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85Irrationality and cognitionIn Quentin Smith (ed.), Epistemology: new essays, Oxford University Press. 2008.The strategy of this paper is to throw light on rational cognition and epistemic justification by examining irrationality. Epistemic irrationality is possible because we are reflexive cognizers, able to reason about and redirect some aspects of our own cognition. One consequence of this is that one cannot give a theory of epistemic rationality or epistemic justification without simultaneously giving a theory of practical rationality. A further consequence is that practical irrationality can affe…Read more
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93So you think you exist? — In defense of nolipsismIn Thomas M. Crisp, Matthew Davidson & David Vander Laan (eds.), Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga, Springer. 2006.Human beings think of themselves in terms of a privileged non-descriptive designator — a mental “I”. Such thoughts are called “_de se_” thoughts. The mind/body problem is the problem of deciding what kind of thing I am, and it can be regarded as arising from the fact that we think of ourselves non-descriptively. Why do we think of ourselves in this way? We investigate the functional role of “I” (and also “here” and “now”) in cognition, arguing that the use of such non-descriptive “reflexive” des…Read more
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14Thinking About Acting: Logical Foundations for Rational Decision MakingOxford University Press USA. 2006.John Pollock aims to construct a theory of rational decision making for real agents--not ideal agents. Pollock argues that theories of ideal rationality are largely irrelevant to the decision making of real agents. Thinking about Acting aims to provide a theory of "real rationality."
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22Resurrecting Old-Fashioned FoundationalismRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2000.The contributions in this volume make an important effort to resurrect a rather old fashioned form of foundationalism. They defend the position that there are some beliefs that are justified, and are not themselves justified by any further beliefs. This epistemic foundationalism has been the subject of rigorous attack by a wide range of theorists in recent years, leading to the impression that foundationalism is a thing of the past. DePaul argues that it is precisely the volume and virulence of …Read more
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The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Volume 9: Philosophy of MindCharlottesville: Philosophy Doc Ctr. 2000.
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4Technical methods in philosophyWestview Press. 1990.Introduces the technical tools and concepts employed in advanced work in philosophy. Beginning with the fundamentals of set theory, the author examines relations, functions and the theory of arithmetic before using these tools to clarify the metatheory of the predicate calculus.
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53Thinking About Acting: Logical Foundations for Rational Decision MakingOxford University Press, Usa. 2006.Pollock argues that theories of ideal rationality are largely irrelevant to the decision making of real agents. Thinking about Acting aims to provide a theory of "real rationality.&quot
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Irrationality and cognitionIn Quentin Smith (ed.), Epistemology: new essays, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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156Belief revision and epistemologySynthese 122 (1-2): 69-92. 2000.Postulational approaches attempt to understand the dynamics of belief revision by appealing to no more than the set of beliefs held by an agent and the logical relations between them. It is argued there that such an approach cannot work. A proper account of belief revision must also appeal to the arguments supporting beliefs, and recognize that those arguments can be defeasible. If we begin with a mature epistemological theory that accommodates this, it can be seen that the belief revision opera…Read more
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15Rationality in Philosophy and Artificial IntelligenceThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 9 123-132. 2000.I argue here that sophisticated AI systems, with the exception of those aimed at the psychological modeling of human cognition, must be based on general philosophical theories of rationality and, conversely, philosophical theories of rationality should be tested by implementing them in AI systems. So the philosophy and the AI go hand in hand. I compare human and generic rationality within a broad philosophy of AI and conclude by suggesting that ultimately, virtually all familiar philosophical pr…Read more
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44Philosophy and AI: Essays at the Interface (edited book)MIT Press. 1991.Philosophy and AI presents invited contributions that focus on the different perspectives and techniques that philosophy and AI bring to the theory of ...
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61Cognitive Carpentry: A Blueprint for how to Build a PersonMIT Press. 1995."A sequel to Pollock's How to Build a Person, this volume builds upon that theoretical groundwork for the implementation of rationality through artificial ...
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63What Am I?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (2): 237-309. 2008.It’s morning. You sit down at your desk, cup of coffee in hand, and prepare to begin your day. First, you turn on your computer. Once it is running, you check your e-mail. Having decided it is all spam, you trash it. You close the window on your e-mail program, but leave the program running so that it will periodically check the mail server to see whether you have new mail. If it finds new mail it will alert you by playing a musical tone. Next you start your word processor. You have in mind to w…Read more
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95Subjunctive reasoningReidel. 1976.Reidel, 1976. This book is out of print, but can be downloaded as a pdf file (3.3 MB).
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38Laying the Raven to rest: A discussion of Hempel and the paradoxes of confirmationJournal of Philosophy 70 (20): 747-754. 1973.
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2II. Sketch of a Theory of LanguageIn The foundations of philosophical semantics, Princeton University Press. pp. 7-42. 1984.
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2III. Possible WorldsIn The foundations of philosophical semantics, Princeton University Press. pp. 43-109. 1984.
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I. IntroductionIn The foundations of philosophical semantics, Princeton University Press. pp. 1-6. 1984.
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2IV. CounterfactualsIn The foundations of philosophical semantics, Princeton University Press. pp. 110-147. 1984.
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2IndexIn The foundations of philosophical semantics, Princeton University Press. pp. 237-242. 1984.
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40How to use probabilities in reasoningPhilosophical Studies 64 (1). 1991.Probabilities are important in belief updating, but probabilistic reasoning does not subsume everything else (as the Bayesian would have it). On the contrary, Bayesian reasoning presupposes knowledge that cannot itself be obtained by Bayesian reasoning, making generic Bayesianism an incoherent theory of belief updating. Instead, it is indefinite probabilities that are of principal importance in belief updating. Knowledge of such indefinite probabilities is obtained by some form of statistical in…Read more
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