Logic Of Belief Research Articles

Civic Literacy and Disinformation in Democracies

The aim of this study is to explore civic literacy as an approach to counter disinformation in democracies. From group interviews, we elicit, categorize, and analyze diverse perspectives on disinformation in Sweden, previously upheld as a country with high civic literacy levels. We focus on people’s understandings of disinformation, their assessment of their own abilities to discern disinformation, and their ideas about how increased resilience to disinformation could be achieved. Our findings, based on input from 73 interviewees across Sweden, suggest that shared basic knowledge on disinformation is lacking. Moreover, there is a related weak understanding of what constitutes authentic information. Those with low awareness operate on a logic of beliefs, implying that measures to improve factuality and objectivity could not even be aspired for. Still, there are also constituents showing advanced understandings. The majority of respondents call for new measures to strengthen citizen knowledge and skills and generate many proposals to that end. Our results indicate that citizen competence needs to increase considerably to keep up with the rapidly evolving disinformation environment. A concerted drive to boost citizen knowledge and skills, tailored to different constituencies, is needed for the democratic system to work as intended.

A logic of trust-based beliefs

Traditionally, knowledge and beliefs are attributed to agents. The article explores an alternative approach where knowledge is informed by data and belief comes from trust in, not necessarily reliable, data. At the core of the article is the modality “if one dataset is trusted, then another dataset informs a belief”. The main technical result is a sound and complete logical system capturing the properties of this modality and its connection with functional dependency between datasets.

Efficient analysis of belief properties in process algebra

Protocols are typically specified in an operational manner by specifying the communication patterns among the different involved principals. However, many properties are of epistemic nature, e.g., what each principal believes after having seen a run of the protocol. We elaborate on a unified algebraic framework suitable for epistemic reasoning about operational protocols. This reasoning framework is based on a logic of beliefs and allows for the operational specification of untruthful communications. The information recorded in the semantic models to support reasoning about the interaction between the operational and epistemic aspects intensifies the state-space explosion. We propose an efficient on-the-fly reduction for such a unifying framework by providing a set of operational rules. These operational rules automatically generate efficient reduced semantics for a class of epistemic properties, specified in a rich extension of modal μ-calculus with past and belief modality, and can potentially reduce an infinite state space into a finite one. We reformulate and prove criteria that guarantee belief consistency for credulous agents, i.e., agents that are ready to believe what is told unless it is logically inconsistent. We adjust our reduction so that the belief consistency of an original model is preserved. We prove the soundness and completeness result for the specified class of properties.

BeliefFlow: A Framework for Logic-Based Belief Diffusion via Iterated Belief Change

This paper presents BeliefFlow, a novel framework for representing how logical beliefs spread among interacting agents within a network. In a Belief Flow Network (BFN), agents communicate asynchronously. The agents' beliefs are represented using epistemic states, which encompass their current beliefs and conditional beliefs guiding future changes. When communication occurs between two connected agents, the receiving agent changes its epistemic state using an improvement operator, a well-known type of rational iterated belief change operator that generalizes belief revision operators. We show that BFNs satisfy appealing properties, leading to two significant outcomes. First, in any BFN with strong network connectivity, the beliefs of all agents converge towards a global consensus. Second, within any BFN, we show that it is possible to compute an optimal strategy for influencing the global beliefs. This strategy, which involves controlling the beliefs of a least number of agents through bribery, can be identified from the topology of the network and can be computed in polynomial time.

Re-Understanding the Problem of Induction in Empirical Science

<em>A problem is a statement or truth based on experience that is used as a hypothesis. In formulating a hypothesis based on statements as an inductive way of thinking. The problem of induction can also be formulated as a question about the validity or truth of universal statements based on experience. Thinking based on logic gives humans the possibility to gain knowledge, which is deeper than the meaning of what is thought. In formulating a hypothesis based on statements as an inductive way of thinking. The problem of induction can also be formulated as a question about the validity or truth of universal statements based on experience. In the case of inductive logic, however, these relationships vary in strength, measures of conditional probability reflect the degree of rational confidence that a person should have in the hypothesis that empirical science should be so characterized by its methods. With this method, we deal with science with a system based on what we do to what is done. The difference between the psychological view of knowledge which is related to empirical facts, and the logic of knowledge which is only related to empirical facts. With logical connections, the belief in inductive logic is largely due to confusion between psychological problems and epistemological problems.</em>

A hyperintensional approach to positive epistemic possibility

The received view says that possibility is the dual of necessity: a proposition is (metaphysically, logically, epistemically etc.) possible iff it is not the case that its negation is (metaphysically, logically, epistemically etc., respectively) necessary. This reading is usually taken for granted by modal logicians and indeed seems plausible when dealing with logical or metaphysical possibility. But what about epistemic possibility? We argue that the dual definition of epistemic possibility in terms of epistemic necessity generates tension when reasoning about non-idealized agents and is a problem of concern for most hyperintensional epistemic logics that alleviate the problem of logical omniscience. The tension is particularly evident when knowledge is taken as a primitive to define other epistemic concepts, such as justification and belief, as done in the knowledge-first tradition. We propose a non-dual interpretation of epistemic possibility, employing a hyperintensionality filter similar to the one that makes the corresponding epistemic necessity operator hyperintensional. We employ the proposed semantics to model Stalnaker’s belief as epistemic possibility of knowledge and provide a sound and complete axiomatization for a hyperintensional version of his bimodal logic of knowledge and belief.

Eye Movements, Pupil Dilation, and Conflict Detection in Reasoning: Exploring the Evidence for Intuitive Logic

AbstractA controversial claim in recent dual process accounts of reasoning is that intuitive processes not only lead to bias but are also sensitive to the logical status of an argument. The intuitive logic hypothesis draws upon evidence that reasoners take longer and are less confident on belief–logic conflict problems, irrespective of whether they give the correct logical response. In this paper, we examine conflict detection under conditions in which participants are asked to either judge the logical validity or believability of a presented conclusion, accompanied by measures of eye movement and pupil dilation. The findings show an effect of conflict, under both types of instruction, on accuracy, latency, gaze shifts, and pupil dilation. Importantly, these effects extend to conflict trials in which participants give a belief‐based response (incorrectly under logic instructions or correctly under belief instructions) demonstrating both behavioral and physiological evidence in support of the logical intuition hypothesis.

The Moderating Effect of Personal Character and Mediating Effect of Organizational Citizenship Behavior on Ethical Orientation of HRM- Ethical Behavior Linkage

Ethical behavior of employees is an essential individual behavior for survival, success, and growth of any organization. Hardly theoretical arguments and empirical evidence are found with regard to the mediating effect of Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) on Ethical Orientation of Human Resource Management (EOHRM)-Ethical Behavior (EB) linkage, and the moderating effect of employees’ Personal Character (PC) on EOHRM-EB linkage. An empirical survey study was carried out to achieve four specific research objectives established in respect of the network of relationships and effects occurring among the four constructs. A self-administered and structured questionnaire consisting of four instruments measuring the four constructs was used to collect data from 174 branch managers of Licensed Commercial Banks in Sri Lanka to conduct a cross-sectional study. The five hypotheses formulated by basing on two general theories (General System Theory and EDAP Model), arguments, empirical evidence, and logical beliefs of the researchers under the deductive approach were tested. It was substantiated that EOHRM significantly and positively related to EB of employees and this relationship was mediated significantly by OCB and was moderated significantly by PC. The implications were discussed.

Linear Depth Deduction with Subformula Property for Intuitionistic Epistemic Logic

In their seminal paper Artemov and Protopopescu provide Hilbert formal systems, Brower–Heyting–Kolmogorov and Kripke semantics for the logics of intuitionistic belief and knowledge. Subsequently Krupski has proved that the logic of intuitionistic knowledge is PSPACE-complete and Su and Sano have provided calculi enjoying the subformula property. This paper continues the investigations around sequent calculi for Intuitionistic Epistemic Logics by providing sequent calculi that have the subformula property and that are terminating in linear depth. Our calculi allow us to design a procedure that for invalid formulas returns a Kripke model of minimal depth. Finally we also discuss refutational sequent calculi, that is sequent calculi to prove that formulas are invalid.

Phenomenology of Non-Ordinary Logics in Brief Strategic Therapy.

Brief Strategic Therapy (BST) is a psychosocial treatment for mental disorders based on a unique theory of psychological dysfunction that differs from major psychotherapy approaches in that psychological dysfunction follows non-ordinary logics rather than classic logical principles. BST contends that there are three different kinds of non-ordinary logics that underpin psychological dysfunction: the logic of contradiction, the logic of paradox, and the logic of belief. BST therapeutic strategies are based on these non-ordinary logics processes. Unfortunately, descriptions and case examples of these non-ordinary logics are scattered among a myriad of books so that it is difficult for the clinician to get acquainted with them. Additionally, BST literature has described these non-ordinary logics with a somewhat obscure and metaphorical language that might be difficult for the clinician to grasp. Herein, we condensate descriptions and case examples of the three non-ordinary logics, clarify the phenomenological processes of each of the classes of non-ordinary logics, and highlight research findings from different theoretical orientations that are coherent and consistent with our phenomenological accounts of non-ordinary logics. Based on our clinical observations, non-ordinary logics can be distinguished by three variables: (a) the immediate effect of the dysfunctional attempted solution (DAS), (b) the long-term effect of the DAS, and (c) the most salient mental phenomenon associated with the DAS that maintains a psychological problem. This advancement could foster clinicians' ability to identify non-ordinary logics and their ability to devise appropriate strategies to solve psychological problems.

The Impact of Workload, Co-Worker Pressure and Supervisor Pressure on Employee Presenteeism: An Empirical Study on Sri Lankan Employees in Colombo District

Presenteeism is one of the major contemporary issues in Human Resource Management (HRM) as it negatively impacts on worker productivity and ultimately on organizational productivity and goal achievement. Objectives of the study were; (1) to find the degree of presenteeism of Sri Lankan employees in Colombo District who are under the study; (2) to find the impact of workload on employee presenteeism; (3) to find the impact of co-worker pressure on employee presenteeism; (4) to find the impact of supervisor pressure on employee presenteeism; (5) to find the overall impact of workload, co-worker pressure and supervisor pressure on employee presenteeism; and (6) to investigate whether there is any significant difference between male and female employees under study in terms of presenteeism. A theoretical framework was formulated based on some empirical evidences in literature review and logical beliefs of the authors. Three different instruments were developed by the authors to measure the degree of workload, co-worker pressure, and supervisor pressure while Stanford Presenteeism Scale (SPS) was utilized to measure employee presenteeism. Reliability and validity of the instruments are assured. Survey method was utilized and 72 employees responded to the questionnaire through the sampling technique of convenient sampling technique. The empirical findings revealed that the degree of employee presenteeism is between average and high and there is a significant positive impact from workload, co-worker pressure and supervisor pressure on employee presenteeism which means that higher the workload, co-worker pressure and supervisor pressure, higher the presenteeism will be. Further it was revealed that there is no significant difference between male and female employees who are under this study in terms of presenteeism.

The Institutional Foundations of Business Models

This study explores the institutional foundations of business models by comparing business models of two groups of actors. By conducting an empirical multi-case study, the study finds that business model innovation is directed and constrained by the adopted business logic of beliefs, rules, norms, and practices about proper and legitimate ways of conducting intercompany exchange. The results explicate the institutional foundation of business models, demonstrate the role of business model as an artefact and carrier in institutional and business model change, and suggest a novel mechanism of temporal consolidation to settle the dichotomy between alternative and mutually exclusive business models.

Intuitionistic Logics of Confirmation and Discouragement

We analyse intuitionistic logics of confirmation and discouragement. This means that our acceptance of some formula φ in a possible world w gets an additional support or disapprovement. We use pre-ordered neighbourhood frames to model this situation. Our systems have certain connection with so-called logics of false belief and unknown truths.

A computationally grounded logic of awareness

Abstract We introduce a multi-agent logic of explicit, implicit belief and awareness with a semantics using belief bases. The novelty of our approach is that an agent’s awareness is not a primitive but is directly computed from the agent’s belief base. We prove soundness and completeness of the logic relative to the belief base semantics. Furthermore, we provide a polynomial embedding of the logic of propositional awareness into it and a polynomial embedding of our logic into the logic of general awareness. Thanks to the latter embedding, we show that the satisfiability checking problem for our logic is PSPACE complete. Finally, we extend it by the notions of public announcement and private belief expansion.

The Failure of Western Policies toward Iran’s Power Projection & Resilience Strategies

Today, the Islamic Republic has reached the age of reason after forty-three years in power. Its two pillars of existence are nationalism — reinforced by its exclusion from the international scene — and religion — as an ideological mechanism of resilience to evolve, and above all, to endure over time. This nationalist unconsciousness and the appropriation of its destiny in a logic of religious belief are the unexpected result of multiple offensive Western policies such as economic embargo, maximum pressure, sabotage, and targeted assassinations of Iranian personalities with the aim of putting an end to its nuclear programme and annihilating its unsuspected ambitions of expansion in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region. It seems that these Western, and more specifically American, policies have had the opposite effect and have only accelerated the rise of the principalists to power. Nowadays, this hard-line policy between conservatives and ultra-conservatives is more involved in logic of security and external defence policy to strengthen the economic, military and strategic capacities of the “axis of resistance”, and a new domestic policy called “economy of resistance” (a politico-religious project to counteract economic sanctions, as an alternative for the survival of the Islamic Republic while maintaining its independence from the West). The latter is based on logic of self-defence that aims to achieve economic self-sufficiency to counteract the external enemy, and adopts an internal policy that can broaden its popular partisan base. This would help maintain the goals of the imamate and, above all, keep Iran independent from the West.

Public Announcements, Public Lies and Recoveries.

The paper gives a formal analysis of public lies, explains how public lying is related to public announcement, and describes the process of recoveries from false beliefs engendered by public lying. The framework treats two kinds of public lies: simple lying update and two-step lying, which consists of suggesting that the lie may be true followed by announcing the lie. It turns out that agents’ convictions of what is true are immune to the first kind, but can be shattered by the second kind. Next, recovery from public lying is analyzed. Public lies that are accepted by an audience cannot be undone simply by announcing their negation. The paper proposes a recovery process that works well for restoring beliefs about facts but cannot be extended to beliefs about beliefs. The formal machinery of the paper consists of KD45 models and conditional neighbourhood models, with various update procedures on them. Completeness proofs for a number of reasoning systems (converse belief logic, public lies logic, lying and recovery logic, conditional neighbourhood logic, plus its dynamic version) are included.

Autonomous human-machine teams: Reality constrains logic, but hides the complexity of data dependency

<abstract> <p>In this review, scientists have struggled to apply logic to rational beliefs of collectives, concluding that belief logics fail in the face of conflict and uncertainty where reality governs. We have generalized this finding by concluding that traditional social science based on independent concepts about individuals and interpretations of reality requires too many fixes to address its replication crisis, yet ignores the generalization of individuals to teams, for which social science has become largely irrelevant. Unable to process the data dependencies of autonomous human-machine teammates in orthogonal roles for successful teams, producing zero correlations, this problem extends to traditional social science predicated on the belief that perceptions in closed systems (laboratories) are eality. But, as the National Academy of Sciences has noted, this assumption fails in open spaces. Thus, the study of group processes has de-evolved to become overly focused on individuals (e.g., biases), which do not generalize to teams. For a theory of autonomous human-machine teams and systems, generalization is critical. By using an open-systems approach, we have been able to explain the failures of social science, and its ack of success in the field, and we have generalized to autonomous human-machine teams and human-human teams. We extend our theory to conclude that traditional belief logics uses assumptions that, if not tested in reality (e.g., with debates), can be lethal (e.g, DoD's drone tragedy in Afghanistan in 2021). We conclude that an AI machine operating interdependently with a human teammate, jointly challenging each other's beliefs about reality while sharing and shaping their experiences, is the path to autonomy in the open, justifying our research program.</p> </abstract>

Applications in Human Resource Management: A Study of Authoritative Textbooks

For the purpose of achieving four research objectives: (1) to describe general meaning, types, and utility of applications in Human Resource Management (HRM) useful for teaching and learning purpose; (2) to explore, record, and classify applications in HRM presented in the textbooks on HRM selected for the study; (3) to determine the importance of the classified applications in HRM as per the intensity of usage; and (4) to propose some implications of the findings in the way that will contribute theoretically and practically. The adopted research strategy was the desk research strategy and the study was carried out by using two non-scientific methods, i.e., authority to a greater extent and logical beliefs to a certain extent. By adopting seven conditions 29 authoritative textbooks were utilized and from which a considerable number of applications were explored and recorded. They were logically classified into 15 applications which were arranged in the order of importance in terms of the intensity of usage. Finally, implications were given briefly.

A Probabilistic Semantics for Belief Logic

Belief logic is one of the most important branches of philosophical logic. The standard approach for characterizing belief is based on the so-called possible worlds model within which the problem of logical omniscience is considered a significant defect. We present an alternative semantics for belief logic based on a probabilistic model, which formalizes the so-called Lockean thesis in philosophical literature. The Lockean thesis states that a person believes a proposition whenever they see that the probability of the proposition has reached or exceeded a prespecified threshold. We give a complete deductive system for probabilistic belief logic as well as detailed comparisons to existing frameworks of belief logic.

Sullying Sights

ABSTRACT In this article, an account of the architecture of the cognitive contamination system is offered, according to which the contamination system can generate contamination representations in circumstances that do not satisfy the norms of contamination, including in cases of mere visual contact with disgusting objects. It is argued that this architecture is important for explaining the content, logic, distribution, and persistence of maternal impression beliefs – according to which fetal defects are caused by the pregnant mother’s experiences and actions – which in turn provide important evidence of the architecture of the cognitive contamination system.