Additionally, the text shows how to develop computationally feasible methods to mesh with this framework.

Special issue. With contributions by Malcolm Forster, Rocio Garcia-Rotamero and Ulrich Hoffrage, Christian Jakob, Kevin Korb and Erik Nyberg, Michael Smithson, Daniel Steel, Brad Weslake, and Jon Williamson.

In everyday life, as well as in science, we have to deal with and act on the basis of partial (i.e. incomplete, uncertain, or even inconsistent) information. This observation is the source of a broad research activity from which a number of competing approaches have arisen. There is some disagreement concerning the way in which partial or full ignorance is and should be handled. The most successful approaches include both quantitative aspects (by means of probability theory) and qualitative aspect (by (...) means of graphical or causal models or logic). Some of these approaches have important impacts on various disciplines including philosophy, computer science, statistics, mathematics, physics, and social science. Most notably, the relation between causal and probabilistic information is a topic of interest in all of these fields. (shrink)

Combining testimonial reports from independent and partially reliable information sources is an important epistemological problem of uncertain reasoning. Within the framework of Dempster–Shafer theory, we propose a general model of partially reliable sources, which includes several previously known results as special cases. The paper reproduces these results on the basis of a comprehensive model taxonomy. This gives a number of new insights and thereby contributes to a better understanding of this important application of reasoning with uncertain and incomplete information.

In everyday life, as well as in science, we have to deal with and act on the basis of partial (i.e. incomplete, uncertain, or even inconsistent) information. This observation is the source of a broad research activity from which a number of competing approaches have arisen. There is some disagreement concerning the way in which partial or full ignorance is and should be handled. The most successful approaches include both quantitative aspects (by means of probability theory) and qualitative aspect (by (...) means of graphical or causal models or logic). Some of these approaches have important impacts on various disciplines including philosophy, computer science, statistics, mathematics, physics, and social science. Most notably, the relation between causal and probabilistic information is a topic of interest in all of these fields. The general question of how uncertainty is related to ignorance, and the connection thereof to causality, have been the key topics of the international summer school at the University of Konstanz, Germany, in August 2004. This was the third event in a series of summer schools organized by the interdisciplinary research group “Philosophy, Probability, and Modeling”. The group was in operation from September 1st, 2001, until August 31, 2005. The first summer school, held in September 2002, focused on the application of probability theory to topics of philosophical interest. Problems and questions that arise when probabilistic models and techniques are being applied in the special sciences were then discussed during the second summer school, held in July 2003. The fourth and final event in the series, in August 2005, was devoted to philosophical questions related to the application and interpretation of probabilities in physics. Each of the four summer schools attracted 40–50 people from many different countries. It was an inspiring forum for an interdisciplinary discussion among researchers and students from many different areas. This special issue collects a selection of the invited and contributed papers presented at the summer school in 2004. We acknowledge the generous support of the Center for Junior Research Fellows at the University of Konstanz, the Gesellschaft für analytische Philosophie e.V., the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Program for the Investment in the Future (ZIP) of the German Government through a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award. We thank the referees of the papers for their work, and James Moor for his interest in dedicating a special issue of this journal to Causality, Uncertainty and Ignorance. (shrink)

In V. N. Huynh (ed.): Interval / Probabilistic Uncertainty and Non-Classical Logics, Advances in Soft Computing Series, Springer 2008, pp. 268-279. This paper proposes a common framework for various probabilistic logics. It consists of a set of uncertain premises with probabilities attached to them. This raises the question of the strength of a conclusion, but without imposing a particular semantics, no general solution is possible. The paper discusses several possible semantics by looking at it from the perspective of probabilistic argumentation.

This paper presents the progicnet programme. It proposes a general framework for probabilistic logic that can guide inference based on both logical and probabilistic input. After an introduction to the framework as such, it is illustrated by means of a toy example from psychometrics. It is shown that the framework can accommodate a number of approaches to probabilistic reasoning: Bayesian statistical inference, evidential probability, probabilistic argumentation, and objective Bayesianism. The framework thus provides insight into the relations between these approaches, it (...) illustrates how the results of different approaches can be combined, and it provides a basis for doing efficient inference in each of the approaches. (shrink)

Summary. This paper proposes a common framework for various probabilistic logics. It consists of a set of uncertain premises with probabilities attached to them. This raises the question of the strength of a conclusion, but without imposing a particular semantics, no general solution is possible. The paper discusses several possible semantics by looking at it from the perspective of probabilistic argumentation.

A unifying framework of probabilistic reasoning Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9573-x Authors Jan Sprenger, Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This is the first full English translation of Bernard Bolzano's masterwork, the Theory of Science (1837)--a monumental and revolutionary study in logic, epistemology, heuristics, and scientific methodology. Each volume includes an introduction which illuminates the historical context of Bolzano's work and its continuing relevance.

The degree to which physiology and culture have affected the formation of primitive color categories continues to be a matter of discussion. In this paper the degree of agreement between the ranges of individual color term foci for the four hue-based color categories yellow, green, blue, and red and individual choices of Munsell samples representing for the observers Hering's four unique hues is investigated. The color term focus range data are extracted from the survey results of the 110 unwritten languages (...) of the World Color Survey, also in terms of the Munsell color order system. Agreement of approximately 90% between the two has been found, indicating the likelihood of a strong color vision system related physiological component in the formation of these four primitive hue categories. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the ordering of color percepts, and starts by presenting an overview of the critical issues surrounding the topic and by examining the relationship between stimuli and percepts. Certain types of variability were found by experimental psychology in the relationship between stimulus and response as a result of observation conditions. In the twentieth century, the view that the normal human color-vision system has a standard implementation and that all perceptual data are appropriately treated with normal statistical distribution methodology (...) became the standard paradigm. However, the idea that the large number of color percepts humans can experience must fit into some kind of ordering system is an old one, going as far back to Aristotle and his proposed color categories based on a scale of chromatic colors between white and black. The strengths and limitations of the more recently developed kinds of color order systems are also touched upon here. (shrink)

Berlin & Kay hue-related basic color categories are compared with the ISCC-NBS system of object color categorization. Though independently derived, categories of the former form a small subset of the latter. A conjecture is proposed that explains the absence of yellow-green and blue-green basic hue categories and the potential for a violet category as the result of constraints on primitive hue category formation due to considerable variation in stimuli selected by color-normal observers as representing for them unique hues.

This book interprets the theory of relation of John Buridan, one of the most influential thinkers of the late Middle Ages. In so doing it examines his whole wider oeuvre in the context of the history of scholastic debate.

This commentary raises the possibility of recent discussion on the issue of basic color terms suffering from the "stimulus error," first described by the English psychologist E. B. Titchener. It refers to confusion of the psychological experience with the physical description of the stimulus. Such confusion is routine in everyday language in situations where private sensory experiences are involved that cannot be objectively described, but is harmful in fundamental discussions about experiences.

The data from the World Color Survey of 110 un-written languages have been analyzed in regard to individual focal choices. A total of 46 major color terms have been identified. Of these 24 can be defined in terms of English color terms, while 22 cannot. The most important color term in terms of usage is red, followed by white and black. In the 110 languages, 73 different arrangements of major color terms have been found. The six Hering fundamental colors, presumably (...) closely related to the workings of the color vision system, occur preferentially but not consistently in languages with 6 or more major terms. They represent the top six categories in terms of major usage. WCS indicates usage of major color terms to be complex and clearly also influenced by cultural choices. (shrink)

Research shows that after layoffs, employees often report decreased commitment and performance which has been coined the survivor syndrome. However, the mechanisms underlying this effect remain underexplored. The purpose of the paper is to show that reduced organizational identification can serve as an explanation for the survivor syndrome. We conducted a laboratory experiment, in which participants work as a group of employees for another participant who acts as employer. In the course of the experiment, the employer decides whether one of (...) his or her employees should be laid off or not. Mediation analysis supports a social identity-based explanation for the emergence of the survivor syndrome: downsizing causes lower identification with the employer which in turn relates to lower performance of employees. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 1 Seiten: 257-274.

Ever since antiquity, philosophy has continuously striven to grasp the phenomenon of humor and laughter, while, in modern times, Bergson certainly holds a special place,\ with his interpretation of laughter, and particularly “humor”, as a form of social sanction. However, such an analysis neglects the fact that the ability to laugh is actually grounded in a primordial sphere of life-affection as such, so that, starting from here, we could understand laughter, in connection with the radical-phenomenological essence of life itself, as (...) being essentially joy. (shrink)

Maine de Biran (1766-1824) has rarely been thought of as a forerunner of phenomenology in German speaking countries, although mere self-apperception, which follows the primacy of practical transcendentality, surfaces in his analysis. Examining the differential lecture of the sense of touch, as well as the ‚Metaphysics of the Hand‘ by J. Derrida, the author questions his monistic premises to perceive the immediacy of any initial endeavour as a motion, which originates in the possibility of life itself. This result in combination (...) with the sensitivity of the skin leads to a radical phenomenological description of immanent self-manifestation in the flesh, bodily subjectivity and the visibility of flesh as body. (shrink)

The paper attempts to propound a new understanding of the experience of the world and others on the basis of a radical phenomenology of the body, as it is revealed in the originary impressibility as affect and desire. This impressibility shapes every relation to beings and others due to the unity of an originary life that founds individuation before any temporal difference, having ethical consequences for a plural communality, which can no longer be characterized by means of mere abstract processes (...) of objectivation. (shrink)