Notion Of Reason Research Articles

Full downside risk aversion

It is shown that well-behaved notions of greater or less downside risk aversion, via utility transformations, lead not to just one, but two, dual, notions of absolute aversion to downside risk: one, the more evident but weaker condition, requires that the prudence measure be positive, given a positive Arrow–Pratt measure of risk aversion, whereas the other, stronger, but less obvious, condition requires that the prudence measure be greater than three times the corresponding Arrow–Pratt measure. The reason for the appearance of these two extreme conditions, bounding the spectrum of reasonable alternative notions of downside risk aversion, or equivalently of downside risk loving, are explained, and consequences of this divergence in the possible meanings of downside risk aversion are explored.

Observing logics: revisiting reason in The Brothers Karamazov

AbstractVery often in frameworks for and presentations of The Brothers Karamazov, the modern reading public attempts to divide characters by their ability to reason. Usually Ivan is remembered for his reason, pitted against Dmitri’s passion. Adapting some terminology from mathematical logic, I propose and trace a different approach to reason in Dostoevsky’s text, to recast its canonical characters into alternative, though still fluid, categories. This exercise aims not to reinscribe or to reinterpret Dostoevsky’s novel but rather to reconsider an aspect of reasoning, specifically modes or forms of logic. With an admittedly imperfect mapping of characters onto these logical structures, this article encourages the ways in which we can trouble notions of stable reason and sound logic as they operate in the novel.

Legal Gaps and their Logical Forms

Abstract The concept of legal gap is tackled from a number of logical perspectives and semantic methods. After presenting our own goal (Section 1), a first introduction into legal logic refers to Bobbio’s works and his formalization of legal statements (Sections 2 and 3). Then Woleński’s contribution to the area is taken into account through his reference to the distinction between two juridical systems (viz. Common Law vs Civil Law) and the notion of conditional norms (Section 4). The notion of reason is also highlighted in the case of Raz’s legal logic, thereby leading to a future connection with von Wright’s logic of truth and an analogy made with an anti-realist reading of truth-values and norms (Section 5). Our personal contribution is introduced through a reflection on how logic should deal with the logical form of norms (Section 6), before entering a number of crucial definitions and distinctions for the concepts of norm, legal statement, and promulgation (Section 7). The final point is a proposed semantics for legal statements, which is both many-valued and gap-friendly (Section 8). A distinction between a number of requirements for permission and forbiddance leads to a set of non-classical juridical systems in which non-permission and forbiddance are not equivalent with each other any more; this does justice to Woleński’s former distinction between Common Law and Civil Law, also leading ultimately to a non-classical square of legal oppositions in which several legal operators may collapse into other ones (Section 9).

Endless History: Hegel's Flawed Account of Amerindians

Abstract In this article, I argue that Hegel's treatment of Amerindian peoples is rooted in an exclusionary perspective of Reason, which establishes a particular form of life as its defining standard-bearer. This stance results in a distinct form of epistemic misrecognition and injustice that disregards the potential contributions of Amerindian resources and worldviews to the lexicon stablished throughout the modernity. To present an alternative viewpoint, I examine the insights of Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa, whose pluriversal conception of reason and history challenges one-sided portrayals of rationality. My aim is not to ‘fit’ Amerindian concepts into our familiar modern philosophical vocabulary. Instead, I wish to consider Hegel's philosophy through the lens of encounters and epistemic recognition with those who have been denied it. In particular, the application of an ‘ethnographic pact’ as a mode of translation constitutes a valuable contribution to ongoing decolonial discussions. I assert that this approach calls into question Hegel's notions of progress and universal reason, suggesting that his philosophy of history might have taken a divergent path if it had not been entangled in a self-centric epistemic framework. While these considerations remain subject to further development, they offer a fresh perspective for comprehending Hegel's argument beyond his own epistemic limitations.

Partial Reasons

AbstractPartial reasons are considerations in favor of something that, taken individually, are not sufficient to establish an obligation. I consider the extent to which partial reasons are reasons, and why they cannot be reduced to or identified with pro tanto reasons. I lay out two approaches to the content of reasons, the flat theory and the structured theory. I argue that parts of reasons are not partial reasons, by showing that natural ways to represent parts of reasons in the flat theory and the structured theory lead to overgeneration problems with regard to partial reasons. I then formulate two notions of partial reasons: one based on a notion of partial support, which is in turn captured by the notions of full support and partial content, and one based on the notion of in exact verification. I show under which conditions the two notions of partial reasons (based on partial content, and based on inexact verification) coincide.

Testimony and Non-Evidential Reasons for Belief (A Non-Purist Place for Interpersonalism)

Abstract Interpersonalist theories of testimony have the theoretical virtue of giving room to the characteristic interpersonal features of testimonial exchange among persons. Nonetheless, it has been argued that they are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to accounting for the way in which testimonial beliefs may be epistemically justified. In this paper, we defend the epistemological credentials of interpersonalism, emphasizing that it is inseparable from the acceptance of non-evidential epistemic reasons to believe, which demands proper conceptual elaborations on the notions of epistemic reasons and of epistemic justification. We offer a proper reading of epistemic reason, and we defend non-purism on justification as the adequate way to conceive the epistemic proposal of interpersonalism on testimony, realizing that only this combination is capable of apprehending certain cases in which there seems to be no way to rule out the idea that the assurance offered by the testifier offers an epistemic reason to believe that it is not evidential.

Structural causal models reveal confounder bias in linear program modelling

AbstractThe recent years have been marked by extended research on adversarial attacks, especially on deep neural networks. With this work we intend on posing and investigating the question of whether the phenomenon might be more general in nature, that is, adversarial-style attacks outside classical classification tasks. Specifically, we investigate optimization problems as they constitute a fundamental part of modern AI research. To this end, we consider the base class of optimizers namely Linear Programs (LPs). On our initial attempt of a naïve mapping between the formalism of adversarial examples and LPs, we quickly identify the key ingredients missing for making sense of a reasonable notion of adversarial examples for LPs. Intriguingly, the formalism of Pearl’s notion to causality allows for the right description of adversarial like examples for LPs. Characteristically, we show the direct influence of the Structural Causal Model (SCM) onto the subsequent LP optimization, which ultimately exposes a notion of confounding in LPs (inherited by said SCM) that allows for adversarial-style attacks. We provide both the general proof formally alongside existential proofs of such intriguing LP-parameterizations based on SCM for three combinatorial problems, namely Linear Assignment, Shortest Path and a real world problem of energy systems.

How exclusionary reasons guide

ABSTRACT In ‘(Really) Defending Exclusionary Reasons’, Monti seeks to defend Raz’ notion of exclusionary reasons from the attack made by Daniel Whiting. Monti agrees with Whiting that exclusionary reasons cannot motivate and so suggests that they operate by guiding rather than motivating. However, Monti’s account of guiding omits the key feature that they can guide even when one’s action is the opposite to what the exclusionary reason seems to recommend. An amended account of what it is to be guided by exclusionary reasons is needed to give the Razian account the explanatory power it is due.

The Haunting Image of the Frozen Jew (in Christian Self-Understanding), the Self-Determining Universality of Human Reason, and Anticipating the Secular-Nation-State: From Hobbes to Kant and Beyond

Abstract: The following article takes aim at the deeply contested relationship between the secular and the religious in the contemporary: in its conceptual but also genealogical dimensions. Toward this end the essay analyzes Hobbes's Leviathan and Kant's Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason by adopting a bifocaled lens in exposing what is seen as two interrelated forms of universality. One consisted in the (historical and pre-Christian) image of Judaic law and the Jewish people in the self-understanding of what claimed to be a universalizing (moral) Christianity, while the other consisted in a notion of reason that articulates and expresses human morality as a characteristic and index of freedom therein constituting a political society and its laws. The essay argues that the secular-religious dialectic is best understood in terms of this relationship between the image of the Judaic as it operates within Christian and "modern" aspirations toward universality. This dialectic is thereby shown to be essential to thinking and reflecting about the modern emergence of categories like the secular, the national, and the religious in their distinctions: their development as much as their ruin. In such an analysis a critique of the contemporary forms of political-theology—prominently in Schmitt and reiterated in Agamben and Badiou—is also undertaken as conclusion.

Problems of Compensation of Losses in Breach of Civil Law Obligations

Relevance. One of the basic approaches for civil law is to allow the injured party to claim full compensation for losses, including in case of violation of civil law obligations. The widespread use of this approach is based on universal human notions of reasonableness and fairness of restoring the property sphere of the injured party at the expense of the party that committed the violation. Compensation of losses plays a crucial role among the means of protection of subjective civil rights provided for by Article 12 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.The purpose of the study is to develop theoretical provisions that determine the features of the implementation of the principle of full compensation for damages in breach of obligations at the current stage of development of market economy and legislation of the Russian Federation.Objectives: to identify the problems associated with the implementation of the principle of full compensation for losses in the civil law of the Russian Federation; to determine the features of ensuring the balance of interests in the compensation of losses; to determine the directions of further development of legal regulation of the issues under consideration.Methodology. When writing the work, dialectical-materialistic method, systematic method, methods of analysis and synthesis, formal-legal method were used.The results of the research are of a theoretical and applied nature and are aimed at improving the quality of legal regulation of civil legal relations.The conclusions made in the article are of a discussion nature, aimed at continuing the research in the frame-work of the stated subject matter, development of basic principles that allow to uniformly resolve the problems associated with the realization of the rights to full compensation for damages for breach of obligations, including in a complex system of relations between individual participants of civil turnover. The article is a continuation of the author's scientific research on issues related to the problems of civil liability.

XIV—Hegel and Fichte: Two Early Critiques of Capitalism

Abstract In what follows, I attempt to reconstruct Fichte’s and Hegel’s reasons for developing at almost the same time two very different conceptions of a rational economic order. Whereas Hegel, on the basis of his objective notion of reason, would recommend that a rational state, founded on the notion of right, should include a strictly confined, socially embedded market economy, Fichte, on the basis of his subjective notion of reason, thought instead that the very same state must adopt an economic order that might well be described as a ‘planned economy’. Throughout the article I discuss whether it is the stark differences in their methodological premisses or their very different ideas about the individual freedom to be institutionalized in the economic sphere that helps us understand their respective notions of a rational economy.

Reasonable adjustment: Is it a way forward to manage diversity and equity issues in vocational education and training?

Literature has highlighted the importance of having a reasonable adjustment approach as a measure of social justice to provide inclusive education for all students. However, the growing globalisation and commercialisation of vocational education and training has tended to encourage provider organisations to use more flexible reasonable adjustments to attract and retain more students in this domain. The framework of this new reasonable adjustment approach expands on the previous reasonable management approach provided to facilitate disadvantaged students. By introducing innovative and flexible teaching and assessment, this notion of reasonable adjustment now incorporates market-like efforts to secure more income in the form of fees from students. However, there remains unanswered the question of how flexible the reasonable adjustment should be. This paper questions whether achieving a more diverse student population has delivered anything of value to the students who are making up that greater diversity. Perhaps the notion of reasonableness has been applied with too narrow a focus on a reasonable diversity of student entry characteristics, rather than also embracing their learning attainment and subsequent workplace success. Reasonable adjustment may well be a way forward, but perhaps more attention needs to be paid to the concept of reasonableness before that can happen.

Capitalismo y Crisis de la Racionalidad. Reflexiones Fenomenológicas sobre Mercantilización, Matematización del Valor y Desinterés por el Mundo de la Vida

Abstract According to Husserl, the mathematization of the lifeworld involves reducing it, as object of knowledge, to what is measurable, as well as excluding other forms of knowledge of it. This has important implications in relation to the modern conception of rationality, and, significantly, of practical rationality. More precisely, it issues in an impoverishment of the notion of reason. This article examines the idea that the process of commodification associated with the consolidation and expansion of capitalism has motivated another aspect of the mathematization of nature to which Husserl alludes: the mathematization of value. Born from capitalist economy and from practical attitudes, this mathematization of value is a tendency to reduce all value to use value. In such context, this article offers a phenomenological reflection on the crisis of modern rationality, especially in relation to the difficulty to undertake collective actions that follow logics that are different from that of the accumulation of capital, based on the examination of this other aspect of the mathematization of the lifeworld.

Fostering Quantitative Reasoning Through a Question of Fairness

An instructional activity positions students’ quantitative reasoning as the central mechanism of problem solving based on the notions of fairness and reasonableness.

Eduard Hayrapetyan Piano quartet (1981 – 1998)

As a result of the study of the theme, our conclusions are as follows: In the present article we deal with the piano quartet of the composer Eduard Hayrapetyan. This musical work has its incomparable place both in the creative activity of the composer and in the Armenian chamber instrumental music. Eduard Hayrapetyan is one of the prominent representatives of the Armenian composer school. He created European classic music derived from Armenian professional musical traditions, synthesized contemporary melodic elements with folk and folk - professional elements. He also responded with great interest to the contemporary professional musical structure and in this way created his own special composer trend.In the 20th century composer creative life was flourishing. Eduard Hayrapetyan belongs to those composers whose creative activity is appreciated by the musicians and by the listeners. In 1981 he created the piano trio for violin, cello and piano. However some time later he transformed the trio into the piano quartet (violin, viola, cello and piano).The second part of the quartet was transformed in the figurative meaning. It became more meditative, but not in the meaning of Buddhist meditation, where human thinking is separated from reasonable notion. He described spiritual state of a human being as the heavenly spiritual world. At the same time he restrained human emotions and deep feelings. The piano quartet is unique by its composition. It lacks the general thematic development, i. E.it is based on the mutual transition of the variations, which is expressed very brightly.

Untangling the politics of (re) production of nonexistence in academic writing and publishing

ABSTRACT A plethora of studies on the decentering and decolonializing knowledge construction and production in global academic writing and publishing has ineluctably cast important light on how Euro-Western-centric hegemonic knowledge is preserved and perpetuated in the academia, often leading to detrimental consequences for non-Anglophones researchers and writers. While laudable, the insights generated from such studies need to be further accentuated from another look – ‘the politics of production of nonexistence’ proposed initially by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. This article will first argue that undergirded this politics are the notions of Eurocentricism and metonymic reason. Then, using samples of some of the reviewers’ comments on the author’s own manuscripts, this article will untangle how the politics of the production of nonexistence has been perpetuated and even sustained in academic writing and publishing practices primarily through a mode of the monoculture of rigor of knowledge. In so doing, this study further expands, and hence enriches valuable findings derived from the previous studies on hegemonic knowledge decoloniality.

Разум в истории философии:единство и множественность

This publication is based on the materials of a panel discussion, held on March 11 2022, as part of the panel “Reason and Rationality from the Perspective of the History of Philosophy”. Four scholars, specialists in different philosophical traditions (D.V. Bugai – Ancient Greece; S.Yu. Rykov – Ancient China; N.N. Trubnikova – Japan; M.T. Stepanyants – India), offered their answers to the question of whether it is possible to speak of a common notion of reason and rationality in the light of the difference in the understanding of these phenomena in various intellectual and cultural traditions. The panel discussion consists of an introduction, contributions of each of the participants and a closing discussion.

Existential Philosophy and Antiracism

Lewis R. Gordon is Professor of Philosophy (and Head of the Department of Philosophy) at the University of Connecticut. His two most recent books are Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (New York: Routledge, 2020) and Fear of Black Consciousness (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022). Since his first monograph, Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (1995), Gordon’s many writings have challenged Sartre scholars to move beyond narrowly Euro-centric ideas of reason, humanity, and existence. The existential philosophy pioneered in Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (a revision of Gordon’s 1993 Ph. D. dissertation), placed the issue of antiracism at the heart of the study of existence. A prolific and highly visible philosopher, Gordon’s writings have inspired an explosion of interest in Africana Existentialism, an open-ended, creolizing philosophy. In the interview below, Gordon outlines the existential situations that face us today. How is human liberation possible given the soul-killing forces of white supremacy, capitalism, and ongoing colonization? Gordon insists on the importance of antiracist institution building, including the transformation of white spaces, especially in academic journals, at conferences, and in university philosophy departments. Importantly, Gordon reminds us that Sartre was one of the few European writers to offer “a genuine engagement with Black intellectuals.” Like Sartre’s famous assertion that “Existentialism is a Humanism,” Gordon’s message is that Black Existentialism is a Humanism. Challenging the Euro-centric notion that human existence is an abstract, color-less category, Gordon teaches us a new way of thinking and listening. Misguided by parochial notions of human reason, many white (and/or non-Black) philosophers have closed their minds and ears to the calls of Black liberation, thinking they have nothing at stake, or that they must remain mere “allies.” Gordon’s work shows us a different path: Black liberation is a universal ethical injunction. Existential philosophy dissolves the supposed contradiction between action and theory, between universal and concrete, between ally and freedom fighter. Done properly, existential philosophy is, in Gordon’s words, “a form of epistemological decolonial practice.”

A Theologian’s Answer to the Challenge of Colonization. Francisco de Vitoria on the Meta-Communicative Aspects of Religious Contact in a Colonial Setting

In Francisco de Vitoria’s (1483?-1546) texts, one may witness a significant object-language attempt to contemplate on and to establish the conditions for successful communication between traditions. It is an attempt on meta-communicative issues involved in the situation of religious contact between Spanish conquerors and missionaries and the indigenous population of the New World. The Dominican professor bases his considerations on the analysis of language as the preeminent element of human communities. Criticizing former missionary practices, Vitoria aims at establishing the notions of reason and purity of conduct as tertia comparationis that allow the connection of Christian discourse to the mindset of the indigenous. Therefore, to Vitoria, the main meta-communicative goal of a missionizing Christian speaker in facing a non-Christian audience is to establish a situation that allows hearing reason being communicated.

Kantův pojem transcendentálního ideálu. Pokus o rekonstrukci

Kant treats the problem of a philosophical theory of God in two basic steps. First he develops his own understanding of the notion of God by providing the doctrine of the transcendental ideal. Then he proceeds to a critique of three types of the proof of God’s existence. Thus, Kant’s „deconstruction“ of philosophical theology has a positive and a negative part. The present contribution analyses the positive part only, with the aim to supply a detailed reconstruction of Kant’s procedure here. The reconstruction proceeds in the following steps. First we have to elucidate Kant’s notion of ideal. Following Wolff’s differentiation of the three kinds of special metaphysics, Kant distinguishes three basic types of those notions of pure reason which, in an explicit reference to Plato, he names „ideas“. It must then be explained why Kant calls the theological idea, unlike the psychological and the cosmological ones, an ideal. My claim is that the difficulty of the chapter on the transcendental ideal derives from the fact that Kant, without adverting to it explicitly yet in accordance with his own methodology, develops one by one three alternative suggestions of how the notion of the transcendental ideal can be approached. These three suggestions are then investigated in three sections where I also attempt to answer the question as to why Kant defines the theological idea to be not only an ideal but also a transcendental one. In conclusion, I provide a reconstruction of Kantʼs explanation of the origin of the notion of the transcendental ideal in pure reason.