Our preferences determine how we act and think, but exactly what the mechanics are and how they work is a central cause of concern in many disciplines. This book uses techniques from modern logics of information flow and action to develop a unified new theory of what preference is and how it changes. The theory emphasizes reasons for preference, as well as its entanglement with our beliefs. Moreover, the book provides dynamic logical systems which describe the explicit triggers driving preference change, including new information, suggestions, and commands. In sum, the book creates new bridges between many fields, from philosophy and computer science to economics, linguistics, and psychology. For the experienced scholar access to a large body of recent literature is provided and the novice gets a thorough introduction to the action and techniques of dynamic logic.

"This encyclopedia, magnificently edited by Byron Kaldis, will become a valuable source both of reference and inspiration for all those who are interested in the interrelation between philosophy and the many facets of the social sciences. A must read for every student of the humanities." Wulf Gaertner, University of Osnabrueck, Germany "Like all good works of reference this Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences is not to be treated passively: it provides clear and sometimes controversial material for constructive confrontation. It is a rich resource for critical engagement. The Encyclopedia conceived and edited by Byron Kaldis is a work of impressive scope and I am delighted to have it on my bookshelf.” David Bloor, Edinburgh University "This splendid and possibly unique work steers a skilful course between narrower conceptions of philosophy and the social sciences. It will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers in either or both fields, and to anyone working on the interrelations between them." William Outhwaite, Newcastle University The Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences is the first of its kind in bringing the subjects of philosophy and the social sciences together. It is not only about the philosophy of the social sciences but, going beyond that, it is also about the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences. The subject of the Encyclopedia is purposefully multi- and inter-disciplinary. Knowledge boundaries are both delineated and crossed over. The goal is to convey a clear sense of how philosophy looks at the social sciences and to mark out a detailed picture of how the two are interrelated: interwoven at certain times but also differentiated and contrasted at others. The Entries cover topics of central significance but also those that are both controversial and on the cutting-edge, underlining the unique mark of this Encyclopedia: the interrelationship between philosophy and the social sciences, especially as it is found in fresh ideas and unprecedented hybrid disciplinary areas. The Encyclopedia serves a further dual purpose: it contributes to the renewal of the philosophy of the social sciences and helps to promote novel modes of thinking about some of its classic problems.

The first reference on rationality that integrates accounts from psychology and philosophy, covering descriptive and normative theories from both disciplines. Both analytic philosophy and cognitive psychology have made dramatic advances in understanding rationality, but there has been little interaction between the disciplines. This volume offers the first integrated overview of the state of the art in the psychology and philosophy of rationality. Written by leading experts from both disciplines, The Handbook of Rationality covers the main normative and descriptive theories of rationality—how people ought to think, how they actually think, and why we often deviate from what we can call rational. It also offers insights from other fields such as artificial intelligence, economics, the social sciences, and cognitive neuroscience. The Handbook proposes a novel classification system for researchers in human rationality, and it creates new connections between rationality research in philosophy, psychology, and other disciplines. Following the basic distinction between theoretical and practical rationality, the book first considers the theoretical side, including normative and descriptive theories of logical, probabilistic, causal, and defeasible reasoning. It then turns to the practical side, discussing topics such as decision making, bounded rationality, game theory, deontic and legal reasoning, and the relation between rationality and morality. Finally, it covers topics that arise in both theoretical and practical rationality, including visual and spatial thinking, scientific rationality, how children learn to reason rationally, and the connection between intelligence and rationality.

A comprehensive examination of the interfaces of logic, computer science, and game theory, drawing on twenty years of research on logic and games. This book draws on ideas from philosophical logic, computational logic, multi-agent systems, and game theory to offer a comprehensive account of logic and games viewed in two complementary ways. It examines the logic of games: the development of sophisticated modern dynamic logics that model information flow, communication, and interactive structures in games. It also examines logic as games: the idea that logical activities of reasoning and many related tasks can be viewed in the form of games. In doing so, the book takes up the “intelligent interaction” of agents engaging in competitive or cooperative activities and examines the patterns of strategic behavior that arise. It develops modern logical systems that can analyze information-driven changes in players' knowledge and beliefs, and introduces the “Theory of Play” that emerges from the combination of logic and game theory. This results in a new view of logic itself as an interactive rational activity based on reasoning, perception, and communication that has particular relevance for games. Logic in Games, based on a course taught by the author at Stanford University, the University of Amsterdam, and elsewhere, can be used in advanced seminars and as a resource for researchers.

This book develops a view of logic as a theory of information-driven agency and intelligent interaction between many agents - with conversation, argumentation and games as guiding examples. It provides one uniform account of dynamic logics for acts of inference, observation, questions and communication, that can handle both update of knowledge and revision of beliefs. It then extends the dynamic style of analysis to include changing preferences and goals, temporal processes, group action and strategic interaction in games. Throughout, the book develops a mathematical theory unifying all these systems, and positioning them at the interface of logic, philosophy, computer science and game theory. A series of further chapters explores repercussions of the 'dynamic stance' for these areas, as well as cognitive science.

This volume brings together a group of logic-minded philosophers and philosophically oriented logicians, mainly from Asia, to address a variety of logical and philosophical topics of current interest, offering a representative cross-section of the philosophical logic landscape in early 21st-century Asia. It surveys a variety of fields, including modal logic, epistemic logic, formal semantics, decidability and mereology. The book proposes new approaches and constructs more powerful frameworks, such as cover theory, an algebraic approach to cut-elimination, and a Boolean approach to causal discovery, to name but a few. Readers may find a wide range of applications of these original works in current research of philosophical logic, especially in the structural and conceptual analysis of some significant semantic properties and formal systems. The variety of topics and issues discussed here will appeal to readers from a broad spectrum of disciplines, ranging from mathematical/philosophical logic, computing science, cognitive science and artificial intelligence, to linguistics, game theory and beyond.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Discovery Science, DS 2016, held in banff, AB, Canada in October 2015. The 30 full papers presented together with 5 abstracts of invited talks in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 60 submissions.The conference focuses on following topics: Advances in the development and analysis of methods for discovering scientific knowledge, coming from machine learning, data mining, and intelligent data analysis, as well as their application in various scientific domains.