The thirty-five chapters in this book describe various judgmental heuristics and the biases they produce, not only in laboratory experiments but in important...

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

In his new foreword to this edition, Hilary Putnam forcefully rejects these nativist claims.

This collection of 17 essays by the author offers a comprehensive theory of mind, encompassing traditional issues of consciousness and free will.

This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process B; availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development; and adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value (...) is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty. (shrink)

Thomas Reid was a philosopher who founded the Scottish school of 'common sense'. Much of Reid's work is a critique of his contemporary, David Hume, whose empiricism he rejects. In this work, written after Reid's appointment to a professorship at the university of Glasgow, and published in 1785, he turns his attention to ideas about perception, memory, conception, abstraction, judgement, reasoning and taste. He examines the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, arguing that 'when we find philosophers maintaining that there (...) is no heat in the fire, nor colour in the rainbow … we may be apt to think the whole to be only a dream of fanciful men, who have entangled themselves in cobwebs spun out of their own brain'. Written by one of the Scottish Enlightenment's most important thinkers, this work brings to life the intellectual debates of the time. (shrink)

Though the Revised Edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawlsıs view, so much of the extensive literature on ...

A collection of all but two of the author's philosophical essays and lectures originally published or presented before August 1976.

Part I Describing and Prescribing He to whom thou was sent for ease, being by name Legality, is the son of the Bond-woman . . . how canst thou expect by ...

The book was planned and written as a single, sustained argument. But earlier versions of a few parts of it have appeared separately. The object of this book is both to establish the existence of the paradoxes, and also to describe a non-Pascalian concept of probability in terms of which one can analyse the structure of forensic proof without giving rise to such typical signs of theoretical misfit. Neither the complementational principle for negation nor the multiplicative principle for conjunction applies (...) to the central core of any forensic proof in the Anglo-American legal system. There are four parts included in this book. Accordingly, these parts have been written in such a way that they may be read in different orders by different kinds of reader. (shrink)

In Minimal Rationality, Christopher Cherniak boldly challenges the myth of Man the the Rational Animal and the central role that the "perfectly rational...

Arranged and integrated to reveal epistemology, phenomenology, theory of signs, other major topics.

Degrees of belief; Dempster's rule of combination; Simple and separable support functions; The weights of evidence; Compatible frames of discernment; Support functions; The discernment of evidence; Quasi support functions; Consonance; Statistical evidence; The dual nature of probable reasoning.

Considers that intuitive predictions follow a judgmental heuristic-representativeness. By this heuristic, people predict the outcome that appears most representative of the evidence. Consequently, intuitive predictions are insensitive to the reliability of the evidence or to the prior probability of the outcome, in violation of the logic of statistical prediction. The hypothesis that people predict by representativeness was supported in a series of studies with both naive and sophisticated university students. The ranking of outcomes by likelihood coincided with the ranking by (...) representativeness, and Ss erroneously predicted rare events and extreme values if these happened to be representative. The experience of unjustified confidence in predictions and the prevalence of fallacious intuitions concerning statistical regression are traced to the representativeness heuristic. (shrink)

First published in 1952, professor’s Strawson’s highly influential _Introduction_ _to Logical Theory_ provides a detailed examination of the relationship between the behaviour of words in common language and the behaviour of symbols in a logical system. He seeks to explain both the exact nature of the discipline known as Formal Logic, and also to reveal something of the intricate logical structure of ordinary unformalised discourse.

The object of this paper is to show why recent research in the psychology of deductive and probabilistic reasoning does not have.

This comprehensive discussion of the problem of rational belief develops the subject on the pattern of Bayesian decision theory. The analogy with decision theory introduces philosophical issues not usually encountered in logical studies and suggests some promising new approaches to old problems."We owe Professor Levi a debt of gratitude for producing a book of such excellence. His own approach to inductive inference is not only original and profound, it also clarifies and transforms the work of his predecessors. In short, the (...) book deserves to become a classic....There is a great deal of interest in the book besides these basic matters [forumlating rules of acceptance]. Some of the most interesting chapters are those that examine the implications of such rules. The discussions of probability, generalization, and various forms of inference are brilliant and enlightening. Indeed, the problems and methods elaborated by Professor Levi in his book serve as a new foundation for the study of inductive inference."--Keith Lehrer, Nous"Levi's book is an extremely interesting report on 'tentative and speculative first steps' toward a decision-theoretic approach to inductive inference....Professor Levi is to be congratulated on his ingenious development and application of this approach...."--Richard C. Jeffrey, The Journal of Philosophy. (shrink)

Gödei's Theorem seems to me to prove that Mechanism is false, that is, that minds cannot be explained as machines. So also has it seemed to many other people: almost every mathematical logician I have put the matter to has confessed to similar thoughts, but has felt reluctant to commit himself definitely until he could see the whole argument set out, with all objections fully stated and properly met. This I attempt to do.

Originally published in 1973. This book presents a valid mode of reasoning that is different to mathematical probability. This inductive logic is investigated in terms of scientific investigation. The author presents his criteria of adequacy for analysing inductive support for hypotheses and discusses each of these criteria in depth. The chapters cover philosophical problems and paradoxes about experimental support, probability and justifiability, ending with a system of logical syntax of induction. Each section begins with a summary of its contents and (...) there is a glossary of technical terms to aid the reader. (shrink)

Foundations of the metaphysics of morals.--Critique of practical reason.--An inquiry into the distinctness of the principles of natural theology and morals.--What is enlightenment?--What is orientation in thinking.--Perpetual peace: a philosophical sketch.--On a supposed right to lie from altruistic motives.--Selections from The metaphysics of morals.

I wish to advocate a reorientation of epistemology. Lest anyone maintain that the enterprise I urge is not epistemology at all (even part of epistemology), I call this enterprise by a slightly different name: epistemics. Despite this terminological concession, I believe that the inquiry I advocate is significantly continuous with traditional epistemology. Like much of past epistemology, it would seek to regulate or guide our intellectual activities. It would try to lay down principles or suggestions for how to conduct our (...) cognitive affairs. The contrast with traditional epistemology – at least "analytic" epistemology of the twentieth century – would be its close alliance with the psychology of cognition. The basic premise of epistemics is that one cannot give the best advice about intellectual operations without detailed information about mental processes. Since these processes are most illuminatingly studied by cognitive psychology, epistemics would go hand in hand with empirical investigation of our "information-processing" mechanisms. (shrink)

"The influence of J. L. Austin on contemporary philosophy, which ranks with that of Wittgenstein, was substantial during his lifetime and has grown greatly since his death in 1960, at the height of his powers. His published papers are here gathered together with three pieces that had not been published when this collection first appeared in 1961. This new edition contains two additional papers edited, with the assistance of the original editors, by L. W. Forguson and J. M. E. Moravcsik, (...) that were published till later..." - Back cover. (shrink)

The end of the nineteenth century is remembered as a time when psychology freed itself from philosophy and carved out an autonomous subject matter for itself. In fact, this time of emancipation was also a time of exile: while the psychologists were leaving, philosophers were slamming the door behind them. Frege is celebrated for having demonstrated the irrelevance of psychological considerations to philosophy. Some of Frege’s reasons for distinguishing psychological questions from philosophical ones were sound, but one of Frege’s most (...) influential arguments, which was elaborated upon and advocated by the positivists, vastly overestimated the gap separating the two disciplines. (shrink)

At least one of these conceptions of probability underlies any theory of statistical inference (or, to use Neyman's phrase, 'inductive behavior'). ...