The Illusion Of Certainty

The Illusion Of Certainty Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of The Illusion Of Certainty book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

The Illusion of Certainty

Author : James Titus Houk
Publisher : Prometheus Books
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781633883239

Get Book

The Illusion of Certainty by James Titus Houk Pdf

In this examination of religion's influence on society, an anthropologist critiques fundamentalism and all mindsets based on rigid cultural certainties. The author argues that the future can only be safeguarded by a global humanistic outlook that recognizes and respects differing cultural perspectives and endorses the use of critical reason and empiricism. Houk coins the term "culturalism" to describe dogmatic viewpoints governed by culture-specific values and preconceived notions. Culturalism gives rise not only to fundamentalism in religion but also stereotypes about race, gender, and sexual orientation. Turning specifically to Christian fundamentalism, the author analyzes the many weaknesses of what he calls a faith-based epistemology, particularly as such thinking is displayed in young-earth creationism, the reliance on revelation and subjective experiences as a source of religious knowledge, and the reverence accorded the Bible despite its obvious flaws. As he points out, the problem with such cultural knowledge generally is that it is non-falsifiable and ultimately has no lasting value in contrast to the data-based and falsifiable knowledge produced by science, which continues to prove its worth as a reliable source of accurate information. Concluding that there is no future to the fundamentalist mindset in a diverse world where religion often exacerbates conflicts, he makes a strong case for reason and mutual tolerance.

Certainty

Author : Paul F. Kisak
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2016-02-01
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1523809868

Get Book

Certainty by Paul F. Kisak Pdf

Certainty is perfect knowledge that has total security from error, or the mental state of being without doubt. Objectively defined, certainty is total continuity and validity of all foundational inquiry, to the highest degree of precision. Something is certain only if no skepticism can occur. Philosophy (at least, historical Cartesian philosophy) seeks this state. It is widely held that certainty about the real world is a failed historical enterprise (that is, beyond deductive truths, tautology, etc.). This is in large part due to the power of David Hume's problem of induction. Physicist Carlo Rovelli adds that certainty, in real life, is useless or often damaging (the idea is that "total security from error" is impossible in practice, and a complete "lack of doubt" is undesirable). This book discusses the issues that surround claims of certainty and the illusion of absolute truth and perfection.

The End of Certainty

Author : Ilya Prigogine,Isabelle Stengers
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 1997-08-17
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780684837055

Get Book

The End of Certainty by Ilya Prigogine,Isabelle Stengers Pdf

Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine discusses the irreversibility of time and his findings impact on the laws of physics.

The Illusion of Certainty

Author : Erik Rifkin,Edward Bouwer
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2007-09-23
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780387485720

Get Book

The Illusion of Certainty by Erik Rifkin,Edward Bouwer Pdf

This book provides an understanding and appreciation of the risk assessment process and the ability to objectively interpret health risk values. Included is an explanation of the uncertainty inherent in the assessment of risks as well as an explanation of how the communication and characterization of risks can dramatically alter the perception of those risks. Case studies illustrate the strengths and limitations of characterizing certain risks. Using the accepted risk assessment paradigm proposed by the National Research Council, these case studies illustrate which risk values have merit and why other assessments fail to meet basic criteria.

The Illusion of Certainty

Author : Greg Messel
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 452 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2011-07-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 193675052X

Get Book

The Illusion of Certainty by Greg Messel Pdf

"The Illusion of Certainty" follows two parallel storylines. Marc is a successful businessman who seems to have everything-a great job, a beautiful wife, a house in an upscale neighborhood of Portland, Oregon and two great kids who are preparing for college. But something is not right. Marc is unsettled by the sudden change in his wife, Aimee, who seems distant and unhappy. What is going on with her? The second storyline involves a successful young attorney Alexandra Mattson. Alex, as she is called by her friends, meets a handsome young cop, Sean, during an unexpected crisis in her neighborhood. Sean and Alex seem made for each other and begin to merge their futures in a world of uncertainty. The only certainty in life is that we will face uncertainty. Despite all of the technology and controls available in the modern world, sometimes the only comfort comes from the human touch.

Illusions of Certainty: Thoughts about Thinking

Author : Bernard John Warnick
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2022-01-28
Category : Education
ISBN : 0645370509

Get Book

Illusions of Certainty: Thoughts about Thinking by Bernard John Warnick Pdf

This book condemns the certainties which pervade Western societies, whether about innate rights, ethics or socially acceptable behavior, because a close examination of our powers of reasoning shows all such certainties to be illusory; and because illusions, like mirages, lead us astray. It asks what constitutes the acts of thinking and reasoning and examines the neurobiology involved, subjectivity - its origins and unavoidability - objectivity and its limited achievability - and the pervasive ambiguity of the language of ideas. It highlights flaws in the concept of truth; shows how deductive logic itself contains the seeds of failure to produce certainty, how inductive logic yields only probabilities and that neither pattern of logic is how we generally reason. The book demonstrates that undue certainty spawns evils which threaten social stability. A new list of what constitutes logical thought emerges. We consider approaches, of which logic is part, but not the entirety - common sense, pragmatism, judgment and wisdom. We ask, to whom might we listen - philosophers, the wise, or ourselves. Finally, the survival instinct is identified as the biological basis of our ideas about morality, political systems and the like. How a secular morality might be constructed and what an ideology-free society might be like, are considered.

Illusion and Certainty

Author : Martin Weinstein
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 23 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:54815213

Get Book

Illusion and Certainty by Martin Weinstein Pdf

The Illusion of Doubt

Author : Genia Schönbaumsfeld
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 178 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2016
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780198783947

Get Book

The Illusion of Doubt by Genia Schönbaumsfeld Pdf

'The Illusion of Doubt' confronts one of the most important questions in philosophy - what can we know? The radical sceptic's answer is 'not very much' if we cannot prove that we are not subject to (permanent) deception, and shows that the radical sceptical problem is an illusion created by a mistaken picture of our evidential situation.

Risk Savvy

Author : Gerd Gigerenzer
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2014-04-17
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780698151437

Get Book

Risk Savvy by Gerd Gigerenzer Pdf

An eye-opening look at the ways we misjudge risk every day and a guide to making better decisions with our money, health, and personal lives In the age of Big Data we often believe that our predictions about the future are better than ever before. But as risk expert Gerd Gigerenzer shows, the surprising truth is that in the real world, we often get better results by using simple rules and considering less information. In Risk Savvy, Gigerenzer reveals that most of us, including doctors, lawyers, financial advisers, and elected officials, misunderstand statistics much more often than we think, leaving us not only misinformed, but vulnerable to exploitation. Yet there is hope. Anyone can learn to make better decisions for their health, finances, family, and business without needing to consult an expert or a super computer, and Gigerenzer shows us how. Risk Savvy is an insightful and easy-to-understand remedy to our collective information overload and an essential guide to making smart, confident decisions in the face of uncertainty.

Simply Rational

Author : Gerd Gigerenzer
Publisher : Evolution and Cognition
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780199390076

Get Book

Simply Rational by Gerd Gigerenzer Pdf

Statistical illiteracy can have an enormously negative impact on decision making. This volume of collected papers brings together applied and theoretical research on risks and decision making across the fields of medicine, psychology, and economics. Collectively, the essays demonstrate why the frame in which statistics are communicated is essential for broader understanding and sound decision making, and that understanding risks and uncertainty has wide-reaching implications for daily life. Gerd Gigerenzer provides a lucid review and catalog of concrete instances of heuristics, or rules of thumb, that people and animals rely on to make decisions under uncertainty, explaining why these are very often more rational than probability models. After a critical look at behavioral theories that do not model actual psychological processes, the book concludes with a call for a heuristic revolution that will enable us to understand the ecological rationality of both statistics and heuristics, and bring a dose of sanity to the study of rationality.

In Search of Certainty

Author : Mark Burgess
Publisher : "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
Page : 473 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2015-04-09
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9781491923375

Get Book

In Search of Certainty by Mark Burgess Pdf

Quite soon, the world’s information infrastructure is going to reach a level of scale and complexity that will force scientists and engineers to approach it in an entirely new way. The familiar notions of command and control are being thwarted by realities of a faster, denser world of communication where choice, variety, and indeterminism rule. The myth of the machine that does exactly what we tell it has come to an end. What makes us think we can rely on all this technology? What keeps it together today, and how might it work tomorrow? Will we know how to build the next generation—or will we be lulled into a stupor of dependence brought about by its conveniences? In this book, Mark Burgess focuses on the impact of computers and information on our modern infrastructure by taking you from the roots of science to the principles behind system operation and design. To shape the future of technology, we need to understand how it works—or else what we don’t understand will end up shaping us. This book explores this subject in three parts: Part I, Stability: describes the fundamentals of predictability, and why we have to give up the idea of control in its classical meaning Part II, Certainty: describes the science of what we can know, when we don’t control everything, and how we make the best of life with only imperfect information Part III, Promises: explains how the concepts of stability and certainty may be combined to approach information infrastructure as a new kind of virtual material, restoring a continuity to human-computer systems so that society can rely on them.

Calculated Risks

Author : Gerd Gigerenzer
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Education
ISBN : 9780743254236

Get Book

Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer Pdf

At the beginning of the twentieth century, H. G. Wells predicted that statistical thinking would be as necessary for citizenship in a technological world as the ability to read and write. But in the twenty-first century, we are often overwhelmed by a baffling array of percentages and probabilities as we try to navigate in a world dominated by statistics. Cognitive scientist Gerd Gigerenzer says that because we haven't learned statistical thinking, we don't understand risk and uncertainty. In order to assess risk -- everything from the risk of an automobile accident to the certainty or uncertainty of some common medical screening tests -- we need a basic understanding of statistics. Astonishingly, doctors and lawyers don't understand risk any better than anyone else. Gigerenzer reports a study in which doctors were told the results of breast cancer screenings and then were asked to explain the risks of contracting breast cancer to a woman who received a positive result from a screening. The actual risk was small because the test gives many false positives. But nearly every physician in the study overstated the risk. Yet many people will have to make important health decisions based on such information and the interpretation of that information by their doctors. Gigerenzer explains that a major obstacle to our understanding of numbers is that we live with an illusion of certainty. Many of us believe that HIV tests, DNA fingerprinting, and the growing number of genetic tests are absolutely certain. But even DNA evidence can produce spurious matches. We cling to our illusion of certainty because the medical industry, insurance companies, investment advisers, and election campaigns have become purveyors of certainty, marketing it like a commodity. To avoid confusion, says Gigerenzer, we should rely on more understandable representations of risk, such as absolute risks. For example, it is said that a mammography screening reduces the risk of breast cancer by 25 percent. But in absolute risks, that means that out of every 1,000 women who do not participate in screening, 4 will die; while out of 1,000 women who do, 3 will die. A 25 percent risk reduction sounds much more significant than a benefit that 1 out of 1,000 women will reap. This eye-opening book explains how we can overcome our ignorance of numbers and better understand the risks we may be taking with our money, our health, and our lives.

Empire of Illusion

Author : Chris Hedges
Publisher : Knopf Canada
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2009-07-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780307398581

Get Book

Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges Pdf

Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion. Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.

Strategic Risk Management

Author : Paul C. Godfrey,Emanuel Lauria,, John Bugalla,Kristina Narvaez
Publisher : Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2020-01-21
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781523086962

Get Book

Strategic Risk Management by Paul C. Godfrey,Emanuel Lauria,, John Bugalla,Kristina Narvaez Pdf

This book presents a new approach to risk management that enables executives to think systematically and strategically about future risks and deal proactively with threats to their competitive advantages in an ever more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. Organizations typically manage risks through traditional tools such as insurance and risk mitigation; some employ enterprise risk management, which looks at risk holistically throughout the organization. But these tools tend to focus organizational attention on past actions and compliance. Executives need to tackle risk head-on as an integral part of their strategic planning process, not by looking in the rearview mirror. Strategic Risk Management (SRM) is a forward-looking approach that helps teams anticipate events or exposures that fundamentally threaten or enhance a firm's position. The authors, experts in both business strategy and risk management, define strategic risks and show how they differ from operational risks. They offer a road map that describes architectural elements of SRM (knowledge, principles, structures, and tools) to show how leaders can integrate them to effectively design and implement a future-facing SRM program. SRM gives organizations a competitive advantage over those stuck in outdated risk management practices. For the first time, it enables them to look squarely out the front windshield.

The Automotive Industry and the Environment

Author : P Nieuwenhuis,P Wells
Publisher : Elsevier
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2003-07-25
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9781855738607

Get Book

The Automotive Industry and the Environment by P Nieuwenhuis,P Wells Pdf

The automotive industry currently faces huge challenges. The fundamental technological paradigm it relies on, volume production, has become progressively more unprofitable in the face of increasingly segmented niche markets. At the same time it faces increasing regulatory and social pressures to improve both the sustainability of its products and methods of production. Building on a wealth of research, The automotive industry and the environment addresses those challenges and how they can be met in producing a sustainable and profitable industry for the future. The authors first discuss the development of the automotive industry and the problems it currently faces. They then consider the solutions the industry can adopt. The book reviews trends in more environmentally-friendly technologies such as the use of more sustainable fuel sources and new types of modular design with built-in recyclability. However, these technologies can only be fully exploited if methods of manufacture change. The book also describes models of decentralised production, particularly the micro factory retailing (MFR) model, which provide an alternative to volume production and promise to be both more sustainable and more profitable. The automotive industry and the environment provides both a cogent diagnosis of the environmental and other problems facing the industry and a blueprint for a better future. It will be widely welcomed by the industry, policy makers and all those concerned with sustainable transport. Addresses the challenges facing the automotive industry, from the increasing unprofitability of volume production to regulatory and social pressures to improve environmental and product sustainability Examines how the automotive industry can meet the current challenges in producing a sustainable and profitable industry for the future Reviews trends in more environmentally-friendly technologies such as the use of more sustainable fuel sources and new types of modular design with built-in recyclability