• Title/Summary/Keyword: epistemic belief

Search Result 13, Processing Time 0.026 seconds

Inquiry and Epistemic Rationality (탐구와 인식적 합리성)

  • Kim, Ki-Hyeon
    • Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
    • /
    • v.18 no.3
    • /
    • pp.245-254
    • /
    • 2007
  • It is an orthodox in epistemology that only those things that affect the truth conduciveness of a belief are relevant to the epistemic rationality of the belief. I criticize this orthodox. In this paper, 1 claim that the epistemic worth of a subject affects the epistemic rationality of inquiries and resulting beliefs. More specifically, I argue that it is epistemically irrational to conduct an inquiry when it is about something unworthy of knowing, and that the epistemic irrationality of an inquiry in this sense makes the resulting beliefs epistemically irrational. After presenting my argument, I defend it from various possible criticisms. Then I explicate the implications of my argument that opposes the core assumptions of contemporary epistemology.

  • PDF

Belief, Pragmatic Acceptance, and Epistemic Acceptance (믿음, 실용적 수용, 그리고 인식적 수용)

  • Lee, Byeongdeok
    • Korean Journal of Logic
    • /
    • v.21 no.2
    • /
    • pp.269-300
    • /
    • 2018
  • In his recent three papers, Joohan Lee defends the following three theses. First, an ordinary term 'believes' is polysemous in that it can refer to three different types of mental attitudes; that is, it can refer to a belief as an involuntary mental disposition, or a pragmatic acceptance as a voluntary mental action, or an epistemic acceptance as a different voluntary mental action. Second, a person's pragmatic acceptance of a proposition is his voluntary mental action which takes it to be true for pragmatic reasons, despite the fact that there is no adequate epistemic evidence for the proposition, whereas a person's epistemic acceptance of a proposition is his voluntary mental action which takes it to be true for epistemic reasons, despite the fact that there is a pragmatic reason to the contrary. Third, mental attitudes to which epistemic norms apply are epistemic acceptances as voluntary mental actions, rather than beliefs as involuntary mental dispositions. If these theses are correct, then they will have important implications for contemporary epistemology. In this paper, however, I argue that Joohan Lee is not successful in defending these theses.

Characteristics of Teacher Learning and Changes in Teachers' Epistemic Beliefs within a Learning Community of Elementary Science Teachers (초등 과학 교사들의 교사 공동체 내에서의 학습의 특징과 인식적 믿음의 변화)

  • Oh, Phil Seok
    • Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
    • /
    • v.33 no.4
    • /
    • pp.683-699
    • /
    • 2014
  • The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics of teacher learning and changes in teachers' epistemic beliefs within a learning community of elementary science teachers. Three in-service elementary teachers who majored in elementary science education in a doctoral course of a graduate school of education participated in the study, and learning activities in the teachers' beginning learning community provided a context for the study. Data sources included field notes produced by the researcher who engaged jointly in the teacher learning community as a coach, audio-recordings of the teachers' narratives, and artifacts generated by the teachers during the process of teacher learning. Complementary analyses of these multiple sources of data revealed that epistemic beliefs of the three elementary teachers were different and that each teacher made a different plan of science instruction based on his own epistemic belief even after the learning experiences within the teacher community. It was therefore suggested that science teacher education programs should be organized in consideration of the nature of teachers as constructivist learners and their practical resources.

'Belief' and Epistemic acceptance ('믿음'과 인식적 수용)

  • Lee, Joohan
    • Korean Journal of Logic
    • /
    • v.20 no.2
    • /
    • pp.197-239
    • /
    • 2017
  • The ordinary term 'believe' is polysemous and thus its meaning varies depending on contexts. Little attention, however, has been paid to its context sensitivity in philosophical discussions, and thereby unnecessary problems tend to be brought about in philosophy. This article explores the different meanings of the term 'believe' to serve as a steppingstone to the solving or dissolving of those problems. To begin, it discusses two different mental attitudes 'believe' stands for, i.e., belief as an involuntary mental disposition and pragmatic acceptance as a mental action, and then suggests and explicates another mental action 'believe' referes to, which I call 'epistemic acceptance'. It will be revealed that epistemic acceptance is a secondary mental action which is performed in a context where epistemic reason and non-epistemic reason compete each other. Then, attention is given to several questions concerning epistemic acceptance and answers to them are provided. The issue of whether epistemic acceptance is analyzable and of the relation between epistemic acceptance and judgment will be addressed in the course of answering them. Finally, a brief prospect is put forward that distinction of different mental attitudes 'believe' stands for will bring a new perspective to solve some philosophical problems, especially, with regard to the issue of the nature of epistemic norm.

  • PDF

A Proof Mechanism for Knowledge and Belief Based on Deduction Model (추론모형에 기초한 믿음과 지식의 증명)

  • 김영훈;한상기
    • Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
    • /
    • v.1 no.2
    • /
    • pp.347-360
    • /
    • 1989
  • Retearches on epistemology for artificial intelligence have started quite recently.Recently,Konolige made a contribution to epistemology by proposing a deduction model based on an efficieit modal logic for a proof mechanism for belief.In this thesis,a unified and generalized proof mechanism for the epistemic logic using a formal system called a View is pesented.In addition,the algorithm to adapt the theorem prover according to the given rule schema,which charncterizes the deduction model of the epistemic logic,is constructed. With this algorlthm,multiple agents having different rule schemas can co-exist in the proposed system. The soundness and completeness of the proposed proof mechanism is proved and a simple theorem prover is implemented to demonstrate the usefulness and practilcality.

Key Stages of a Research and Students' Epistemic Agency in a Student-Driven R&E (학생 주도의 R&E 활동에서 드러나는 연구 활동의 주요 단계 및 학생의 인식적 행위주체성)

  • Lee, Minjoo;Kim, Heui-Baik
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
    • /
    • v.39 no.4
    • /
    • pp.511-523
    • /
    • 2019
  • In this age of the $4^{th}$ industrial revolution, we, science educators, are giving more light on students' agentic behavior in the process of educating future scientist. This study, with the analytic lens of epistemic agency, explores the key stages of a student-driven R&E program rather than the scientist-led R&E program. It also examines to understand the emergence of students' epistemic agency in each stage of R&E. Data from participant observation for 18 months and in-depth interviews were collected and analyzed with the constant comparative method of grounded theory. This study identifies and describes five key stages of student-driven R&E: The stage of exploring research theme, designing research, performing lab activity, interpreting results, and communicating research. It also finds that (a) students' epistemic agency emerged with the constant interactions with the R&E structure; (b) students' epistemic agency has deep relations with the epistemic beliefs of the students; (c) students positioned themselves as decision-makers in the R&E practice; (d) the redistributed power and authority of the R&E contributed to the emergence of students' epistemic agency.

A Study of the Semantic Function of Modality

  • Lee, Sang-Yoon
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
    • /
    • v.11 no.2
    • /
    • pp.149-170
    • /
    • 2005
  • The purpose of this paper is to make a sentence systemic within the category of structural grammar for the modality in which a speaker expresses his attitude. It is the priority of a language to communicate meaning. By eliminating the theoretical description of traditional grammar, this paper also aims to illustrate the concepts of nine modal verbs through a systemic network. The concept of modality includes both the epistemic and the deontic characteristics of modality. Epistemic modality is associated with either knowledge or belief on the part of a speaker who gives his own judgments about the state of affairs, events, or actions. However, deontic modality is related to either the possibility or the necessity of acts that a speaker performs to give permission or fulfill an obligation. In conclusion, all the subsystems are described within the framework of the systemic network, with the intention of including all the potential options of the semantic functions available in a situation.

  • PDF

TREATING UNCERTAINTIES IN A NUCLEAR SEISMIC PROBABILISTIC RISK ASSESSMENT BY MEANS OF THE DEMPSTER-SHAFER THEORY OF EVIDENCE

  • Lo, Chung-Kung;Pedroni, N.;Zio, E.
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
    • /
    • v.46 no.1
    • /
    • pp.11-26
    • /
    • 2014
  • The analyses carried out within the Seismic Probabilistic Risk Assessments (SPRAs) of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) are affected by significant aleatory and epistemic uncertainties. These uncertainties have to be represented and quantified coherently with the data, information and knowledge available, to provide reasonable assurance that related decisions can be taken robustly and with confidence. The amount of data, information and knowledge available for seismic risk assessment is typically limited, so that the analysis must strongly rely on expert judgments. In this paper, a Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST) framework for handling uncertainties in NPP SPRAs is proposed and applied to an example case study. The main contributions of this paper are two: (i) applying the complete DST framework to SPRA models, showing how to build the Dempster-Shafer structures of the uncertainty parameters based on industry generic data, and (ii) embedding Bayesian updating based on plant specific data into the framework. The results of the application to a case study show that the approach is feasible and effective in (i) describing and jointly propagating aleatory and epistemic uncertainties in SPRA models and (ii) providing 'conservative' bounds on the safety quantities of interest (i.e. Core Damage Frequency, CDF) that reflect the (limited) state of knowledge of the experts about the system of interest.

Dualism in mathematics classroom and some teaching strategies for overcoming students' dualistic beliefs (수학 교실의 이원론적 신념과 그 극복을 위한 교수방안 고찰)

  • Lee, Jihyun
    • Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
    • /
    • v.19 no.3
    • /
    • pp.261-275
    • /
    • 2016
  • Many students have dualistic beliefs about mathematics and its learning- for example, there is always just one right answer in mathematics and their role in the classroom is receiving and absorbing knowledge from teacher and textbook. This article investigated some epistemic implications and limitations of common mathematics teaching practices, which often present mathematical facts(or procedures) and treat students' errors in a certain and absolute way. Langer and Piper's (1987) experiment and Oliveira et al.'s (2012) study suggested that presenting knowledge in conditional language which allows uncertainty can foster students' productive epistemological beliefs. Changing the focus and patterns of classroom communication about students' errors could help students to overcome their dualistic beliefs. This discussion will contribute to analyze the implicit epistemic messages conveyed by mathematics instructions and to investigate teaching strategies for stimulating students' epistemic development in mathematics.

A novel evidence theory model and combination rule for reliability estimation of structures

  • Tao, Y.R.;Wang, Q.;Cao, L.;Duan, S.Y.;Huang, Z.H.H.;Cheng, G.Q.
    • Structural Engineering and Mechanics
    • /
    • v.62 no.4
    • /
    • pp.507-517
    • /
    • 2017
  • Due to the discontinuous nature of uncertainty quantification in conventional evidence theory(ET), the computational cost of reliability analysis based on ET model is very high. A novel ET model based on fuzzy distribution and the corresponding combination rule to synthesize the judgments of experts are put forward in this paper. The intersection and union of membership functions are defined as belief and plausible membership function respectively, and the Murfhy's average combination rule is adopted to combine the basic probability assignment for focal elements. Then the combined membership functions are transformed to the equivalent probability density function by a normalizing factor. Finally, a reliability analysis procedure for structures with the mixture of epistemic and aleatory uncertainties is presented, in which the equivalent normalization method is adopted to solve the upper and lower bound of reliability. The effectiveness of the procedure is demonstrated by a numerical example and an engineering example. The results also show that the reliability interval calculated by the suggested method is almost identical to that solved by conventional method. Moreover, the results indicate that the computational cost of the suggested procedure is much less than that of conventional method. The suggested ET model provides a new way to flexibly represent epistemic uncertainty, and provides an efficiency method to estimate the reliability of structures with the mixture of epistemic and aleatory uncertainties.