses collect cues, process the information, come to an understanding of a patient problem or situation, plan and implement interventions, evaluate outcomes, and reflect on and learn from the process’. They also emphasize that a nurse’s ability to develop these clinical reasoning skills depends on what they term as ‘five rights’—that is, the nurse’s ability ‘to collect the right cues and to take the right action for the right patient at the right time and for the right reason’. In the context of ensuring that any patient receives the best possible care, these ‘five rights’ are very appropriate, and indeed if one were to fail to pick up on the right cues and to take the appropriate actions in many clinical situations, the outcome may have serious repercussions for the nurse and the patient.

Would a Virtuous Person Grandstand?

Grandstanding ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 119-138
Author(s):  
Justin Tosi ◽  
Brandon Warmke
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Character Trait ◽  
General Character ◽  
Virtuous Person ◽  
Will To Power ◽  
Slave Revolt ◽  
Right Reason ◽  
Moral Talk ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

This chapter discusses moral grandstanding from the standpoint of virtue ethics. Three common approaches to virtue ethics are considered. A virtuous person would not grandstand according to the classical conception of virtue, on which virtue is doing the right thing for the right reason. People would be disappointed if they found out that a widely admired, historic speech turned out to be grandstanding. Vanity, the general character trait most closely associated with grandstanding, is not plausibly a virtue according to virtue consequentialism. Finally, grandstanding is an abuse of morality, like the one Nietzsche labels the slave revolt in morals, as grandstanders use moral talk as an underhanded shortcut to satisfy their will to power.

scholarly journals New Caledonian crows plan for specific future tool use

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1938) ◽  
pp. 20201490
Author(s):  
M. Boeckle ◽  
M. Schiestl ◽  
A. Frohnwieser ◽  
R. Gruber ◽  
R. Miller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
Convergent Evolution ◽  
Food Item ◽  
Common Ancestor ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Future Events ◽  
New Caledonian Crows ◽  
Future Task ◽  
The Right

The ability to plan for future events is one of the defining features of human intelligence. Whether non-human animals can plan for specific future situations remains contentious: despite a sustained research effort over the last two decades, there is still no consensus on this question. Here, we show that New Caledonian crows can use tools to plan for specific future events. Crows learned a temporal sequence where they were (a) shown a baited apparatus, (b) 5 min later given a choice of five objects and (c) 10 min later given access to the apparatus. At test, these crows were presented with one of two tool–apparatus combinations. For each combination, the crows chose the right tool for the right future task, while ignoring previously useful tools and a low-value food item. This study establishes that planning for specific future tool use can evolve via convergent evolution, given that corvids and humans shared a common ancestor over 300 million years ago, and offers a route to mapping the planning capacities of animals.

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