Rational Illogicality

Many accounts of structural rationality give a special role to logic. This paper reviews the problem case of clear-eyed logical uncertainty. An account of rational norms on belief that does not give a special role to logic is developed: doxastic probabilism.     

Formal Methods in the Philosophy of Science

In this article, we reflect on the use of formal methods in the philosophy of science. These are taken to comprise not just methods from logic broadly conceived, but also from other formal disciplines such as probability theory, game theory, and graph theory. We explain how formal modelling in the philosophy of science can shed light on difficult problems in this domain.     

A new formulation of the Principle of Indifference

The idea of a probabilistic logic of inductive inference based on some form of the principle of indifference has always retained a powerful appeal. However, up to now all modifications of the principle failed. In this paper, a new formulation of such a principle is provided that avoids generating paradoxes and inconsistencies. Because of these results, the thesis that probabilities cannot be logical quantities, determined in an objective way through some form of the principle of indifference, is no longer supportable. Later, the paper investigates some implications of the new principle of indifference. To conclude, a re-examination of the foundations of the so-called objective Bayesian inference is called for.     

回到思想史:先秦名学研究的新路向

Discussions of name (ming, 名) during the pre-Qin and Qin-Han period of Chinese history were very active. The concept ming at that time can be divided into two categories, one is the ethical-political meaning of the term and the other is the linguistic-logical understanding. The former far exceeds the latter in terms of overall influence on the development of Chinese intellectual history. But it is the latter that has received the most attention in the 20th century, due to the influence of Western logic. This has led to the result of a bias in the contemporary studies of ming. Changing course by returning to the correct path of intellectual history can providing an objective and thorough ordering of the pre-Qin discourse on ming. Translated by Joseph E. Harroff from Shandong Daxue Xuebao 山东大学学报 (Journal of Shandong University), 2007, (2): 59–64     

Living up to one's commitments: Agency, strategies and trust

In human social interaction, the notions of commitment and trust are strongly interrelated. A formal model for this interrelation will enable artificial agents to benefit from the associated reduction of complexity and improved possibilities for cooperation. We argue that the notion of living up to one's commitments, rather than actual fulfillment, plays the key role in the trust–commitment interrelation, and we propose a formal analysis of that notion in the framework of agents and strategies in branching time. The main technical innovation is a stringency ordering on an agent's strategies that allows one to classify what an agent does as more or less appropriate with respect to a given commitment, leading to a fine-grained assessment of trustworthiness.