scholarly journals Awareness Growth and Belief Revision

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe Roussos

The problem of awareness growth, also known as the problem of new hypotheses, is a persistent challenge to Bayesian theories of rational belief and decision making. Cases of awareness growth include coming to consider a completely new possibility (called expansion), or coming to consider finer distinctions through the introduction of a new partition (called refinement). Recent work has centred on Reverse Bayesianism, a proposal for rational awareness growth due to Karni and Vierø. This essay develops a "Reserve Bayesian" position and defends it against two challenges. The first, due to Anna Mahtani, says that Reverse Bayesian approaches yield the wrong result in cases where the growth of awareness constitutes an expansion relative to one partition, but a refinement relative to a different partition. The second, due to Steele and Stefánsson, says that Reverse Bayesian approaches cannot deal with new propositions that are evidentially relevant to old propositions. I argue that these challenges confuse questions of belief revision with questions of awareness change. Mahtani’s cases reveal that the change of awareness itself requires a model which specifies how propositions in the agent’s old algebra are identified with propositions in the new algebra. I introduce a lattice-theoretic model for this purpose, which resolves Mahtani’s problem cases and some of Steele and Stefánsson’s cases. Applying my model of awareness change, then Reverse Bayesianism, and then a generalised belief revision procedure, resolves Steele and Stefánsson’s remaining cases. In demonstrating this, I introduce a simple and general model of belief revision in the face of new information about previously unknown propositions.

Author(s):  
Theofanis Aravanis

Belief Revision is a well-established field of research that deals with how agents rationally change their minds in the face of new information. The milestone of Belief Revision is a general and versatile formal framework introduced by Alchourrón, Gärdenfors and Makinson, known as the AGM paradigm, which has been, to this date, the dominant model within the field. A main shortcoming of the AGM paradigm, as originally proposed, is its lack of any guidelines for relevant change. To remedy this weakness, Parikh proposed a relevance-sensitive axiom, which applies on splittable theories; i.e., theories that can be divided into syntax-disjoint compartments. The aim of this article is to provide an epistemological interpretation of the dynamics (revision) of splittable theories, from the perspective of Kuhn's inuential work on the evolution of scientific knowledge, through the consideration of principal belief-change scenarios. The whole study establishes a conceptual bridge between rational belief revision and traditional philosophy of science, which sheds light on the application of formal epistemological tools on the dynamics of knowledge.


Author(s):  
Elaine Wittenberg ◽  
Joy V. Goldsmith ◽  
Sandra L. Ragan ◽  
Terri Ann Parnell

Relating is a chapter that unpacks the complex architecture of goals always at play for each of us. Because the true motives and goals of a patient are rarely fully understood or realized, the recommendation in this chapter is to attend to the relationship to facilitate the instrumental goals of palliative nursing. Throughout this chapter, authors examine the phenomenon of the patient/family acceptance of an illness status, as well as understanding patient/family perspectives on adjusting to new information. The authors examine the role of uncertainty and how it can impact goals of care discussions and, ultimately, decision-making. Relating to a patient/family creates the opportunity to learn about acceptability of a diagnosis/prognosis, fears associated with uncertainty, and the inevitable dissonance among personal goals in the face of serious illness. Multiple, conflicted, and unrealized goals are a reality that clinicians must navigate and that patients and families must face as they work together to acknowledge a changing life and identity.


Liquidity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-109
Author(s):  
Ellya Sestri

An increasingly rapid technological progress in the era of globalization in the business world, so do not rule out the possibility that a decision-making is something that is very vital in determining the decisions to be taken in the face of competitive business world. Decision making can be influenced by several aspects, this can affect the speed of decision making by the decision maker in which decisions must be quick and accurate. Lecturer Performance Assessment Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process is a decision support system that aims to assess faculty performance according to certain criteria. This system of faculty performance appraisal criteria to map a hierarchy, where each hierarchy will be performed pairwise comparison, the pairwise comparisons between criteria, so to get a comparison of the relative importance of criteria with each other. The results of this comparison is then analyzed to obtain the priority of each criterion. Once completed and performed an assessment of alternative options to be compared and calculated to obtain the best alternatives according to established criteria.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Bonawitz ◽  
Patrick Shafto ◽  
Yue Yu ◽  
Sophie Elizabeth Colby Bridgers ◽  
Aaron Gonzalez

Burgeoning evidence suggests that when children observe data, they use knowledge of the demonstrator’s intent to augment learning. We propose that the effects of social learning may go beyond cases where children observe data, to cases where they receive no new information at all. We present a model of how simply asking a question a second time may lead to belief revision, when the questioner is expected to know the correct answer. We provide an analysis of the CHILDES corpus to show that these neutral follow-up questions are used in parent-child conversations. We then present three experiments investigating 4- and 5-year-old children’s reactions to neutral follow-up questions posed by ignorant or knowledgeable questioners. Children were more likely to change their answers in response to a neutral follow-up question from a knowledgeable questioner than an ignorant one. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of common practices in legal, educational, and experimental psychological settings.


Author(s):  
Richard Gowan

During Ban Ki-moon’s tenure, the Security Council was shaken by P5 divisions over Kosovo, Georgia, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. Yet it also continued to mandate and sustain large-scale peacekeeping operations in Africa, placing major burdens on the UN Secretariat. The chapter will argue that Ban initially took a cautious approach to controversies with the Council, and earned a reputation for excessive passivity in the face of crisis and deference to the United States. The second half of the chapter suggests that Ban shifted to a more activist pressure as his tenure went on, pressing the Council to act in cases including Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, and Syria. The chapter will argue that Ban had only a marginal impact on Council decision-making, even though he made a creditable effort to speak truth to power over cases such as the Central African Republic (CAR), challenging Council members to live up to their responsibilities.


Author(s):  
John Bishop

The argument of this chapter is that the foundational problem of evil is the existential problem of maintaining hopeful commitment to virtuous living in the face of all that may undermine human fulfilment. Dealing with this problem at the cognitive level involves commitment to a view of reality as favourable to practical commitment to ethical ideals. An intellectual problem of evil then arises to the extent that it seems that the fact of evil is evidence against the truth of the salvific worldview we are inclined to adopt for dealing with it. In relation to theism’s ‘revelatory’ worldview, this intellectual problem is expressible as an Argument from Evil. A ‘normatively relativized’ version of the Argument from Evil is proposed that seeks to exclude rational belief in the ‘personal omniGod’. As a viable alternative conception of God is possible, however, the Argument fails to justify outright atheism.


This is the first book to treat the major examples of megadrought and societal collapse, from the late Pleistocene end of hunter–gatherer culture and origins of cultivation to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer Empire capital at Angkor, and ranging from the Near East to South America. Previous enquiries have stressed the possible multiple and internal causes of collapse, such overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, warfare, and poor leadership and decision-making. In contrast, Megadrought and Collapse presents case studies of nine major episodes of societal collapse in which megadrought was the major and independent cause of societal collapse. In each case the most recent paleoclimatic evidence for megadroughts, multiple decades to multiple centuries in duration, is presented alongside the archaeological records for synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from paleoclimate proxy sources (lake, marine, and glacial cores; speleothems, or cave stalagmites; and tree-rings) and are explained by researchers directly engaged in their analysis. Researchers directly responsible for them discuss the relevant current archaeological records. Two arguments are developed through these case studies. The first is that societal collapse in different time periods and regions and at levels of social complexity ranging from simple foragers to complex empires would not have occurred without megadrought. The second is that similar responses to megadrought extend across these historical episodes: societal collapse in the face of insurmountable climate change, abandonment of settlements and regions, and habitat tracking to sustainable agricultural landscapes. As we confront megadrought today, and in the likely future, Megadrought and Collapse brings together the latest contributions to our understanding of past societal responses to the crisis on an equally global and diverse scale.


2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 263-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Schoenfield
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Azadeh Assadi ◽  
Peter C. Laussen ◽  
Patricia Trbovich

Background and aims: Children with congenital heart disease (CHD) are at risk of deterioration in the face of common childhood illnesses, and their resuscitation and acute management is often best achieved with the guidance of CHD experts. Access to such expertise may be limited outside specialty heart centers and the fragility of these patients is cause for discomfort among many emergency medicine physicians. An understanding of the differences in macrocognition of these clinicians could shed light on some of the causes of discomfort and facilitate the development of a sociotechnological solution to this problem. Methods: Cardiac intensivists (CHD experts) and pediatric emergency medicine physicians (non-CHD experts) in a major academic cardiac center were interviewed using the critical decision method. Interview transcripts were coded deductively based on Klein’s macrocognitive framework and inductively to allow for new or modified characterization of dimensions. Results: While both CHD-experts and non-CHD experts relied on the macrocognitive functions of sensemaking, naturalistic decision making and detecting problems, the specific data and mental models used to understand the patients and course of therapy differed between CHD-experts and non-CHD experts. Conclusion: Characterization of differences between the macrocognitive processes of CHD experts and non-CHD experts can inform development of sociotechnological solutions to augment decision making pertaining to the acute management of pediatric CHD patients.


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