Rationality in games and institutions

Against the orthodox view of the Nash equilibrium as “the embodiment of the idea that economic agents are rational” (Aumann, 1985, p 43), some theorists have proposed ‘non-classical’ concepts of rationality in games, arguing that rational agents should be capable of improving upon inefficient equilibrium outcomes. This paper considers some implications of these proposals for economic theory, by focusing on institutional design. I argue that revisionist concepts of rationality conflict with the constraint that institutions should be designed to be incentive-compatible, that is, that they should implement social goals in equilibrium. To resolve this conflict, proponents of revisionist concepts face a choice between three options: (1) reject incentive compatibility as a general constraint, (2) deny that individuals interacting through the designed institutions are rational, or (3) accept that their concepts do not cover institutional design. I critically discuss these options and I argue that a more inclusive concept of rationality, e.g. the one provided by Robert Sugden’s version of team reasoning, holds the most promise for the non-classical project, yielding a novel argument for incentive compatibility as a general constraint.

Or not Alternative Questions, Focus and Discourse Structure

Or not alternative questions like Are you coming or not? give rise to so-called ‘cornering effects’ (Biezma 2009), consisting of two parts: (i) they cannot appear discourse-initially, and (ii) they do not allow for follow-up questions. Building on recent experimental data (Beltrama, Meertens & Romero 2020), the present paper raises problems for current analyses (Biezma 2009, Biezma & Rawlins 2012, 2018), reframes the second part of cornering as not specific to NAQs but as a general constraint on questions in general, and develops a novel proposal for the first part of cornering. The key ingredients of the new proposal are the intrinsic focus structure of or not questions and its effects on discourse trees.

Edgington on Possible Knowledge of Unknown Truth

The chapter responds to Dorothy Edgington’s article ‘Possible Knowledge of Unknown Truth’, which defends her seminal diagnosis of the Church–Fitch refutation of verificationist knowability principles. Using counterfactual conditionals, she reformulates those principles to block that objection. The chapter argues that, to avoid trivialization, Edgington must supply a more general constraint on how the knower specifies a counterfactual situation for purposes of her reformulated principles; it is unclear how to do so. The philosophical motivation for her strategy is also questioned, with special reference to her treatment of Putnam’s epistemic account of truth. In passing, it is questioned how dangerous Church–Fitch arguments are for verificationist principles with non-factive evidential attitudes in place of knowledge. Finally, a doubt is raised about the compatibility of Edgington’s reformulation strategy with her view that counterfactual conditionals lack truth-conditions.

Structural Synthesis of Lower-Class Robot Manipulators with General Constraint One

In this research, the structural synthesis of lower-class robot manipulators with general constraint one is investigated. The number of constraints d = 1 and the mobility number λ = 5 for sphere–sphere and sphere–plane combinations of higher kinematic pairs are investigated by using the analytical approach. Structural synthesis of new first- and second-class robot manipulators is investigated by using transformations of higher kinematic pairs to lower kinematic pairs. Therefore, using this approach, we obtain structural groups with general constraint one. Further, kinematic structures and physical models of overconstrained robot manipulators are presented in the research.

The Express Knowledge Account of Assertion

Many philosophers favour the simple knowledge account of assertion, which says you may assert something only if you know it. The simple account is true but importantly incomplete. I defend a more informative thesis, namely, that you may assert something only if your assertion expresses knowledge. I call this 'the express knowledge account of assertion', which I argue better handles a wider range of cases while at the same time explaining the simple knowledge account's appeal. §1 introduces some new data that a knowledge account of assertion well explains. §2 explains the simple knowledge account's advantage over two of its main competitors. §3 presents a problem for the simple account and offers a solution, which is to adopt the express knowledge account. §4 encapsulates the case for the express knowledge account, and offers a unifying vision for the epistemology of belief and assertion. §5 answers an objection. §6 briefly sums up. Even those who ultimately reject my conclusion can still benefit from the new data presented in §1, and learn an important lesson from the problem discussed in §3, which demonstrates a general constraint on an acceptable account of the norm of assertion.

Variation, the Height Effect, and Disharmony in Hungarian Front/Back Harmony

The neutral vowels in Hungarian front/back harmony a gradience in neutrality (from most neutral to least neutral) known as the Height Effect. In this paper we examine the relationship between two aspects of the Height Effect: disharmony associated with invariance in suffixes and the gradience in transparency in roots (the only aspect of the Height Effect that is usually analysed in the literature). We will show that there is a parallelism between the differences in the distribution of the various neutral vowels in invariant suffixes and the Height Effect as manifested in the gradience of transparency in roots and will argue that the latter is in fact motivated by the former due to an independently motivated general constraint, Harmonic Consistency, which regulates the harmonic behaviour suffixes in morphologically complex contexts.

Expressivism and Cognitive Propositions

Expressivists about normative thought and discourse traditionally deny that there are nondeflationary normative propositions. However, it has recently been suggested that expressivists might avoid a number of problems by providing a theory of normative propositions compatible with expressivism. This paper explores the prospects for developing an expressivist theory of propositions within the framework of cognitive act theories of propositions. First, I argue that the only extant expressivist theory of cognitive propositions—Michael Ridge's ‘ecumenical expressivist’ theory—fails to explain identity conditions for normative propositions. Second, I argue that this failure motivates a general constraint—the ‘unity requirement’—that any expressivist theory of propositions must provide a unified nonrepresentational explanation of that in virtue of which propositional attitudes have the content that they have. Third, I argue that conceptual role accounts of content provide a promising framework in which to develop an expressivist theory of cognitive propositions.

Approximation Guarantees of Stochastic Greedy Algorithms for Subset Selection

Subset selection is a fundamental problem in many areas, which aims to select the best subset of size at most $k$ from a universe. Greedy algorithms are widely used for subset selection, and have shown good approximation performances in deterministic situations. However, their behaviors are stochastic in many realistic situations (e.g., large-scale and noisy). For general stochastic greedy algorithms, bounded approximation guarantees were obtained only for subset selection with monotone submodular objective functions, while real-world applications often involve non-monotone or non-submodular objective functions and can be subject to a more general constraint than a size constraint. This work proves their approximation guarantees in these cases, and thus largely extends the applicability of stochastic greedy algorithms.

Historical development of pragmatic scalar modifiers

Chapter 9 considers the development of pragmatic scalar modifiers from a historical point of view. The main point is that although the directionality of the semantic change of scalar modifiers can be captured under a general path of semantic change or grammaticalization (i.e. propositional $>$ (textual) $>$ expressive; Traugott 1982), the semantic shift of scalar modifiers is not lexically at random. The chapter argues that semantic change in scalar modifiers is constrained or regulated by their lexical and morphosyntactic properties. At the lexical level, this constraint means that semantic change does not occur if the source meaning does not fit with an expressive mode. At the morphosyntactic level, there is a general constraint that the elements used for expressing a particular CI meaning must form a constituent. Finally, the relationship between syntactic change and semantic change is also discussed.