The Stability of Belief

The Stability of Belief PDF Author: Hannes Leitgeb
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198732635
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
In everyday life we normally express our beliefs in all-or-nothing terms: I believe it is going to rain; I don't believe that my lottery ticket will win. In other cases, if possible, we resort to numerical probabilities: my degree of belief that it is going to rain is 80%; the probability that I assign to my ticket winning is one in a million. It is an open philosophical question how all-or-nothing belief and numerical belief relate to each other, and how we ought to reason with them simultaneously. The Stability of Belief develops a theory of rational belief that aims to answer this question by building new bridges between logic and probability theory, traditional and mathematical epistemology, and theoretical and practical rationality. Hannes Leitgeb develops a joint normative theory of all-or-nothing belief and numerical degrees of belief. While rational all-or-nothing belief is studied in traditional epistemology and is usually assumed to obey logical norms, rational degrees of belief constitute the subject matter of Bayesian epistemology and are normally taken to conform to probabilistic norms. One of the central open questions in formal epistemology is what beliefs and degrees of belief have to be like in order for them to cohere with each other. The answer defended in this book is a stability account of belief: a rational agent believes a proposition just in case the agent assigns a stably high degree of belief to it. Leitgeb determines this theory's consequences for, and applications to, learning, suppositional reasoning, decision-making, assertion, acceptance, conditionals, and chance. The volume builds new bridges between logic and probability theory, traditional and formal epistemology, theoretical and practical rationality, and synchronic and diachronic norms for reasoning.

The Stability of Belief

The Stability of Belief PDF Author: Hannes Leitgeb
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191047015
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
In everyday life we normally express our beliefs in all-or-nothing terms: I believe it is going to rain; I don't believe that my lottery ticket will win. In other cases, if possible, we resort to numerical probabilities: my degree of belief that it is going to rain is 80%; the probability that I assign to my ticket winning is one in a million. It is an open philosophical question how all-or-nothing belief and numerical belief relate to each other, and how we ought to reason with them simultaneously. The Stability of Belief develops a theory of rational belief that aims to answer this question. Hannes Leitgeb develops a joint normative theory of all-or-nothing belief and numerical degrees of belief. While rational all-or-nothing belief is studied in traditional epistemology and is usually assumed to obey logical norms, rational degrees of belief constitute the subject matter of Bayesian epistemology and are normally taken to conform to probabilistic norms. One of the central open questions in formal epistemology is what beliefs and degrees of belief have to be like in order for them to cohere with each other. The answer defended in this book is a stability account of belief: a rational agent believes a proposition just in case the agent assigns a stably high degree of belief to it. Leitgeb determines this theory's consequences for, and applications to, learning, suppositional reasoning, decision-making, assertion, acceptance, conditionals, and chance. The volume builds new bridges between logic and probability theory, traditional and formal epistemology, theoretical and practical rationality, and synchronic and diachronic norms for reasoning.

The Maturity of Belief

The Maturity of Belief PDF Author: Kevin Twain Lowery
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826498531
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
This book explores the nature and dynamics of religious belief, and offers constructive criticism to promote its intellectual maturity.

The Nature of Belief Systems Reconsidered

The Nature of Belief Systems Reconsidered PDF Author: Jeffrey Friedman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1135755280
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
In the foundational document of modern public-opinion research, Philip E. Converse’s "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics" (1964) established the U.S. public’s startling political ignorance. This volume makes Converse’s long out-of-print article available again and brings together a variety of scholars, including Converse himself, to reflect on Converse’s findings after nearly half a century of further research. Some chapters update findings on public ignorance. Others outline relevant research agendas not only in public-opinion and voter-behavior studies, but in American political development, "state theory," and normative theory. Three chapters grapple with whether voter ignorance is "rational." Several chapters consider the implications of Converse’s findings for the democratic ideal of a well-informed public; others focus on the political "elite," who are better informed but quite possibly more dogmatic than members of the general public. Contributors include Scott Althaus, Stephen Earl Bennett, Philip E. Converse, Samuel DeCanio, James S. Fishkin, Jeffrey Friedman, Doris A. Graber, Russell Hardin, Donald Kinder, Arthur Lupia, Samuel L. Popkin, Ilya Somin, and Gregory W. Wawro. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society.

Credition - An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Nature of Beliefs and Believing

Credition - An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Nature of Beliefs and Believing PDF Author: Rüdiger J. Seitz
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2832529933
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
The concept of credition represents an innovative research field at the interface of the natural sciences and the humanities addressing the nature of beliefs and believing. Credition signifies the integrative information processing that is brought about by neurophysiologically defined neural activity in the brain affording decision making. In analogy to cognition and emotion it is mediated by neural processes and constrains behavior by predictive coding. Three categories of beliefs have been defined on the background of evolutionary biology that can be differentiated linguistically. The goal of the collection of research papers is to provide an interdisciplinary discourse on an international level in the emerging field of credition. On this basis individual, group-specific and cultural narratives of secular and non-secular origin can become normative, in particular, when enhanced by ritual acts. Also, the recently defined belief categories can pave the way for novel approaches of empirical research on the formation of civilizations and cultures as well as for new perspectives on the psychopathological understanding of mental disorders. The disciplines of empirical research such as cognitive science, neurophysiology, neuropsychology, social neuroscience shall counteract with theoretical disciplines such as anthropology, philosophy, and theology in order to elaborate premises that are suited to bridge the scientific gap. The potential contributors will submit their abstracts such that they are available for the International meeting, Credition - An Interdisciplinary Challenge, that is going to take place in October 2021 in Hannover, Germany. Following the symposium, the participants shall elaborate their perspective concerning beliefs and believing, based on their expertise, and the information they have learned during the symposium. The authors are expected to submit a concise paper of 2000 words (C Type Article).

Contextualisms in Epistemology

Contextualisms in Epistemology PDF Author: Elke Brendel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781402031816
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Contextualism has become one of the leading paradigms in contemporary epistemology. According to this view, there is no context-independent standard of knowledge, and as a result, all knowledge ascriptions are context-sensitive. Contextualists contend that their account of this analysis allows us to resolve some major epistemological problems such as skeptical paradoxes and the lottery paradox, and that it helps us explain various other linguistic data about knowledge ascriptions. The apparent ease with which contextualism seems to solve numerous epistemological quandaries has inspired the burgeoning interest in it. This comprehensive anthology collects twenty original essays and critical commentaries on different aspects of contextualism, written by leading philosophers on the topic. The editors’ introduction sketches the historical development of the contextualist movement and provides a survey and analysis of its arguments and major positions. The papers explore, inter alia, the central problems and prospects of semantic (or conversational) contextualism and its main alternative approaches such as inferential (or issue) contextualism, epistemic contextualism, and virtue contextualism. They also investigate the connections between contextualism and epistemic particularism, and between contextualism and stability accounts of knowledge. Elke Brendel is Professor of Philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. She has published numerous articles on logic, epistemology, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of language. She is the author of Die Wahrheit über den Lügner (The Truth About the Liar, 1992), Grundzüge der Logik II – Klassen, Relationen, Zahlen (Foundations of Logic II – Sets, Relations, Numbers, with Wilhelm K. Essler, 1993), and Wahrheit und Wissen (Truth and Knowledge, 1999). Christoph Jäger is Lecturer in Philosophy at Aberdeen University, United Kingdom, and Privatdozent of Philosophy (honorary office) at the University of Leipzig, Germany. He has published numerous articles on epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of religion. Books: Selbstreferenz und Selbstbewusstsein (Self-reference and Self-knowledge, 1999), Analytische Religionsphilosophie (Analytic Philosophy of Religion, ed., 1998), Kunst und Erkenntnis (Art and Knowledge, ed., with Georg Meggle, 2004), Religion und Rationalität (Religion and Rationality, forthcoming).

Lotteries, Knowledge, and Rational Belief

Lotteries, Knowledge, and Rational Belief PDF Author: Igor Douven
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108421911
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
The book offers new insights into the lottery paradox, and thereby into how categorical and graded beliefs are formally connected.

David Hume and the Problem of Other Minds

David Hume and the Problem of Other Minds PDF Author: Anik Waldow
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441151400
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The problem of other minds has widely been considered as a special problem within the debate about scepticism. If one cannot be sure that there is a world existing independent ly of one's mind, how can we be sure that there are minds - minds which we cannot even experience the way we experience material objects? This book shows, through a detailed examination of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, that these concerns are unfounded. By focusing on Hume's discussion of sympathy - the ability to connect with the mental contents of other persons - Anik Waldow demonstrates that belief in other minds can be justified by the same means as belief in material objects. The book thus not only provides the first large-scale treatment of the function of the belief in other minds within the Treatise, thereby adding a new dimension to Hume's realism, but also serves as an invaluable guide to the complexity of the problem of other minds and its various responses in contemporary debate.

Parental Belief Systems

Parental Belief Systems PDF Author: Irving E. Sigel
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1317783824
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
Research on the topic of parent beliefs, or parent cognition, has increased tremendously since the original publication of this volume in 1985. For this revised second edition, the editors sought to reflect some of the new directions that research on parent cognition has taken. By offering a greater variety of topics, it gives evidence of the intellectual concerns that now engage researchers in the field and testifies to the expanding scope of their interests. Although a unique collection because it reflects the diversity that exists among major researchers in the field, it evinces a common theme -- that the ideas parents have regarding their children and themselves as parents have an impact on their actions. This emphasis on parents' ideas shifts the focus on sources of family influence to ideas or beliefs as determinants of family interactions. The implication of this way of thinking for practitioners is that it suggests the shift to ideas and thoughts from behavior and attitudes.

American Beliefs About Intelligence

American Beliefs About Intelligence PDF Author: Orville G., Jr. Brim
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610440811
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Based on two national surveys--one of adults and one of secondary school students, this volume reports on their experiences with and their attitudes toward standardized tests of intelligence. The authors analyze the relations between a person's beliefs about the nature of intelligence, his estimate of his own intelligence, his attitudes concerning tests, and other personal characteristics.

Teacher Beliefs as a Complex System: English Language Teachers in China

Teacher Beliefs as a Complex System: English Language Teachers in China PDF Author: Hongying Zheng
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319230093
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
The volume is a practical introduction to the ways in which the teachers deal with classroom events in the context of change for researchers, teachers, administrators who wish to implement curriculum reform to EFL in schools. The author provides insights into the beliefs of Chinese teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), and their pedagogical choices in the context of the National English Curriculum Reform. The complex nature of EFL teachers’ beliefs about EFL teaching and learning are exposed, how their beliefs interact with mental and actionable processes triggered by classroom practice, and how their beliefs co-adapt with contexts to maintain the stability of the teachers’ belief systems. This is the first study to present complexity theory in a narrative context of education, exploring the non-linear and unpredictable features of the relationship between the teachers’ beliefs and practices. Integrating complexity theory with interpretivist, ecological and sociocultural perspectives, this book contributes to the research agenda by providing a systematic framework for examining teacher beliefs as a whole, and examining the extent to which western theory may be applied to Chinese educational contexts.