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9Maxmin weighted expected utility: a simpler characterizationTheory and Decision 80 (4): 581-610. 2016.Chateauneuf and Faro axiomatize a weighted version of maxmin expected utility over acts with nonnegative utilities, where weights are represented by a confidence function. We argue that their representation is only one of many possible, and we axiomatize a more natural form of maxmin weighted expected utility. We also provide stronger uniqueness results.
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5Decision Theory with Resource‐Bounded AgentsTopics in Cognitive Science 6 (2): 245-257. 2014.There have been two major lines of research aimed at capturing resource-bounded players in game theory. The first, initiated by Rubinstein (), charges an agent for doing costly computation; the second, initiated by Neyman (), does not charge for computation, but limits the computation that agents can do, typically by modeling agents as finite automata. We review recent work on applying both approaches in the context of decision theory. For the first approach, we take the objects of choice in a d…Read more
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18Belief revision: A critique (review)Journal of Logic, Language and Information 8 (4): 401-420. 1999.We examine carefully the rationale underlying the approaches to belief change taken in the literature, and highlight what we view as methodological problems. We argue that to study belief change carefully, we must be quite explicit about the ontology or scenario underlying the belief change process. This is something that has been missing in previous work, with its focus on postulates. Our analysis shows that we must pay particular attention to two issues that have often been taken for granted: …Read more
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19Probability and Conditionals: Belief Revision and Rational DecisionPhilosophical Review 109 (2): 277. 2000.
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14Intransitivity and vaguenessReview of Symbolic Logic 1 (4): 530-547. 2008.There are many examples in the literature that suggest that indistinguishability is intransitive, despite the fact that the indistinguishability relation is typically taken to be an equivalence relation (and thus transitive). It is shown that if the uncertainty perception and the question of when an agent reports that two things are indistinguishable are both carefully modeled, the problems disappear, and indistinguishability can indeed be taken to be an equivalence relation. Moreover, this mode…Read more
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22Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach. Part II: ExplanationsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (4): 889-911. 2005.We propose new definitions of (causal) explanation, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition is based on the notion of actual cause, as defined and motivated in a companion article. Essentially, an explanation is a fact that is not known for certain but, if found to be true, would constitute an actual cause of the fact to be explained, regardless of the agent's initial uncertainty. We show that the definition handles well a number of problematic examples from the liter…Read more
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15I'm OK if you're OK: On the notion of trusting communication (review)Journal of Philosophical Logic 17 (4). 1988.We consider the issue of what an agent or a processor needs to know in order to know that its messages are true. This may be viewed as a first step to a general theory of cooperative communication in distributed systems. An honest message is one that is known to be true when it is sent (or said). If every message that is sent is honest, then of course every message that is sent is true. Various weaker considerations than honesty are investigated with the property that provided every message sent…Read more
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1Zero-one laws for modal logicAnnals of Pure and Applied Logic 69 (2-3): 157-193. 1994.We show that a 0–1 law holds for propositional modal logic, both for structure validity and frame validity. In the case of structure validity, the result follows easily from the well-known 0–1 law for first-order logic. However, our proof gives considerably more information. It leads to an elegant axiomatization for almost-sure structure validity and to sharper complexity bounds. Since frame validity can be reduced to a Π11 formula, the 0–1 law for frame validity helps delineate when 0–1 laws ex…Read more
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16Reasoning About UncertaintyMIT Press. 2003.Using formal systems to represent and reason about uncertainty.
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8On definability in multimodal logicReview of Symbolic Logic 2 (3): 451-468. 2009.Three notions of definability in multimodal logic are considered. Two are analogous to the notions of explicit definability and implicit definability introduced by Beth in the context of first-order logic. However, while by Beth’s theorem the two types of definability are equivalent for first-order logic, such an equivalence does not hold for multimodal logics. A third notion of definability, reducibility, is introduced; it is shown that in multimodal logics, explicit definability is equivalent …Read more
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3Erratum to “Zero-one laws for modal logic” [Ann. Pure Appl. Logic 69 (1994) 157–193]Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 121 (2-3): 281-283. 2003.
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First-order conditional logic for default reasoning revisitedAcm Trans. Comput. Logic 1 (2): 175--207. 2000.
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5Taken by surprise: The paradox of the surprise test revisited (review)Journal of Philosophical Logic 15 (3). 1986.A teacher announced to his pupils that on exactly one of the days of the following school week (Monday through Friday) he would give them a test. But it would be a surprise test; on the evening before the test they would not know that the test would take place the next day. One of the brighter students in the class then argued that the teacher could never give them the test. "It can't be Friday," she said, "since in that case we'll expect it on Thurday evening. But then it can't be Thursday, sin…Read more
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26Presburger arithmetic with unary predicates is Π11 completeJournal of Symbolic Logic 56 (2). 1991.We give a simple proof characterizing the complexity of Presburger arithmetic augmented with additional predicates. We show that Presburger arithmetic with additional predicates is Π 1 1 complete. Adding one unary predicate is enough to get Π 1 1 hardness, while adding more predicates (of any arity) does not make the complexity any worse
Ithaca, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |