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In philosophy, Pascal's mugging is a thought experiment demonstrating a problem in expected utility maximization. A rational agent should choose actions whose outcomes, when weighted by their probability, have higher utility. But some very unlikely outcomes may have very great utilities, and these utilities can grow faster than the probability ...
Pascal's wager is a philosophical argument advanced by Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), seventeenth-century French mathematician, philosopher, physicist, and theologian. [1] This argument posits that individuals essentially engage in a life-defining gamble regarding the belief in the existence of God .
The problem of points, also called the problem of division of the stakes, is a classical problem in probability theory. One of the famous problems that motivated the beginnings of modern probability theory in the 17th century, it led Blaise Pascal to the first explicit reasoning about what today is known as an expected value .
For example, it has been argued that certain insights of quantum mechanics refute the principle of distributivity in classical logic, which states that the formula () is equivalent to () (). This claim can be used as an empirical argument for the thesis that quantum logic is the correct logical system and should replace classical logic.
In logic, the law of non-contradiction (LNC; also known as the law of contradiction, principle of non-contradiction (PNC), or the principle of contradiction) states that propositions cannot both be true and false at the same time, e. g. the two propositions "the house is white" and "the house is not white" are mutually exclusive.
Le grand docteur sophiste, 1886 illustration of Gargantua by Albert Robida, expressing mockery of his casuist education. Casuistry (/ ˈ k æ zj u ɪ s t r i / KAZ-ew-iss-tree) is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending abstract rules from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances. [1]
'The problem of demarcation' is an expression introduced by Karl Popper to refer to 'the problem of finding a criterion which would enable us to distinguish between the empirical sciences on the one hand, and mathematics and logic as well as "metaphysical" systems on the other'.
Logical reasoning is a form of thinking that is concerned with arriving at a conclusion in a rigorous way. [1] This happens in the form of inferences by transforming the information present in a set of premises to reach a conclusion.