Possibly v. actually the case: Davidson’s omniscient interpreter at twenty

The publication of Davidson 2001, anthologizing articles from the 1980s and 1990s, encourages reconsidering arguments contained in them. One such argument is Davidson’s omniscient-interpreter argument (‘OIA’) in Davidson 1983. The OIA allegedly establishes that it is necessary that most beliefs are true. Thus the omniscient interpreter, revived in 2001 and now 20 years old, was born to answer the skeptic. In Part I of this paper, I consider charges that the OIA establishes only that it is possible that most beliefs are true; if correct, then it is also possibly the case that most beliefs are false—the skeptic’s very position. Next, I consider two responses on Davidson’s behalf, showing that each fails. In Part II, I show that the OIA establishes neither that it is necessarily merely possibly but actually the case that most beliefs are true. I then conclude that this is enough to answer the skeptic.     

Limited resoluteness and strategic voting: The case of linear sincere preference orderings

This note is concerned with the strategic manipulation of the aggregation procedures, which for every profile of individual preference orderings and every set of alternatives (presented for choice) specify a non-empty subset of alternatives. In the context of multi–valued aggregation procedures, the strategic behaviour of an individual crucially depends on the criterion of comparing different subsets of alternatives. It is shown that when the sincere (or true) preference orderings are restricted to be strict, the requirement of resoluteness in pairwise choice is the frontier between the manipulability and non-manipulability results in social choice as long as individuals adopt some versions of the sure-thing principle in comparing different subsets of alternatives.     

The Systems Approach to Decision-making in the Department of Defense and the University of California

The paper discusses some of the problems associated with the installation and operation of the PPBS system, first in the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Army and then in the University of California.     

The Prospect for O.R. in the Nigerian Government Service—An Administrators' Viewpoint

The paper reports the results of interviews with senior government administrators in Nigeria in which they were asked a range of questions about their own work and about the problems that are likely to be encountered in trying to introduce operational research into the government service. It is thus in contrast with most papers on O.R. in developing countries, which are written primarily from the viewpoint of practitioners. The administrators confirmed that there was a wide range of problems recognized as being suitable for the O.R. approach, and identified some of the barriers to the introduction of an effective O.R. service.     

The decomposition of the representationsT v and the plancherel formula for the universal convering group ofSU(1, 1)

The decomposition of the representations T^v(vεR) are considered here. The Plancherel formula for the universal covering group of SU(1, 1) is also deduced.     

The Existence of （v, 4, 1） Disjoint Difference Families with v a Prime Power

A （v, k, λ） difference family （（v, k, λ）-DF in short） over an abelian group G of order v, is a collection F=（Bi｜i ∈ I} of k-subsets of G, called base blocks, such that any nonzero element of G can be represented in precisely A ways as a difference of two elements lying in some base blocks in F. A （v, k, λ）-DDF is a difference family with disjoint blocks. In this paper, by using Weil＇s theorem on character sum estimates, it is proved that there exists a （p^n, 4, 1）-DDF, where p = 1 （rood 12） is a prime number and n ≥1.     

The 1/n expansion in the Gross-Neveu model: Conformal bootstrap calculation of the exponent 1/v to the order 1/n2

The critical exponent 1/v (dimensions of temperature) in theU _N -symmetric Gross-Neveu model is calculated to the order 1/n ² (nN tr 1) for arbitrary dimension of space.St. Petersburg State University. Translated from Teoreticheskaya i Matematicheskaya Fizika, Vol. 97, No. 3, pp. 364–372, December, 1993.     

Cell polarisation model: The 1D case

We study the dynamics of a one-dimensional non-linear and non-local drift-diffusion equation set in the half-line, with the coupling involving the trace value on the boundary. The initial mass M of the density determines the behaviour of the equation: attraction to self-similar profile, to a steady state of finite time, blow-up for supercritical mass. Using the logarithmic Sobolev and the HWI inequalities we obtain a rate of convergence for the sub-critical and critical mass cases. Moreover, we prove a comparison principle on the equation obtained after space integration. This concentration-comparison principle allows proving blow-up of solutions for large initial data without any monotonicity assumption on the initial data.