Paradoxes of Belief and Strategic Rationality

Paradoxes of Belief and Strategic Rationality
Author: Robert C. Koons
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2009-01-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521100595

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The purpose of this book is to develop a framework for analyzing strategic rationality, a notion central to contemporary game theory, which is the formal study of the interaction of rational agents, and which has proved extremely fruitful in economics, political theory, and business management. The author argues that a logical paradox (known since antiquity as "the Liar paradox") lies at the root of a number of persistent puzzles in game theory, in particular those concerning rational agents who seek to establish some kind of reputation. Building on the work of Parsons, Burge, Gaifman, and Barwise and Etchemendy, Robert Koons constructs a context-sensitive solution to the whole family of Liar-like paradoxes, including, for the first time, a detailed account of how the interpretation of paradoxial statements is fixed by context. This analysis provides a new understanding of how the rational agent model can account for the emergence of rules, practices, and institutions.

Paradoxes of Belief and Strategic Rationality

Paradoxes of Belief and Strategic Rationality
Author: Robert C. Koons
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 1992-01-31
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0521412692

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The author argues that a logical paradox lies at the root of a number of persistent puzzles in game theory, in particular those concerning rational agents who seek to establish some kind of reputation. This analysis provides an understanding of how the rational agent model can account for the emergence of rules, practices and institutions.

Paradox and Belief

Paradox and Belief
Author: Michael Caie
Publisher:
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2011
Genre:
ISBN:

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At a fairly high level of abstraction, this work is about some ways in which questions about the correct treatment of the semantic paradoxes and questions about the principles of rationality governing doxastic states can be mutually illuminating. In the first part of the dissertation, I argue that certain treatments of the semantic paradoxes lead to surprising conclusions about the nature of the doxastic states of rational agents. The semantic paradoxes, such as the liar paradox, provide us with good reason to take seriously various non-classical logics. In addition to the semantic paradoxes, there are also paradoxes that show that some extremely plausible principles of rationality governing doxastic states are inconsistent given classical logic. I show how various non-classical responses to the semantic paradoxes provide us with resources sufficient to resolve these paradoxes. In particular, if we allow that certain statements about an agent's doxastic state, e.g., statements about whether an agent believes a proposition P, may give rise to certain failures of classical logic, then we can hold on to all of our plausible principles of doxastic rationality. I use this fact to argue for the conditional claim that if one is inclined to reject classical logic in response to the liar paradox, then one should allow that statements about an agent's doxastic state may also give rise to failures of classical logic. Since the antecedent of the conditional is reasonable, and the consequent surprising, the conditional is of interest. In the second part of the dissertation, I argue that attention to questions about the nature of doxastic rationality can provide us with important insights into the correct treatment of the semantic paradoxes. For any non-classical response to the semantic paradoxes, an important question that arises is: what exactly is the cognitive significance of the non-classical semantic statuses employed by the theory? I argue that our earlier reflections on the normative paradoxes show that the standard ways of answering this question are wrong. Given standard accounts of the cognitive significance of non-classical semantic statuses, we can resurrect our normative paradoxes. What this means is that the standard accounts of non-classical cognitive significance are in conflict with certain fundamental principles of doxastic rationality. I argue that in order to reconcile the account of non-classical cognitive significance with these principles we need to say that the correct rational response to paradoxical propositions, such as that expressed by the liar sentence, is for there to be a mirroring non-classicality in one's doxastic state. A rational agent, then, will be such that the claim that it believes the proposition expressed by the liar sentence will have the same non-classical status as the proposition expressed by the liar sentence. What emerges is a new picture of the significance of non-classical treatments of the semantic paradoxes.

Paradoxes and Inconsistencies in the Law

Paradoxes and Inconsistencies in the Law
Author: Oren Perez
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2005-12-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1847311784

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Is law paradoxical? This book seeks to unravel the riddle of legal paradoxes. It focuses on two main questions: the nature of legal paradoxes, and their social ramifications. In exploring the structure of legal paradoxes, the book focuses both on generic paradoxes, such as those associated with the self-referential character of legal validity and the endemic incoherence of legal discourse, and on paradoxes that permeate more restricted fields of law, such as contract law, euthanasia, and human rights (the prohibition of torture). The discussion of the social effects of legal paradoxes focuses on the role of paradoxes as drivers of legal change, and explores the institutional mechanisms that ensure the stability of the law, in spite of its paradoxical makeup. The essays in the book discuss these questions from various perspectives, invoking insights from philosophy, systems theory, deconstruction and economics.

Interpreting Probability

Interpreting Probability
Author: David Howie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2002-08-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1139434373

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The term probability can be used in two main senses. In the frequency interpretation it is a limiting ratio in a sequence of repeatable events. In the Bayesian view, probability is a mental construct representing uncertainty. This 2002 book is about these two types of probability and investigates how, despite being adopted by scientists and statisticians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Bayesianism was discredited as a theory of scientific inference during the 1920s and 1930s. Through the examination of a dispute between two British scientists, the author argues that a choice between the two interpretations is not forced by pure logic or the mathematics of the situation, but depends on the experiences and aims of the individuals involved. The book should be of interest to students and scientists interested in statistics and probability theories and to general readers with an interest in the history, sociology and philosophy of science.

Adventures in Paradox

Adventures in Paradox
Author: Charles D. Presberg
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0271045965

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Rationality and Coordination

Rationality and Coordination
Author: Cristina Bicchieri
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1997-03-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521574440

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. This major new book will be of particular interest not only to philosophers but to decision theorists, political scientists, economists, and researchers in artificial intelligence.

Reflections on the Liar

Reflections on the Liar
Author: Bradley Armour-Garb
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2017-06-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190672277

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In recent years there have been a number of books-both anthologies and monographs-that have focused on the Liar Paradox and, more generally, on the semantic paradoxes, either offering proposed treatments to those paradoxes or critically evaluating ones that occupy logical space. At the same time, there are a number of people who do great work in philosophy, who have various semantic, logical, metaphysical and/or epistemological commitments that suggest that they should say something about the Liar Paradox, yet who have said very little, if anything, about that paradox or about the extant projects involving it. The purpose of this volume is to afford those philosophers the opportunity to address what might be described as reflections on the Liar.

Revenge of the Liar

Revenge of the Liar
Author: JC Beall
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2007-12-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191528501

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The Liar paradox raises foundational questions about logic, language, and truth (and semantic notions in general). A simple Liar sentence like 'This sentence is false' appears to be both true and false if it is either true or false. For if the sentence is true, then what it says is the case; but what it says is that it is false, hence it must be false. On the other hand, if the statement is false, then it is true, since it says (only) that it is false. How, then, should we classify Liar sentences? Are they true or false? A natural suggestion would be that Liars are neither true nor false; that is, they fall into a category beyond truth and falsity. This solution might resolve the initial problem, but it beckons the Liar's revenge. A sentence that says of itself only that it is false or beyond truth and falsity will, in effect, bring back the initial problem. The Liar's revenge is a witness to the hydra-like nature of Liars: in dealing with one Liar you often bring about another. JC Beall presents fourteen new essays and an extensive introduction, which examine the nature of the Liar paradox and its resistance to any attempt to solve it. Written by some of the world's leading experts in the field, the papers in this volume will be an important resource for those working in truth studies, philosophical logic, and philosophy of language, as well as those with an interest in formal semantics and metaphysics.

The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism

The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism
Author: Jonathan J. Loose
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 531
Release: 2018-05-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1119375266

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A groundbreaking collection of contemporary essays from leading international scholars that provides a balanced and expert account of the resurgent debate about substance dualism and its physicalist alternatives. Substance dualism has for some time been dismissed as an archaic and defeated position in philosophy of mind, but in recent years, the topic has experienced a resurgence of scholarly interest and has been restored to contemporary prominence by a growing minority of philosophers prepared to interrogate the core principles upon which past objections and misunderstandings rest. As the first book of its kind to bring together a collection of contemporary writing from top proponents and critics in a pro-contra format, The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism captures this ongoing dialogue and sets the stage for rigorous and lively discourse around dualist and physicalist accounts of human persons in philosophy. Chapters explore emergent, Thomistic, Cartesian, and other forms of substance dualism—broadly conceived—in dialogue with leading varieties of physicalism, including animalism, non-reductive physicalism, and constitution theory. Loose, Menuge, and Moreland pair essays from dualist advocates with astute criticism from physicalist opponents and vice versa, highlighting points of contrast for readers in thematic sections while showcasing today’s leading minds engaged in direct debate. Taken together, essays provide nuanced paths of introduction for students, and capture the imagination of professional philosophers looking to expand their understanding of the subject. Skillfully curated and in touch with contemporary science as well as analytic theology, The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism strikes a measured balanced between advocacy and criticism, and is a first-rate resource for researchers, scholars, and students of philosophy, theology, and neuroscience.