Search results for "epistemic"

A Dempster-Shafer Theory-based approach to the Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) under epistemic uncertainty: application to the…

2017

Abstract Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a safety and reliability analysis tool widely used for the identification of system/process potential failures, their causes and consequences. When aimed at the failure modes prioritization, FMEA is named Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA). In the latter case, failure modes are commonly prioritized by means of the Risk Priority Number (RPN) that has been widely criticized to have several shortcomings. Firstly, in the presence of multiple experts supplying different and uncertain judgments on risk parameters, RPN is not able to deal with such a kind of information. Therefore, the present paper proposes the Dempster-Shaf…

Modality and Injunctive in Homeric Greek: the case of counterfactual and epistemic constructions

Homeric unaugmented aorists and imperfects are the oldest verbal forms attested in Greek, which continue the so-called Indo-European ‘injunctives’. The latter were inflectionally underspecified as regards verbal categories such as tense or mood (Hoffmann 1967; Kiparsky 1968). Thus, the question arises as to how the attitude of the speaker towards the content of his utterance was expressed. The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of epistemic particles co-occurring with injunctives in the Iliad and the Odyssey, focusing in particular on past counterfactual constructions. Crosslinguistic studies have shown that such modal constructions reflect the universal semantic distinction betwe…

Modality and Injunctive in Homeric Greek: The role of epistemic particles and adverbs in counterfactual constructions

2020

Structurally, unaugmented aorists and imperfects belong to the oldest layer of verbal forms attested in Greek, which continue the so-called Indo-European ‘injunctive’. The latter was inflectionally underspecified as regards verbal categories such as tense or mood (Hoffmann 1967; Kiparsky 1968). Thus, the question arises as to how the attitude of the speaker toward the content of his utterance was expressed. The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of epistemic particles and adverbs co-occurring with injunctives in the Iliad and the Odyssey, focusing in particular on past counterfactual constructions. Crosslinguistic studies have shown that such modal constructions reflect the univer…

Handling the epistemic uncertainty in the selective maintenance problem

2020

Abstract Nowadays, both continuous and discontinuous operating systems require higher and higher reliability levels in order to avoid the occurrence of dangerous or even disastrous consequences. Accordingly, the definition of appropriate maintenance policies and the identification of components to be maintained during the planned system’s downtimes are fundamental to ensure the reliability maximization. Therefore, the present paper proposes a mathematical programming formulation of the selective maintenance problem with the aim to maximize the system’s reliability under an uncertain environment. Specifically, the aleatory model related to the components’ failure process is well known, where…

A dempster-shafer theory-based approach to compute the birnbaum importance measure under epistemic uncertainty

2016

Importance Measures (IMs) aim at quantifying the contribution of components to the system performance. In Process Risk Assessment (PRA), they are commonly used by risk managers to derive information about the risk/safety significance of events. However, IMs are typically calculated without taking into account the uncertainty that inevitably occurs whenever the input reliability data are poor. In literature, uncertainty arising from the lack of knowledge on the system/process parameters is defined as epistemic or subjective uncertainty. The present work aims at investigating on its influence on the Birnbaum IM and on how such an uncertainty could be accounted for in the components ranking. I…

Level of acceptance of epistemically unwarranted beliefs in pre-service primary school teachers: influence of cognitive style, academic level and gen…

2022

One of the main objectives of scientific literacy is the development of rational skills and critical thinking in citizens. This is a central goal for teachers. However, beliefs that lack rational foundation and supporting evidence, named “epistemically unwarranted beliefs” (EUB), spread rapidly among the population. If teachers had some of these EUB, their work could be compromised. The aim of this research was to determine the level of acceptance of different EUB in Spanish pre-service primary school teachers and to analyze the influence of their cognitive style, gender, and academic level. Two hundred and fifty undergraduate students of Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education participated …

Chapter 7. Evidentiality and epistemic modality in Old Catalan

2018

Trattamento dell'incertezza epistemica nell'analisi affidabilistica

Epistemic uncertainty in fault tree analysis approached by the evidence theory

2012

Abstract Process plants may be subjected to dangerous events. Different methodologies are nowadays employed to identify failure events, that can lead to severe accidents, and to assess the relative probability of occurrence. As for rare events reliability data are generally poor, leading to a partial or incomplete knowledge of the process, the classical probabilistic approach can not be successfully used. Such an uncertainty, called epistemic uncertainty, can be treated by means of different methodologies, alternative to the probabilistic one. In this work, the Evidence Theory or Dempster–Shafer theory (DST) is proposed to deal with this kind of uncertainty. In particular, the classical Fau…

The Epistemics of “Personalized Medicine”. Rebranding Pharmacogenetics

2015

Whereas chapter 4 focuses on uses and normative claims of the rhetorical frame “Personalized Medicine” in medical and popular writings, chapter 5 analyzes the intellectual formation of pharmacogenetic, -genomics as a disciplinary field. It explores when, how, and why the leading journals in the field present themselves as part of the overall phenomenon labelled “Personalized Medicine”. Pharmacogenetic journals founded at the beginning of the twenty-first century, not only adopted the rhetorical framing of PM, but also branded pharmacogenomics as a milestone in medical history. Their vision extended to a large societal context that included not only pharmacology and genetics, but also broad …