This article proposes a term structure model for dual-currency interest rate markets. The model assumes that volatility is a deterministic function of time alone. This volatility structure can reduce the dimension of the required state variables. An important special case is presented, which corresponds essentially to a Vasicek/Hull-White yield curve model in each currency. The model is very useful for pricing cross-currency derivatives.

Lack of a historical sense is the hereditary defect of philosophers. … So what is needed from now on is historical philosophizing, and with it the virtue of modesty.

Ratio, Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 303-311, December 2021.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Introduction: The development of advanced sewage technologies empowers the industry to produce high-quality recycled water, which greatly influences human’s life and health. Thus, this study investigates the mechanism of individuals’ adoption of recycled water from the technology adoption perspective. -/- Methods: Employing the mixed method of structural equation modeling and artificial neural network analysis, we examined a research model developed from the extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) framework. To examine the research model, this study employs (...) a leading web-survey company (Sojump) to collect 308 valid samples from the residents in mainland China. -/- Results: The structural equation modeling results verified the associations between the six predictors (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, environmental motivation, and price value), individuals’ cognitive and emotional attitudes, and acceptance intention. The artificial neural network analysis validates and complements the structural equation modeling results by unveiling the importance rank of the significant determinants of the acceptance decisions. -/- Discussion: The study provides theoretical implications for recycled water research and useful insights for practitioners and policymakers to reduce the environmental hazards of water scarcity. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that if an agent acts intentionally, she must know what she is doing. Although the scholarly consensus for many years was to reject the thesis in light of presumed counterexamples by Donald Davidson, several scholars have recently argued that attention to aspectual distinctions and the practical nature of this knowledge shows that these counterexamples fail. In this paper I defend a new objection against the thesis, one modelled after Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument. Since this argument relies on (...) general principles about the nature of knowledge rather than on intuitions about fringe cases, the recent responses that have been given to defuse the force of Davidson’s objection are silent against it. Moreover, the argument suggests that even weaker theses connecting practical entities with knowledge are also false. Recent defenders of the thesis that there is a necessary connection between knowledge and intentional action are motivated by the insight that this connection is non-accidental. I close with a positive proposal to account for the non-accidentality of this link without appeal to necessary connections by drawing an extended analogy between practical and perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, so our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control, which accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes required to select, revise and (...) correct strategies during self-control exertion? The skill model borrows conceptual tools from ‘hierarchical models’ recently developed in the context of motor skills, and asserts that self-control crucially involves the ability to manage the implementation and monitoring of regulatory strategies as the self-control exercise unfolds. Skilled agents are able do this by means of flexible practical reasoning: a fast, context-sensitive type of deliberation that incorporates non-propositional representations into the formation and revision of the mixed-format intentions that structure self-control exertion. The literatures on implementation intentions and motivation framing offer corroborating evidence for the theory. As a surprising result, the skill of self-control that allows agents to overcome the contrary motivations they experience is self-effacing: instead of continuously honing this skill, expert agents replace it with a different one, which minimizes or prevents contrary motivations from arising in the first place. Thus, the more expert you are at self-control, the less likely you are to use it. (shrink)

By elaborating on the results presented in Lógica cuántica, Nmatrices y adecuación I, here we discuss the notions of adequacy and truth functionality in quantum logic from the point of view of a non-deterministic semantics based on Nmatrices. We present a proof of the impossibility of providing a functional semantics for the quantum lattice. An advantage of our proof is that it is independent of the number of truth values involved, generalizing previous works. Due to the impossibility of defining adequate (...) interpreting sets for the conjunction and disjunction (as was shown in our previous work), it follows that a homomorphism between the lattice of quantum projections and a Boolean algebra of n-elements cannot exist. (shrink)

Does self-control require willpower? The question cuts to the heart of a debate about whether self-control is identical with some psychological process internal to the agents or not. Noticeably absent from these debates is systematic evidence about the folk-psychological category of self-control. Here, we present the results of two behavioral studies (N = 296) that indicate the structure of everyday use of the concept. In Study 1, participants rated the degree to which different strategies to respond to motivational conflict exemplify (...) self-control. Participants distinguished between intra-psychic and externally-scaffolded strategies and judged that the former exemplified self-control more than the latter. In Study 2, participants provided various solutions to manage motivational conflict and rated their proposals on effectiveness. Participants produced substantially more intra-psychic strategies, rated them as more effective, and advised them at a higher rate than externally-scaffolded strategies. Taken together, these results suggest that while people recognize a plurality of strategies as genuine instances of self-control, purely internal exercises of self-control are considered more prototypical than their externally-scaffolded counterparts. This implies a hierarchical structure for the folk psychological category of self-control. The concept encompasses a variety of regulatory strategies and organizes these strategies along a hierarchical continuum, with purely intra-psychic strategies at the center and scaffolded strategies in the periphery. (shrink)

This paper presents a new model for valuing hybrid defaultable financial instruments, such as, convertible bonds. In contrast to previous studies, the model relies on the probability distribution of a default jump rather than the default jump itself, as the default jump is usually inaccessible. As such, the model can back out the market prices of convertible bonds. A prevailing belief in the market is that convertible arbitrage is mainly due to convertible underpricing. Empirically, however, we do not find evidence (...) supporting the underpricing hypothesis. Instead, we find that convertibles have relatively large positive gammas. As a typical convertible arbitrage strategy employs delta-neutral hedging, a large positive gamma can make the portfolio highly profitable, especially for a large movement in the underlying stock price. (shrink)

The LIBOR Market Model has become one of the most popular models for pricing interest rate products. It is commonly believed that Monte-Carlo simulation is the only viable method available for the LIBOR Market Model. In this article, however, we propose a lattice approach to price interest rate products within the LIBOR Market Model by introducing a shifted forward measure and several novel fast drift approximation methods. This model should achieve the best performance without losing much accuracy. Moreover, the calibration (...) is almost automatic and it is simple and easy to implement. Adding this model to the valuation toolkit is actually quite useful; especially for risk management or in the case there is a need for a quick turnaround. (shrink)

This book addresses key conceptual issues relating to the modern scientific and engineering use of computer simulations. It analyses a broad set of questions, from the nature of computer simulations to their epistemological power, including the many scientific, social and ethics implications of using computer simulations. The book is written in an easily accessible narrative, one that weaves together philosophical questions and scientific technicalities. It will thus appeal equally to all academic scientists, engineers, and researchers in industry interested in questions (...) related to the general practice of computer simulations. (shrink)

In the last decades there has been a great controversy about the scientific status of emotion categories. This controversy stems from the idea that emotions are heterogeneous phenomena, which precludes classifying them under a common kind. In this article, I analyze this claim—which I call the Variability Thesis—and argue that as it stands, it is problematically underdefined. To show this, I examine a recent formulation of the thesis as offered by Scarantino (2015). On one hand, I raise some issues regarding (...) the logical structure of the claim. On the other hand, and most importantly, I show that the Variability Thesis requires a consensus about what counts as a relevant pattern of response in different domains, a consensus that is lacking in the current literature. This makes it difficult to assess what counts as evidence for or against this thesis. As a result, arguments based on the Variability Thesis are unwarranted. This raises serious concerns about some current empirical theories of emotions, but also sheds light on the issue of the scientific status of emotion categories. (shrink)

From our everyday commuting to the gold medalist’s world-class performance, skillful actions are characterized by fine-grained, online agentive control. What is the proper explanation of such control? There are two traditional candidates: intellectualism explains skillful agentive control by reference to the agent’s propositional mental states; anti-intellectualism holds that propositional mental states or reflective processes are unnecessary since skillful action is fully accounted for by automatic coping processes. I examine the evidence for three psychological phenomena recently held to support anti-intellectualism and (...) argue that it supports neither traditional candidate, but an intermediate attention-control account, according to which the top-down, intention-directed control of attention is a necessary component of skillful action. Only this account recognizes both the role of automatic control in skilled action and the need for higher-order cognition to thread automatic processes together into a unified, skillful performance. This applies to bodily skillful action in general, from the world-class performance of experts to mundane, habitual action. The attention-control account stresses that, for intentions to play their role as top-down modulators of attention, agents must sustain the intention’s activation; hence, the need for reflecting throughout performance. (shrink)

This paper presents a new model for pricing OTC derivatives subject to collateralization. It allows for collateral posting adhering to bankruptcy laws. As such, the model can back out the market price of a collateralized contract. This framework is very useful for valuing outstanding derivatives. Using a unique dataset, we find empirical evidence that credit risk alone is not overly important in determining credit-related spreads. Only accounting for both collateral arrangement and credit risk can sufficiently explain unsecured credit costs. This (...) finding suggests that failure to properly account for collateralization may result in significant mispricing of derivatives. We also empirically gauge the impact of collateral agreements on risk measurements. Our findings indicate that there are important interactions between market and credit risk. (shrink)

Much of our know-how is acquired through practice: we learn how to cook by cooking, how to write by writing, and how to dance by dancing. As Aristotle argues, however, this kind of learning is puzzling, since engaging in it seems to require possession of the very knowledge one seeks to obtain. After showing how a version of the puzzle arises from a set of attractive principles, I argue that the best solution is to hold that knowledge-how comes in degrees, (...) and through practice a person gradually learns how to do something. However, the two standard accounts of know-how in the literature, intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, cannot properly account for the distinctive way in which know-how is gradually acquired by practice, a process in which conceptual representations and practical abilities are intimately interwoven. Drawing on Gareth Evans's work, I outline an account that may do so, and use this account to distinguish between two forms of learning to explain why skill generally cannot be learnt through testimony, and requires practice. (shrink)

Chinese international students who studied in the United States received “double stigmatization” from American and Chinese authorities because of the “political othering” tactic during COVID-19. The research used a phenomenological approach to examine why and how specifically the transnational identity of Chinese international students in the United States shifted during the double stigmatization. The researcher conducted a total of three rounds of interviews with 15 Chinese international students who studied in the United States and returned to China between 2018 and (...) 2020, which culminated in 45 interviews through a longitudinal study to probe the transnational identities of this population before and during the double stigmatization; the study also examined how the mindsponge mechanism worked during the identity shifts and the interplay among stigmatization, transnational identity shifts, and the mindsponge mechanism. The study concluded that before COVID-19, Chinese international students had been stigmatized in both China and the United States. (shrink)

En este trabajo presento un estudio sobre el estado del arte de la llamada ‘epistemología de las simulaciones computacionales’. En particular, me centro en los varios trabajos de Eric Winsberg quién es uno de los filósofos más fructíferos y sistemáticos en este tema. Además de analizar la obra de Winsberg, y basándome en sus trabajos y en el de otros filósofos, mostraré que hay buenas razones para pensar que la epistemología tradicional de la ciencia no es suficiente para el análisis (...) de las simulaciones computacionales. (shrink)

Both motivational internalism and externalism need to explain why sometimes moral judgments tend to motivate us. In this paper, I argue that Dreier’ second-order desire model cannot be a plausible externalist alternative to explain the connection between moral judgments and motivation. I explain that the relevant second-order desire is merely a constitutive requirement of rationality because that desire makes a set of desires more unified and coherent. As a rational agent with the relevant second-order desire is disposed towards coherence, she (...) will have some motivation to act in accordance with her moral judgments. Dreier’s second-order desire model thus collapses into a form of internalism and cannot be a plausible externalist option to explain the connection between moral judgments and motivation. (shrink)

According to intellectualists, the will is a rational inclination towards apprehended goodness. This conception of the will makes its acts intelligible: they are explained by (i) the nature of the will as a rational inclination, and (ii) the judgement of the intellect that moves the will. From this it follows that it is impossible for an agent to will evil as such or for its own sake. In explaining wrongdoing intellectualists cite cognitive error or the disruptive influences of the passions; (...) these considerations, however, seem involuntary and at least partly exculpatory. The intellectualist needs an account that renders wrongful actions intelligible without undermining their status as responsible. I argue that Leibniz has the theoretical tools to provide at least part of an answer to this problem. In sum, an agent is directly responsible for her wrongdoing if the cognitive error or the disruptive influence of the passions that help explain this wrongdoing do not completely undermine her acting freely; an agent is indirectly responsible for her wrongdoing if she is directly responsible for previous actions which partly resulted in her wrongdoing, even if the presence of cognitive error or disruptive influence of the passions completely undermines her acting freely. (shrink)

Carlos Vaz Ferreira argues that the problem of freedom is conceptually distinct from the problem of causal determinism. The problem of freedom is ultimately a problem regarding the ontologically independent agency of a being, and the problem of determinism is a problem regarding explanations of events or acts in terms of the totality of their antecedent causal conditions. As Vaz Ferreira sees it, failing to keep these problems apart gives rise to merely apparent but unreal puzzles pertaining to the nature (...) of freedom and its relation to determinism. In this article, I present my interpretation of Vaz Ferreira’s distinctive ideas regarding the nature of freedom and its relation to casual determinism. (shrink)

Effort and the feeling of effort play important roles in many theoretical discussions, from perception to self-control and free will, from the nature of ownership to the nature of desert and achievement. A crucial, overlooked distinction within the philosophical and scientific literatures is the distinction between theories that seek to explain effort and theories that seek to explain the feeling of effort. Lacking a clear distinction between these two phenomena makes the literature hard to navigate. To advance in the unification (...) and development of this area, this article provides an overview of the main theories of the nature of effort and the nature of the feeling of effort, and then discusses how efforts and their feelings are related. Two key takeaways emerge. First, there is widespread agreement that efforts are goal-directed actions. Second, one of the main philosophical issues to be decided is whether feelings of effort should be defined by reference to efforts (effort-first approach), or whether efforts are defined by reference to the feeling of effort (feeling-first approach). (shrink)

In this paper I argue that many scholars involved in the contemporary free will debates have underappreciated the philosophical appeal of agent causation because the resources of contemporary emergentism have not been adequately introduced into the discussion. Whereas I agree that agent causation’s main problem has to do with its intelligibility, particularly with respect to the issue of how substances can be causally relevant, I argue that the notion of substance causation can be clearly articulated from an emergentist framework. According (...) to my proposal, a free agent is _a causally powerful substance that emerges in an anomic way from her constitutive mental events_, downwardly constraining, selecting and, in this way, having control on them. As we shall see, this particular concept of agent causation not only makes sense of the deep insight behind agent libertarianism, but it also provides us with the resources to solve some of the main objections that have been raised against it. It is true that here I cannot develop a complete defense of the evidential credentials of emergentism. Still, even if the considerations that follow do not serve to convince detractors of agent causal libertarian accounts of free will, they do suggest that libertarian agent causation is more promising than is typically acknowledged. (shrink)

This article aims to develop a new account of scientific explanation for computer simulations. To this end, two questions are answered: what is the explanatory relation for computer simulations? And what kind of epistemic gain should be expected? For several reasons tailored to the benefits and needs of computer simulations, these questions are better answered within the unificationist model of scientific explanation. Unlike previous efforts in the literature, I submit that the explanatory relation is between the simulation model and the (...) results of the simulation. I also argue that our epistemic gain goes beyond the unificationist account, encompassing a practical dimension as well. (shrink)

The two main theories of perceptual reasons in contemporary epistemology can be called Phenomenalism and Factualism. According to Phenomenalism, perceptual reasons are facts about experiences conceived of as phenomenal states, i.e., states individuated by phenomenal character, by what it’s like to be in them. According to Factualism, perceptual reasons are instead facts about the external objects perceived. The main problem with Factualism is that it struggles with bad cases: cases where perceived objects are not what they appear or where there (...) is no perceived object at all. The main problem with Phenomenalism is that it struggles with good cases: cases where everything is perfectly normal and the external object is correctly perceived, so that one’s perceptual beliefs are knowledge. In this paper we show that there is a theory of perceptual reasons that avoids the problems for Factualism and Phenomenalism. We call this view Propositionalism. We use ‘proposition’ broadly to mean the entities that are contents of beliefs and other doxastic attitudes. The key to finding a middle ground between Phenomenalism and Factualism, we claim, is to allow our reasons to be false in bad cases. Despite being false, they are about the external world, not our phenomenal states. (shrink)

Leibniz endorses several tenets regarding explanation: (1) causes provide contrastive explanations of their effects, (2) the past and the future can be read from the present, and (3) primitive force and derivative forces drive and explain changes in monadic states. I argue that, contrary to initial appearances, these tenets do not preclude an intelligible conception of contingency in Leibniz’s system. In brief, an agent is free to the extent that she determines herself to do that which she deliberately judges to (...) be the best from several considered options that she could have brought about, had she come to the deliberative conclusion that these options were best. I develop a model which illustrates how Leibnizian agents could have come to different deliberative conclusions, and which thus illustrates how Leibnizian agents could have acted differently. (shrink)

Thomas Bonk has dedicated a book to analyzing the thesis of underdetermination of scientific theories, with a chapter exclusively devoted to the analysis of the relation between this idea and the indeterminacy of meaning. Both theses caused a revolution in the philosophic world in the sixties, generating a cascade of articles and doctoral theses. Agitation seems to have cooled down, but the point is still debated and it may be experiencing a renewed resurgence.

In this paper, I develop a criticism to a method for metaontology, namely, the idea that a discourse’s or theory’s ontological commitments can be read off its sentences’ truth- conditions. Firstly, I will put forward this idea’s basis and, secondly, I will present the way Quine subscribed to it. However, I distinguish between two readings of Quine’s famous ontological criterion, and I center the focus on the one currently dubbed “ontological minimalism”, a kind of modern Ockhamism applied to the mentioned (...) metaontological view. I show that this view has a certain application via Quinean thesis of reference inscrutability but that it is not possible to press that application any further and, in particular, not for the ambitious metaontological task some authors try to employ. The conclusion may sound promising: having shown the impossibility of a semantic ontological criterion, intentionalist or subjectivist ones should be explored. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that, contrary to scholarly consensus, Antonio Caso draws inspiration from important principles and ideas from Kant’s philosophy in his critique of positivism. I first examine the prima facie textual reasons why someone might believe that Caso and Kant are philosophical enemies. To contradict this notion, I proceed by noting and developing three core ideas that the two share in common. First, Caso and Kant are both ardent critics of dogmatic philosophizing. Second, both Caso and Kant (...) carve out special room for intuition in their respective accounts of cognition, resisting the idea that the understanding has a more prominent role in the formation of knowledge. Third, Kant’s doctrine of aesthetic judgment paves the way for Caso’s de-intellectualized aesthetics. In the end, we see that Kant and Caso are closer to being philosophical friends than enemies. (shrink)

This article presents a new model for valuing financial contracts subject to credit risk and collateralization. Examples include the valuation of a credit default swap (CDS) contract that is affected by the trilateral credit risk of the buyer, seller and reference entity. We show that default dependency has a significant impact on asset pricing. In fact, correlated default risk is one of the most pervasive threats in financial markets. We also show that a fully collateralized CDS is not equivalent to (...) a risk-free one. In other words, full collateralization cannot eliminate counterparty risk completely in the CDS market. (shrink)

This paper presents an analytical model for valuing interest rate swaps, subject to bilateral counterparty credit risk. The counterparty defaults are modeled by the reduced-form model as the first jump of a time-inhomogeneous Poisson process. All quantities modeled are market-observable. The closed-form solution gives us a better understanding of the impact of the credit asymmetry on swap value, credit value adjustment, swap rate and swap spread.

Gibson defined affordances as action possibilities directly offered to an animal by the environment. Ambitiously, affordances are meant to show the inadequacy of the subjective-objective dichotomy in the study of cognition. Armed with similar concerns, some neo-Gibsonians recently thought of affordances as latent dispositions existing independently of individual organisms or whole species. It is no coincidence that critics had, on several occasions, objected that this theoretical stance dramatically neglects the role of the perceiver in the emergence of affordances. In this (...) paper, we provide a phenomenological characterization of the perceiver’s role in affordance perception. Specifically, we borrow from Husserlian phenomenology to characterize two features of affordance perception that can enrich our understanding of the individual’s engagement with the environment, namely, its affective and temporal aspects. Taking an everyday activity such as rock climbing as a case example, we show that phenomenological investigations, if not misinterpreted as mere introspection, can represent an ally for ecological psychologists. (shrink)

This paper introduces the theory QST of quasets as a formal basis for the Nmatrices. The main aim is to construct a system of Nmatrices by substituting standard sets by quasets. Since QST is a conservative extension of ZFA (the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with Atoms), it is possible to obtain generalized Nmatrices (Q-Nmatrices). Since the original formulation of QST is not completely adequate for the developments we advance here, some possible amendments to the theory are also considered. One of the (...) most interesting traits of such an extension is the existence of complementary quasets which admit elements with undetermined membership. Such elements can be interpreted as quantum systems in superposed states. We also present a relationship of QST with the theory of Rough Sets RST, which grants the existence of models for SQT formed by rough sets. Some consequences of the given formalism for the relation of logical consequence are also analysed. (shrink)

La migración internacional nos enfrenta con problemas irresolubles desde la figura moderna del Estado nacional, su concepto de ciudadanía y su noción de justicia. Juan Carlos Velasco critica las limitaciones y la orientación de las políticas contemporáneas que nos hacen percibir a la migración como una “invasión”, y propone un modo radicalmente diferente de entender e intervenir el fenómeno desde lo trasnacional. Nacer de uno u otro lado de una línea divisoria es un evento azaroso, no obstante delimitar la (...) frontera es una construcción histórico-política: la desigualdad en las oportunidades que ofrecen las naciones es una situación estructural de injusticia que se perpetúa con las políticas de exclusión de los migrantes y la deslegitimación de su derecho a buscar una vida mejor. Esa circunstancia genera fracturas sociales, injustificables pero normalizadas, que imposibilitan alcanzar la justicia global. Velasco presenta un análisis completo que abarca las dimensiones política, jurídica y moral del tema, en el que lleva a la filosofía política a un terreno práctico del que se desprenden las claves para entender y actuar en esta nueva era en la que, debido a los conflictos sociales y políticos, la migración vuelve a ser argumento de discusión relevante. (Texto de la CONTRAPORTADA del libro). (shrink)

A central debate in philosophy of action concerns whether agential knowledge, the knowledge agents characteristically have of their own actions, is inferential. While inferentialists like Sarah Paul hold that it is inferential, others like Lucy O’Brien and Kieran Setiya argue that it is not. In this paper, I offer a novel argument for the view that agential knowledge is non-inferential, by posing a dilemma for inferentialists: on the first horn, inferentialism is committed to holding that agents have only alienated knowledge (...) of their own actions; on the second horn, inferentialism is caught in a vicious regress. Neither option is attractive, so inferentialism should be rejected. (shrink)

El propósito principal de este libro es mostrar hasta qué punto el pensamiento teórico de Habermas está animado por un fuerte aliento práctico, más concretamente práctico-político, con el que concretaría el muy ilustrado propósito de hacer uso público de la razón. De hecho, la intencionalidad práctica de su pensamiento es tan destacada que el conjunto de su obra se entiende mucho mejor si se la concibe, tal como él mismo insiste, como un intento de guiar con una finalidad emancipatoria el (...) camino de la praxis, o, si se prefiere, de orientar racionalmente la acción política en las sociedades contemporáneas. (shrink)

This paper investigates ‘authoritative knowledge’, a neglected species of practical knowledge gained on the basis of exercising practical authority. I argue that, like perceptual knowledge, authoritative knowledge is non-inferential. I then present a broadly reliabilist account of the process by which authority yields knowledge, and use this account to address certain objections.

Being-in-the-world defines in Heidegger an ontological and practical existential situation that in a first approach characterizes intellectual knowledge, an approach related to the Husserlian notion of intentionality. In his Curso de teoría del co- nocimiento, Polo rectifies this characterization, stressing the primacy of theory regarding action, and interpreting the practical (technical) relation- ship with the world as a lower level of “having”. Ma- king some comparisons between Husserl, Scheler and Jonas, in connection with Polo’s thought, the article presents different accounts (...) of the notion of the world (phenomenological, metaphysical, mo- ral) that allow to clarify the problem of the rela- tionship between contemplation and action in the world. (shrink)

This paper considers the relevance of the theory of the cogitative power in Aquinas, as highlighted by Cornelio Fabro during his early research in the fourth decade of the past century, in contemporary neuropsychological studies, and particularly as a specific way of overcoming a dualistic approach in the psychology of perception. The thesis is coherent with an anthropological view based on the substantial unity between soul and body. As a consequence, the capacities of the cogitative faculty (estimative in animals) involve (...) a special account of perception, irreducible to pure thought and to sensations as well, an account that is present in the psychological view of M. Merleau-Ponty and J. J. Gibson. (shrink)

In “Willpower with and without effort”, G. Ainslie advances our understanding of selfcontrol by theoretically unifying multiple forms of willpower. But one crucial question remains unanswered: How do agents pick the right forms of willpower in each situation? I argue that willpower requires tactical skill, which detects willpower-demanding contexts, selects context-appropriate tactics, and monitors their implementation. Research on tactical skill will significantly advance our understanding of willpower.

Richard Feldman has proposed and defended different versions of a principle about evidence. In slogan form, the principle holds that ‘evidence of evidence is evidence’. Recently, Branden Fitelson has argued that Feldman’s preferred rendition of the principle falls pray to a counterexample related to the non-transitivity of the evidence-for relation. Feldman replies arguing that Fitelson’s case does not really represent a counterexample to the principle. In this note, we argue that Feldman’s principle is trivially true.

This paper presents a Least Square Monte Carlo approach for accurately calculating credit value adjustment (CVA). In contrast to previous studies, the model relies on the probability distribution of a default time/jump rather than the default time itself, as the default time is usually inaccessible. As such, the model can achieve a high order of accuracy with a relatively easy implementation. We find that the valuation of a defaultable derivative is normally determined via backward induction when their payoffs could be (...) positive or negative. Moreover, the model can naturally capture wrong or right way risk. (shrink)

Life as self-organization is philosophically understood by L. Polo in terms of co-causality between matter, formal configuration and intrinsic efficiency. This characterization provides a dynamic account of life and soul, capable to explain both its identity and its continuous renovation. In this article I especially highlight in this author the metaphysical notions of finality, unity and cosmos, which may be helpful to understand the sense of biological systems in the universe.

Evidentialism and Reliabilism are two of the main contemporary theories of epistemic justification. Some authors have thought that the theories are not incompatible with each other, and that a hybrid theory which incorporates elements of both should be taken into account. More recently, other authors have argued that the resulting theory is well- placed to deal with fine-grained doxastic attitudes (credences). In this paper I review the reasons for adopting this kind of hybrid theory, paying attention to the case of (...) credences and the notion of probability involved in their treatment. I argue that the notion of probability in question can only be an epistemic (or evidential) kind of probability. I conclude that the resulting theory will be incompatible with Reliabilism in one important respect: it cannot deliver on the reductivist promise of Reliabilism. I also argue that attention to the justification of basic beliefs reveals limitations in the Evidentialist framework as well. The theory that results from the right combination of Evidentialism and Reliabilism, therefore, is neither Evidentialist nor Reliabilist. (shrink)

In this work, we discuss the failure of the principle of truth functionality in the quantum formalism. By exploiting this failure, we import the formalism of N-matrix theory and non-deterministic semantics to the foundations of quantum mechanics. This is done by describing quantum states as particular valuations associated with infinite non-deterministic truth tables. This allows us to introduce a natural interpretation of quantum states in terms of a non-deterministic semantics. We also provide a similar construction for arbitrary probabilistic theories based (...) in orthomodular lattices, allowing to study post-quantum models using logical techniques. (shrink)