Helmut Reich's Proposal

A form of logic called relational and contextual reasoning is put forward as an improvement over other, more familiar types of logic. Developmental ideas are used to show how maturity ordinarily leads people away from binary (true/false) logic to systems of reasoning that are more subtle and better suited to making decisions in the face of ambiguity.     

The Adult Self: Process and Paradox

This paper defines the adult self as an identity-in-a-mutuality-of-relating, a reality that is at once a process and a paradox. As an identity-in-a-mutuality-of-relating this self has 5 characteristics, each of which is also a process and a paradox: it is a body-self; it is rooted and disclosed in feeling; it is a felt sense of depth; it has its own clear boundaries and exists in intimacy; and it is its own responsible process of experiencing. The fullness of the adult self lies in self-actualization and self-reflection, and here this self is most a process and most a paradox.     

Corporate foreign exchange risk management: A study in decision making under uncertainty

This paper examines the management of foreign exchange risk in multinational corporations in light of the conclusions of previous empirical and theoretical investigations into decision making under uncertainty. Cognitive perceptions of risk and uncertainty are shown to underlie the hedging decisions made by corporate treasury managers, which are often demonstrably sub-optimal in a Bayesian expected utility framework. The findings suggest that simple principal-agent approaches to explaining seemingly sub-optimal corporate risk management preferences are inadequate inasmuch as they fail to account for the markedly different perspectives on risk and uncertainty taken by financial economists (qua economists) and corporate financial risk managers.     

Problems for Linguistic Solutions to the Paradox of Analysis

G. E. Moore opined that the paradox of analysis might be avoided if it could be shown that sentences expressing conceptual analyses convey information not only about concepts, but also about the expressions they use. If so, "to be a brother is to be a male sibling" and "to be a brother is to be a brother" might express the same proposition, and yet not be identical in information value as the paradox suggests. How sentences might do this, Moore could not see. Many philosophers have pointed out an obvious way in which sentences might be said to convey information about the expressions they use. Some have suggested this information might be used to develop Moore's intuition and resolve the paradox of analysis. I argue that this approach fails. I present a version of the paradox of analysis that resists this sort of solution.     

Slippery Slopes and Collapsing Taboos

A slippery slope argument is an argument to this twofold effect. First, that if a policy or practice P is permitted, then we lack the dialectical resources to demonstrate that a similar policy or practice P* is not permissible. Since P* is indeed not permissible, we should not endorse policy or practice P. At the heart of such arguments is the idea of dialectical impotence, the inability to stop the acceptance of apparently small deviations from a heretofore secure policy or practice from leading to apparently large and unacceptable deviations. Using examples of analogical arguments and sorites arguments I examine this phenomenon in the context of collapsing taboos.     

Soritic thinking, vagueness, and weakness of will

Soritic thinking based on reasoning that is involved in the sorites paradox plays a crucial role in some forms of weakness of will. Such soritic reasoning leads to failures of behavior, but cannot be shown to be irrational by standard means. Thus weakness of will appears to be rational, whereas strength of will is irrational when viewed soritically. The puzzle is how to undermine weakness of will and expose it as irrational. Even though such weakness of will is not moral, moral-type reasoning involving the principle of equality can be brought to bear. Weakness of will can also be seen to be analogous to free-rider problems and the prisoner's dilemma.     

行为决策中模糊规避研究的回顾与展望

模糊规避是指在相同奖赏的情况下,决策者会偏好有精确概率的事件而不是从主观上判断具有相同模糊概率的事件。自从Ellsberg提出模糊规避的概念以来,模糊规避已在行为决策研究的多个领域得到广泛验证。本文梳理了近五十年来关于模糊规避的研究文献,系统分析了模糊规避的研究范式、心理机制和影响因素,同时提出了未来的研究展望。     

Reasoning with Slippery Predicates

It is a commonplace that the extensions of most, perhaps all, vague predicates vary with such features as comparison class and paradigm and contrasting cases. My view proposes another, more pervasive contextual parameter. Vague predicates exhibit what I call open texture: in some circumstances, competent speakers can go either way in the borderline region. The shifting extension and anti-extensions of vague predicates are tracked by what David Lewis calls the “conversational score”, and are regulated by what Kit Fine calls penumbral connections, including a principle of tolerance. As I see it, vague predicates are response-dependent, or, better, judgement-dependent, at least in their borderline regions. This raises questions concerning how one reasons with such predicates. In this paper, I present a model theory for vague predicates, so construed. It is based on an overall supervaluationist-style framework, and it invokes analogues of Kripke structures for intuitionistic logic. I argue that the system captures, or at least nicely models, how one ought to reason with the shifting extensions (and anti-extensions) of vague predicates, as borderline cases are called and retracted in the course of a conversation. The model theory is illustrated with a forced march sorites series, and also with a thought experiment in which vague predicates interact with so-called future contingents. I show how to define various connectives and quantifiers in the language of the system, and how to express various penumbral connections and the principle of tolerance. The project fits into one of the topics of this special issue. In the course of reasoning, even with the external context held fixed, it is uncertain what the future extension of the vague predicates will be. Yet we still manage to reason with them. The system is based on that developed, more fully, in my Vagueness in Context, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, but some criticisms and replies to critics are incorporated.