Experience and Epistemic Structure

SummaryIn this paper I argue that the debate on the legitimacy of using religious arguments in public discourse displays a one-dimensional understanding of the epistemic structure of religious beliefs. This holds true even for the most recent and most advanced approaches such as Andrew March’s innovative typology of religious arguments. Hence, my first aim in this paper is to provide an analysis of the epistemic structure of religious beliefs. I suggest that religious convictions have two main components: they have a cognitive-propositional dimension (belief) as well as a regulative-expressive dimension (faith). Therefore, they may be intersubjectively accessible, but not mutually acceptable. My second aim in this paper is to show that mutual acceptability is an adequate criterion for political legitimacy. However, although the demands of public reason require mutual acceptability, religious convictions ought not to be privatized as they offer essential input for public discourse beyond public justification. Thus, it is necessary to insist on the mutual acceptability of reasons in public justifications, but this does not imply that religion is a private matter.

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Some Things are Easier for the Dumb and the Bright Ones (Beware the Average!)

Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence ◽

10.24963/ijcai.2019/240 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Wojciech Jamroga ◽

Michał Knapik

Keyword(s):

Model Checking ◽

Multi Agent Systems ◽

Worst Case ◽

Case Complexity ◽

Special Cases ◽

Worst Case Complexity ◽

Multi Agent ◽

Np Complete ◽

Epistemic Structure ◽

Verification Of Models

Model checking strategic abilities in multi-agent systems is hard, especially for agents with partial observability of the state of the system. In that case, it ranges from NP-complete to undecidable, depending on the precise syntax and the semantic variant. That, however, is the worst case complexity, and the problem might as well be easier when restricted to particular subclasses of inputs. In this paper, we look at the verification of models with "extreme" epistemic structure, and identify several special cases for which model checking is easier than in general. We also prove that, in the other cases, no gain is possible even if the agents have almost full (or almost nil) observability. To prove the latter kind of results, we develop generic techniques that may be useful also outside of this study.

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Epinets: the epistemic structure and dynamics of social networks

Choice Reviews Online ◽

10.5860/choice.185028 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 52 (04) ◽

pp. 52-2077-52-2077

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Structure And Dynamics ◽

Epistemic Structure

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Epistemic models of shallow depths and decision making in games: Horticulture

Journal of Symbolic Logic ◽

10.2178/jsl/1045861510 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 68 (1) ◽

pp. 163-186 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Mamoru Kaneko ◽

Nobu-Yuki Suzuki

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Shallow Depth ◽

Epistemic Structure ◽

Surgical Operations

AbstractKaneko-Suzuki developed epistemic logics of shallow depths with multiple players for investigations of game theoretical problems. By shallow depth, we mean that nested occurrences of belief operators of players in formulae are restricted, typically to be of finite depths, by a given epistemic structure. In this paper, we develop various methods of surgical operations (cut and paste) of epistemic world models. An example is a bouquet-making, i.e., tying several models into a bouquet. Another example is to engraft a model to some branches of another model. By these methods, we obtain various meta-theorems on semantics and syntax on epistemic logics. To illustrate possible uses of our meta-theorems, we present one game theoretical theorem, which is also a meta-theorem in the sense of logic.

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