Wisdom, Knowledge and Rationality

After surveying the strengths and weaknesses of several well-known approaches to wisdom, I argue for a new theory of wisdom that focuses on being epistemically, practically, and morally rational. My theory of wisdom, The Deep Rationality Theory of Wisdom, claims that a wise person is a person who is rational and who is deeply committed to increasing his or her level of rationality. This theory is a departure from theories of wisdom that demand practical and/or theoretical knowledge. The Deep Rationality Theory salvages all that is attractive, and avoids all that is problematic, about theories of wisdom that require wise people to be knowledgeable.     

Wisdom: Understanding and the Good Life

I argue that a necessary condition for being wise is: understanding how to live well. The condition, by requiring understanding rather than a wide variety of justified beliefs or knowledge, as Ryan and Whitcomb respectively require, yields the desirable result that being wise is compatible with having some false beliefs but not just any false beliefs about how to live well—regardless of whether those beliefs are justified or not. In arguing for understanding how to live well as a necessary condition for wisdom, I reject the view, proposed by both Ryan and Whitcomb, that subjects such as chemistry lies within the domain of wisdom. I show that the argued for condition yields the desirable result that being wise is not a common achievement, but that it is not something that can only plausibly be achieved in the modern era.     

Wisdom Beyond Rationality: A Reply to Ryan

We discuss Sharon Ryan’s Deep Rationality Theory of wisdom, defended recently in her “Wisdom, Knowledge and Rationality.” We argue that (a) Ryan’s use of the term “rationality” needs further elaboration; (b) there is a problem with requiring that the wise person possesses justified beliefs but not necessarily knowledge; (c) the conditions of DRT are not all necessary; (d) the conditions are not sufficient. At the end of our discussion, we suggest that there may be a problem with the very assumption that an informative, non-circular set of necessary and sufficient conditions of wisdom can be given.     

Internalist Virtues and Knowledge

What role can intellectual virtues play in an account of knowledge when we interpret those virtues internalistically, i.e., as depending only on internal states of the cognizer? Though it has been argued that internalist virtues are ill suited to play any role in an account of knowledge, I will show that, on the contrary, internalist virtues can play an important role in recent accounts of knowledge developed to utilize externalist virtues. The virtue account of knowledge developed by Linda Zagzebski is intended to be supplemented by her version of the intellectual virtues which require an external success component. John Greco and Wayne Riggs both develop credit accounts of knowledge on which the abilities we use when we get credit for a true belief must be reliable. I examine the similarities between these three accounts of knowledge and demonstrate that internalist virtues fit into these accounts just as well as externalist virtues. Thus, although internalist virtues do not require a reliable connection to truth, they can still play an important role in defining the truth-requiring concept of knowledge.     

Privileges of First-Person Reference and of Third-Person Reference

It is a widely held view that persons have privileged knowledge about their own minds, although numerous different views on what this privilege exactly consists of exist. One possible way of interpreting it is to claim that persons can refer to their own mental states in a privileged way. I will argue that this view has to be extended. Our common-sense view about reference to mental states implies that besides privileges of first-person reference to one's own mental states, there also exist privileges of third-person reference to the mental states of others: Other persons can refer to all of the mental states of a person in a way that the person cannot. In a next step, I will explain that persons can take two perspectives towards their own mental states: a first-person perspective and a third-person perspective. I will conclude that the possibilities of first-person reference from a third-person perspective are limited.     

An exploration of three emancipatory themes within OR and systems thinking

This paper pursues the current debate about emancipation as one of the principal tenets of critical OR. It highlights some conceptual ambiguities involved in the notion of emancipation and so attempts to multiply the possibilities for an emancipatory approach to OR. The paper will explore three different emancipatory themes, one which understands the concept of emancipation in terms of a democratic discourse, a second which views it in terms of the cultivation of different virtues and values, and a third which questions the very essence of ethics and emancipation. Central to this analysis is a concern for the methodological implications of these three themes, and the current neglect of emancipatory methodologies for OR practice.     

Introduction to the Special Issue

In the model, each person in a large population chooses between two options, such as adhering to or not adhering to a social norm. People observe each others’ choices at random and adjust their adherence probabilities in imitative directions. It is known from earlier work that, under strong restrictions on the imitation, the distribution of adherence probabilities will either evolve upward toward a high adherence equilibrium or downward toward a low adherence equilibrium, depending on initial conditions. The intuition is that imitation leads to uniformity. Here we show that more general forms of imitation allow a much wider variety of outcomes. There can be a sizable number of equilibria and a variety of stability patterns. In mathematical form, the model is an interactive Markov chain.     

The Social Virtues: Two Accounts

Social (epistemic) virtues are the virtues bound up with those forms of inquiry involved in social routes to knowledge. A thoroughly individualistic account of the social virtues endorses two claims: (1) we can fully characterize the nature of the social virtues independent of the social factors that are typically in play when these virtues are exemplified, and (2) even when a subject’s route to knowledge is social, the only epistemic virtues that are relevant to her acquisition of knowledge are those she herself possesses. A social (or anti-individualistic) account of the social virtues, by contrast, denies one or both of these claims. I will offer some reasons for thinking that the individualistic account is not acceptable, and that one or the other social account provides a better understanding of the social virtues. The argument is not decisive, but it does suggest that the social dimension of social epistemic virtues is not fully characterizable in individualistic terms.     

History of mathematical programming in the USSR: analyzing the phenomenon

I am not a historian; these are just reminiscences of a person involved in the development of optimization theory and methods in the former USSR. I realize that my point of view may be very personal; however, I am trying to present as broad and unbiased picture as I can. Received: January 29, 2001 / Accepted: May 17, 2001?Published online October 2, 2001     

What is (Correct) Practical Reasoning?

This paper argues that practical reasoning is a mental process which leads a person from a set of existent mental states to an intention. In Section 1, I defend this view against two other proposals according to which practical reasoning either concludes in an action itself or in a normative belief. Section 2 discusses the correctness of practical reasoning and explains how the correctness of instrumental reasoning can be explained by the logical relations that hold between the contents of the mental states. In Section 3, I explore the correctness of normative practical reasoning. I conclude with the sceptical view that correct practical reasoning cannot require us to intend to do what we believe we ought to do.     

Infinite Regress Arguments

Infinite regress arguments play an important role in many distinct philosophical debates. Yet, exactly how they are to be used to demonstrate anything is a matter of serious controversy. In this paper I take up this metaphilosophical debate, and demonstrate how infinite regress arguments can be used for two different purposes: either they can refute a universally quantified proposition (as the Paradox Theory says), or they can demonstrate that a solution never solves a given problem (as the Failure Theory says). In the meantime, I show that Black’s view on infinite regress arguments (1996, this journal) is incomplete, and how his criticism of Passmore can be countered.     

On the drawbacks of large committees

This paper aims at identifying possible drawbacks of large committees. I present a model of a committee of experts with career concerns where each expert may observe an argument about the state of the world but be unsure about the argument’s soundness. Experts may remain silent or decide to be the first to announce an argument. In contrast with the existing literature, I focus on the possibility that experts may discover duplicate information. I show that experts become more reluctant to speak in larger committees as a result. This effect can be sufficiently strong to make small groups of experts optimal.     

Naïve Realism,Adverbialism and Perceptual Error

My paper has three parts. First I will outline the act/object theory of perceptual experience and its commitments to (a) a relational view of experience and (b) a view of phenomenal character according to which it is constituted by the character of the objects of experience. I present the traditional adverbial response to this, in which experience is not to be understood as a relation to some object, but as a way of sensing. In the second part I argue that acceptance of (a) is independent of acceptance of (b). I then present a modified adverbialism that presents experience as relational in nature but whose character is nevertheless to be explained in terms of the way in which one senses an object. Finally, I will offer an explanation of how a naïve realist about experience can adopt this modified adverbialism and in so doing accommodate the possibility of perceptual error.     

Global existence of strong solutions to the Cauchy problem for a 1D radiative gas

We consider a one-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics model in the case of the equilibrium diffusion approximation which is described by the compressible Navier-Stokes system with the additional terms in the pressure and internal energy respectively, which embody the effect of radiation. Under the physical growth conditions on the heat conductivity, we establish the existence and uniqueness of strong solutions to the Cauchy problem with large initial data, where the initial density and velocity may have differing constant states at infinity. Moreover, we show that if there is no vacuum in the initial density, then, the vacuum and concentration of the density will never occur in any finite time.     

Frege,Dedekind, and the Modern Epistemology of Arithmetic

In early analytic philosophy, one of the most central questions concerned the status of arithmetical objects. Frege argued against the popular conception that we arrive at natural numbers with a psychological process of abstraction. Instead, he wanted to show that arithmetical truths can be derived from the truths of logic, thus eliminating all psychological components. Meanwhile, Dedekind and Peano developed axiomatic systems of arithmetic. The differences between the logicist and axiomatic approaches turned out to be philosophical as well as mathematical. In this paper, I will argue that Dedekind’s approach can be seen as a precursor to modern structuralism and as such, it enjoys many advantages over Frege’s logicism. I also show that from a modern perspective, Frege’s criticism of abstraction and psychologism is one-sided and fails against the psychological processes that modern research suggests to be at the heart of numerical cognition. The approach here is twofold. First, through historical analysis, I will try to build a clear image of what Frege’s and Dedekind’s views on arithmetic were. Then, I will consider those views from the perspective of modern philosophy of mathematics, and in particular, the empirical study of arithmetical cognition. I aim to show that there is nothing to suggest that the axiomatic Dedekind approach could not provide a perfectly adequate basis for philosophy of arithmetic.     

股权融资管制与公司资本结构:模型与模拟

股权融资管制带来的摩擦会如何影响公司的资本结构及资本结构调整？本文建立了股权融资管制摩擦模型,并使用计算机实验模拟的方法,研究股权再融资管制带来的摩擦对公司目标资本结构以及资本结构调整的影响,同时探讨资本结构调整速度模型的适用性。研究发现,外部股权融资管制程度不仅影响公司的目标资本结构,也影响公司资本结构调整的速度,研究结论为观测资本市场融资摩擦提供了一种独特视角。此外,观察分析当前使用的资本结构调整模型,本文发现该模型忽略了变量之间的强约束条件,会导致模型设定偏误。     

Practically Equal: An Analysis of the Practical Nature of Equality and Incomparability

There exists an ongoing debate about the nature of incomparability. In this paper, I argue that incomparability is most usefully seen as a practical, rather than a metaphysical, issue. When confronted with an important choice between two options, an agent often will be at a loss as to how to decide between them. A common response to this problem is to assert that the options must therefore be equal, and that it is perfectly rational to be indifferent and decide between them in some arbitrary fashion. Contrary to this common view, this paper shows that equality should be seen as the result of indifference and not the cause of it. I will show that the judgment between whether options are either equal or incomparable is actually a decision, made by an agent, that can in turn be judged as more or less rational.     

基于混合单纯形算法的模糊均值图像分割

针对模糊C均值算法用于图像分割时对初始值敏感、容易陷入局部极值的问题,提出基于混合单纯形算法的模糊均值图像分割算法.算法利用Nelder-Mead单纯形算法计算量小、搜索速度快和粒子群算法自适应能力强、具有较好的全局搜索能力的特点,将混合单纯形算法的结果作为模糊C均值算法的输入,并将其用于图像分割.实验结果表明:基于混合单纯形算法的模糊均值图像分割算法在改善图像分割质量的同时,提高了算法的运行速度.