M.A. Theses
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Browsing M.A. Theses by Subject "Belief and doubt."
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Item Is language a prerequisite for belief? An alternative approach to false-belief understanding and meta-representation(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2015., 2015.) Sertalp, Ayşe Büşra.; Thorpe, Lucas.Positioning belief within the discussion of philosophy of mind is one of the major issues in this thesis. I find most of the theories developed in this area to be somewhat process-blind and one-sided, such as the ones I investigate within the body of my project: Davidson and Armstrong. Developing a mono system philosophy of mind understanding that attributes all importance to language causes major problems within the discussion, as well as ignoring a way much more crucial aspect: falsebelief understanding. In order to shed more light on the process of belief acquirement, I refer to studies in the field of developmental psychology. The comparison of non-human animals and human babies is crucial for my project since I find strong resemblance between them in terms of mental capabilities until certain ages of the babies. Developmental psychology studies point out to a more crucial mental capability rather than language, false-belief understanding, and stress the importance of a dual system understanding of mind. I leverage this approach within my project and try to blend these findings with philosophical approach by importing Heidegger`s understanding of Dasein and its everydayness. Heidegger opens a gate for me to discuss dual system of mind, which explains the complex belief mechanism distinguishing human beings from other animals with meta-representation and this, in turn, is the mental capacity for developing false-belief understanding.Item Modeling belief revision via belief bases using situation semantics(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2017., 2017.) Bozdağ, Ayşe Sena.; Kılınç, Berna.The belief base approach to belief representation and belief dynamics is developed as an alternative to the belief set approaches, which are pioneered by the AGM model. The belief base approach models collections of information and expectations of an agent as possibly incomplete and possibly inconsistent foundations for her beliefs. Nevertheless, the beliefs of an agent are always consistent; this is ensured by a sophisticated inference relation. Belief changes take place on the information base instead of on the belief set, providing a reasonable account of belief change, for the content of the information base is much smaller than a closed belief set, and directly accessible by the agent for its elements are characterized as explicit and noninferential information the agent acquires, while the closed belief set represents what the agent is committed to believe. In chapter 2, I present an investigation of the belief base approach, both its statics (formation of beliefs from an information base) and its dynamics, while presenting the consequences of the approach; as well as a brief investigation of the AGM model as the representative of the belief set approaches, to make comparisons between the two approaches. In chapter 3, I offer a modal model of the statics of the belief base approach using situation semantics. The choice of semantics is primarily due to that situation semantics can model incomplete and inconsistent collections of sentences. The belief modality offered in this model is intended to capture the inference process in the belief base approach as much as possible.Item Redefining expectations in belief revision theories(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2016., 2016.) Korkmaz, Oğuz.; Kılınç, Berna.In his 2001 book Change, Choice and Inference, Hans Rott offers a theory of belief change that utilizes a version of belief base revision. An outstanding feature of Rott’s theory is that it places emphasis on the concept of expectation and argues that expectations should be distinguished from beliefs in a formal process. However, the distinction between beliefs and expectations turns out to be formally trivial under Rott’s formalization, since in his theory, expectations correspond to nothing but some propositions on which old beliefs are based. In this thesis, I presuppose that belief and expectation are distinct concepts, and following this presupposition, I offer two new interpretations for the concept of expectation that may draw a substantial difference from the concept of belief.