Bayesianism is a theory of inductive inference that makes use of the mathematical theory of probability. Bayesians usually hold that the relevant probabilities should be interpreted in terms of rational degrees of belief. This still leaves much scope for disagreement, since there is no consensus about what norms govern rational degrees of belief. In this chapter, we first provide an introductio...

From ancient times, philosophers have been proposing theories of human rationality. More recently, many evolutionary psychologists have been conducting studies which appear to show that, under certain conditions, humans are frequently irrational, or, at least, illogical. Nevertheless, the human species has survived and thrived and thus humans must have developed reasoning capacities which work ...

This paper provides an optimal approximation of the fundamental linear fractional order transfer function using a distribution of the relaxation time function. Simple methods, useful in systems and control theories, which can be used to approximate the irrational transfer function of a class of fractional systems for a given frequency band by a rational function are presented. The optimal param...

Many people vote in large elections with costs to vote although the expected benefits would seem to be infinitesimal to a rational mind. We show that prospect and regret theories cannot solve this paradox of not voting and may even aggravate it. However, if the possibility of a decisive vote comes to mind, expected utility maximizers will doubt their preference for abstention and greatly overes...

Research on human causal learning has largely focused on strength learning, or on computational-level theories; there are few formal algorithmic models of how people learn causal structure from covariations. We introduce a model that learns causal structure in a local manner via prediction-error learning. This local learning is then integrated dynamically into a unified representation of causal...

This article examines prospects for theories and methods of preferences, both in the specific sense of the preferences of the ideal rational agents considered in economics and decision theory and in the broader interplay between reasoning and rationality considered in philosophy, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Modern applications seek to employ preferences as means for specifying, des...

The unitary rational orbifold conformal field theories in the algebraic quantum field theory and subfactor theory framework are formulated. Under general conditions, it is shown that the orbifold of a given unitary rational conformal field theory generates a unitary modular category. Many new unitary modular categories are obtained. It is also shown that the irreducible representations of orbif...

We consider the relationship between positive and normative political theory, emphasising both the role of normative ideas in motivating political behaviour and particularly the constraints on normative theory imposed by positive theory. Our point of departure is Christiano’s recent claim that the rational choice approach to positive and normative political theory is self-defeating. In arguing ...

Default logic is supposed to reason with static and consistent default theory, i.e., it can not deal with inconsistencies arising in the situation that an agent receives a sequence of information represented by default theories. To overcome the problem, revision operators for revising default theories have been investigated by many researchers. But none of them has discussed the postulates whic...