Most philosophers agree that causal knowledge is essential to decision-making: agents should choose from the available options those that probably cause the outcomes that they want. This book argues against this theory and in favour of evidential or Bayesian decision theory, which emphasises the symptomatic value of options over their causal role. It examines a variety of settings, including economic theory, quantum mechanics and philosophical thought-experiments, where causal knowledge seems to make a practical difference. The arguments make novel use of (...) machinery from other areas of philosophical inquiry, including first-person epistemology and the free will debate. The book also illustrates the applicability of decision theory itself to questions about the direction of time and the special epistemic status of agents. (shrink)

Masked revelry, the quaffing of large amounts of wine and the sound of flutes … this cavalcade would pass through the streets of Rome every 13th June, even crossing the forum itself. As we will show later on, a connection can be established between this celebration (theQuinquatrus minusculae) and the statue of Marsyas, the acolyte of Dionysus, which stood in the forum and was associated with freedom, wine and charivari. In turn, this connection will open the way for a new (...) interpretation of the multiple meanings of the feast and the satyr in the highly charged political atmosphere of Late Republican Rome. The main aim of this study will be to show, in the third part of this article, howpopularespoliticians tried to exploit the opportunities presented to them by religious festivities andludito draw more of the public into theircontionesor to obtain a favourable verdict in a political trial. (shrink)

This article offers the concept of `global modernity' (in the singular) as a way to understand the contemporary world. It suggests that the concept helps overcome the teleology implicit in a term such as globalization, while it also recognizes global difference and conflict, which are as much characteristics of the contemporary world as tendencies toward unity and homogenization. These differences, and the appearance of `alternative' or `multiple' modernities, it suggests, are expressions, and articulations, of the contradictions of modernity which are (...) now universalized across, as well as within, societies. If we are to speak of alternative or multiple modernities, which presently valorize the persistence of traditions and `civilizational' legacies, we need to recognize that the very language of alternatives and multiplicity is enabled historically by the presupposition of a common modernity shaped by a globalizing capitalism. (shrink)

has offered evidential decision theorists a defence against the charge that they make unintuitive recommendations for cases like Newcomb's Problem. He says that when conditional probabilities are assessed from the agent's point of view, evidential decision theory makes the same recommendation as intuition. I argue that calculating the probabilities in Price's way leads to no recommendation. It condemns the agent to perpetual oscillation between different options. Price's Argument Instability Objections Conclusion.

This paper argues that evidential decision theory is incompatible with options having objective values. If options have objective values, then it should always be rationally permissible for an agent to choose an option if they are certain that the option uniquely maximizes objective value. But, as we show, if options have objective values and evidential decision theory is true, then it is not always rationally permissible for an agent to choose an option if they are certain that the option uniquely (...) maximizes objective value. (shrink)

Deductive inference seems to reveal semantic connections between their premise(s) and conclusion that were there all along. This looks inconsistent with Wittgenstein's later views on meaning. The paper argues that W's treatment of aspects suggests a Wittgensteinian treatment of deduction that accommodates the troublesome phenomenon without conceding its force.

Published in 1953, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations had a deeply unsettling effect upon our most basic philosophical ideas concerning thought, sensation and language. Its claim that philosophical questions of meaning necessitate a close analysis of the way we use language continues to influence Anglo-American philosophy today. However, its compressed and dialogic prose is not always easy to follow. This collection of essays deepens but also challenges our understanding of the work's major themes, such as the connection between meaning and use, the (...) nature of concepts, thought and intentionality, and language games. Bringing together leading philosophers and Wittgenstein scholars, it offers a genuinely critical approach and demonstrating Wittgenstein's relevance for contemporary philosophy. This volume will appeal to readers interested in the later Wittgenstein, in addition to those interested in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

Tourism, as an industry, has become one of the most dynamic sectors of the world economy these days and has specific features that are different from other industries. In the tourism industry, production and consumption points occur spatially at the same time. In addition, the tourism industry contributes to the economic growth of developed regions and can simultaneously distribute the wealth created geographically. It is notable that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused many challenges in the tourism industry (...) regarding the presence of tourists in tourism centres and the closing of all tourism service chains, including food, entertainment, transportation and travel services worldwide. Tourism-related businesses, which are considered as invisible export and one of the engines of development and occupation, have been rendered obsolete. In other words, the businesses, as well as multiple units and activities in the related chain, have been damaged and employees of this industry have lost their jobs. This has led to the recession and regressive course of the developing and large industry of tourism in the world. It is worth noting that the tourism industry includes various sections, the most important of which is religious tourism. All religions in the world have different religious places, works, traditions and customs, which have become amongst the most important tourist attractions. Meanwhile, Muslims and the religion of Islam play a significant role in this branch of tourism. The Hajj, pilgrimage to holy places and the existence of mourning ceremonies or religious celebrations of Muslims are amongst the largest religious tourism events in the world. Given the importance of this issue, the present study aimed to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious tourism in Iraq in 2021. This field study was conducted on 4500 Muslim managers and staff of restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, clothing stores and souvenir shops around the holy shrines of imams and religious places in Karbala, Najaf, Kufa, Samarra and Kazemi. According to the results, the tourism of Iraq, which is mainly limited to Muslim religious sites in several major Iraqi cities, has also seen a decline in the number of religious tourists. The negative effects of COVID-19 on religious tourism have also been proved statistically by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), as µ ≥ 3 has been counted in all indices.Contribution: Our findings offered new insights into the impact of COVID-19 on tourism, based on statistical analysis. In this study, the authors showed how COVID-19 affects various aspects of religious tourism, which has not been addressed in previous researches. (shrink)

The paper argues that on three out of eight possible hypotheses about the EPR experiment we can construct novel and realistic decision problems on which (a) Causal Decision Theory and Evidential Decision Theory conflict (b) Causal Decision Theory and the EPR statistics conflict. We infer that anyone who fully accepts any of these three hypotheses has strong reasons to reject Causal Decision Theory. Finally, we extend the original construction to show that anyone who gives any of the three hypotheses any (...) non-zero credence has strong reasons to reject Causal Decision Theory. However, we concede that no version of the Many Worlds Interpretation (Vaidman, in Zalta, E.N. (ed.), Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy 2014) gives rise to the conflicts that we point out. (shrink)

Hegel’in Jena döneminde zamanın diyalektiği sorununu yalnızca Tinin Fenomenolojisi’nin “Duyusal Kesinlik” bölümünde ele aldığına yönelik genel anlayış, geçtiğimiz yüzyılda orta Jena dönemi derslerine ait el yazmalarının yayımlanmasıyla yeni bir boyut kazanmıştır. 1804-1805 ile 1805-1806 yıllarına ait olan “Jena Sistem taslakları”nda Hegel’in doğanın zamanın üç boyutuna dair kapsamlı bir diyalektik geliştirdiği görülür. Bu çalışmada Christophe Bouton, söz konusu iki sistem taslağında doğanın soyut zamanına ait momentlerin ürettiği sonlu diyalektiğin Hegelci mantıksal ikili sonsuzluk teorisiyle nasıl aşıldığını inceler. Bouton’a göre orta Jena dönemi (...) taslakları sadece Hegel’in düşünsel gelişim sürecine ışık tutmaz, aynı zamanda Hegel’in Berlin döneminde açıkça ortaya koyacağı doğanın zamanı ile Tinin zamanı olarak tarih arasındaki ilişkiyi de temellendirir. Bu bağlamda Heidegger, Koyré ve Bloch gibi yorumcuların aksine Bouton, Hegelci zaman diyalektiğinin kökeninde geçmişin ya da geleceğin önceliği tezini reddeder. Bouton’a göre Hegel felsefesinde zamanın anlamı, zamanın diğer iki boyutundan yalıtılmış olan geçmişte değil, üç zamansal boyutu kendinde içeren somut şimdidedir. Bouton, zaman ve zamana tabi olan hadiselerin yarattığı açmazın yanı sıra, ezeli ve ebedilik ile somut şimdi arasındaki ilişkiyi Jena dönemi ile Berlin dönemine ait dersler ışığında inceler. (shrink)

Dada la intimidad en que a menudo vivían los esclavos y sus dueños, la amenaza servil estaba siempre latente y podía ser letal. Para mantener a los esclavos bajo control y conseguir que hicieran su trabajo, los historiadores creen que se estableció un doble sistema de premios y castigos -la zanahoria y el palo- en el que la esperanza de la manumisión ocupaba un lugar destacado. En este artículo, intentaremos mostrar que la manumisión no contribuyó de modo preferente a obtener (...) la obediencia de los esclavos, pues había otras recompensas más asequibles. Tan importantes como el doble sistema de premios y castigos fueron otros mecanismos que buscaban que el esclavo interiorizase su condición y la aceptase sin protestar. Given the intimacy in which slaves and their owners often lived, the servile threat was always latent and could be lethal. To keep the slaves under control and to get them to do their work, historians believe that a dual system of rewards and punishments -the carrot and the stick- was established in which the hope of manumission occupied a prominent place. In this article, we will try to show that manumission was not the main mechanism to obtain obedience from slaves, since there were other rewards at hand. As important as the double system of rewards and punishments were other mechanisms through which slaves assimilated their condition as natural and accepted it without protest. (shrink)

The irrelevance of ideology is perhaps one of the most strongly held views shared by the historians of the Late Republic. As indicated by Matthias Gelzer in 1912, in those final years of the Roman Republic, ‘political struggles were fought out by thenobilesat the head of their dependents’. In his opinion, this was nothing more than a power struggle, in which slogans or ideas were merely propaganda, without any real value. In 1931, analysing the political proposals of Cicero, Gelzer's disciple (...) Hermann Strasburger rejected the existence of political parties, as, in his opinion, terms such asoptimatesorpopulareswere merely propagandistic mottos and pure wordplay. As a result, it became widely believed that the civil war between Caesar and Pompey was nothing more than a struggle betweendignitates, that is, a confrontation for leadership between ambitious politicians who were not prepared to compromise. More recently, in 1994, Luigi Loreto considered the conflict between Caesar and Pompey to be aimed at seizing power, unlike ‘ideological’ wars, where the aim was to maintain or instate a specific type of social or political order. (shrink)

Opponents of Causal Decision Theory (CDT) sometimes claim (i) that it gives the wrong advice in Egan-style cases, where the CDT-endorsed act brings news that it causes a bad outcome; (ii) that CDT gives the right advice in Newcomb cases, where it is known in advance that the CDT-act causes you to be richer than the alternative. This paper argues that (i) and (ii) cannot both be true if rational preference over acts is transitive.

The essay presents a novel counterexample to Causal Decision Theory (CDT). Its interest is that it generates a case in which CDT violates the very principles that motivated it in the first place. The essay argues that the objection applies to all extant formulations of CDT and that the only way out for that theory is a modification of it that entails incompatibilism. The essay invites the reader to find this consequence of CDT a reason to reject it.

Causal decision theory (CDT) cares only about the effects of a contemplated act, not its causes. The article constructs a case in which CDT consequently recommends a bet that the agent is certain to lose, rather than a bet that she is certain to win. CDT is plainly giving wrong advice in this case. It therefore stands refuted. 1 The Argument2 The Argument in More Detail2.1 The betting mechanism2.2 Soft determinism2.3 The content of P 2.4 The argument again3 The Descriptive (...) Premise3.1 Causal decision theory3.2 Causal decision theory prefers A14 The Normative Premise5 Objections5.1 Table 1 and Table 2 are misleading5.2 The agency theory of causation5.3 The payment mechanism5.4 Newcomb’s problem5.5 Against the normative premise5.6 Drop soft determinism. (shrink)

Probably many people have cyclic preferences: they prefer A to B, B to C and C to A for some objects of choice A, B and C. Recent work has resurrected the objection to cyclic preference that agents possessing them are open to exploitation by means of ‘money pumps’. The paper briefly reviews this work and proposes a general approach to problems of sequential choice that makes cyclic preference immune to exploitation by means of these new mechanisms.

The paper distinguishes versions of the 'Agency theory of causation' and defends some of them against the charge of circularity.

Evidential Decision Theory is a radical theory of rational decision-making. It recommends that instead of thinking about what your decisions *cause*, you should think about what they *reveal*. This Element explains in simple terms why thinking in this way makes a big difference, and argues that doing so makes for *better* decisions. An appendix gives an intuitive explanation of the measure-theoretic foundations of Evidential Decision Theory.

_The Belt and Road initiative was announced in 2013 under the administration of China’s President, Xi Jinping. It was designed to fulfill the aim of interconnecting Asia, Europe, and Africa through reliable connectivity networks. In reaction to it, the 47 th summit of G7 in June 2021 has given a response to this Chinese Initiative with the idea of Build Back Better World (B3W). G7 tried to show that the world can have an alternative to BRI. The main objective of (...) the study was to compare the feasibility of these two massive infrastructural projects. It is a qualitative document analysis of the previously published material on the related theme, that highlighted a competition of economic supremacy between the US and China. The research found that BRI was gaining enough popularity as compared to B3W in the eyes of the world specifically in connecting different regions._. (shrink)

The best-known argument for Evidential Decision Theory (EDT) is the ‘Why ain’cha rich?’ challenge to rival Causal Decision Theory (CDT). The basis for this challenge is that in Newcomb-like situations, acts that conform to EDT may be known in advance to have the better return than acts that conform to CDT. Frank Arntzenius has recently proposed an ingenious counter argument, based on an example in which, he claims, it is predictable in advance that acts that conform to EDT will do (...) less well than acts that conform to CDT. We raise two objections to Arntzenius’s example. We argue, first, that the example is subtly incoherent, in a way that undermines its effectiveness against EDT; and, second, that the example relies on calculating the average return over an inappropriate population of acts. (shrink)

The paper argues against Bob Hale's (1999) argument that enquirers must regard some truths as necessary truths. Hale's argument against Quinean skepticism. like many similar arguments due to McFetridge, Wright and others, involves a quantifier shift fallacy.

In recent years, many Small Island Developing State governments have worked to increase openness and transparency of their transactions as a means to enhance efficiency and reduce corruption in their economies. In order to achieve a cost-effective and efficient strategy to implement a transparent government, Information Communication Technologies offer an opportunity of virtualization by deploying e-government services to promote transparency, accountability and consistency in the public sector and to minimize corruption. This paper explores the potential impact of government virtualization by (...) SIDS and against corruption by comparing the corruption perception index rates of 15 SIDS countries. The CPI relates to the degree by which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians by business people and country analysts. In order to reveal the long-term impact of virtual deployment and its consequences on corruption, an in-depth case analysis based on the CPI index rates was conducted on the deployment of the e-government system in Cyprus. (shrink)

Evolutionary game theory is ethically neutral: its assumption of ‘rationality’ has nothing to do with selfishness but is in fact entirely compatible with altruism. If altruism has an evolutionary explanation then this fact is of no theological relevance: in particular it is not any sort of evidence of a divine plan etc.

A passive brain–computer interface based upon functional near-infrared spectroscopy brain signals is used for earlier detection of human drowsiness during driving tasks. This BCI modality acquired hemodynamic signals of 13 healthy subjects from the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain. Drowsiness activity is recorded using a continuous-wave fNIRS system and eight channels over the right DPFC. During the experiment, sleep-deprived subjects drove a vehicle in a driving simulator while their cerebral oxygen regulation state was continuously measured. Vector phase analysis (...) was used as a classifier to detect drowsiness state along with sleep stage-based threshold criteria. Extensive training and testing with various feature sets and classifiers are done to justify the adaptation of threshold criteria for any subject without requiring recalibration. Three statistical features along with six VPA features were used. The average accuracies for the five classifiers are 90.9% for discriminant analysis, 92.5% for support vector machines, 92.3% for nearest neighbors, 92.4% for both decision trees, and ensembles over all subjects’ data. Trajectory slopes of CORE vector magnitude and angle: m and m are the best-performing features, along with ensemble classifier with the highest accuracy of 95.3% and minimum computation time of 40 ms. The statistical significance of the results is validated with a p-value of less than 0.05. The proposed passive BCI scheme demonstrates a promising technique for online drowsiness detection using VPA along with sleep stage classification. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyze historical evolution, and perspective vis-à-vis prospects of tourism development in Pakistan, especially in the wake of ongoing CPEC projects. It is a well-known fact that development of tourism over the years has been greatly influenced by the overall human development, therefore industrial revolution led to the development of economic corridors, integration and connectivity among societies. Consequently, industrial society initiated the process of globalization and activities of mass tourism. However, owing to rapid technological advancements postmodern society (...) started looking for personalized and diverse tourism products. Travel and tourism is one of the leading industries that is contributing to the World economy in a big way. It has phenomenal economic impact including transportation, entertainment, accommodation and other related aspects. However, despite having an abundance of cultural resources, Pakistan ranks abysmally low on travel and tourism competitiveness index developed by the World economic forum. Besides hosting six UNESCO World heritage sites and host of other attractions, Pakistan is only harvesting 2.7 % from the tourism industry to its GDP as compared to its 10% contribution to World GDP. Thus, huge potential awaits tapping with commitment and ingenuity. (shrink)