Silva Marzetti Dall’aste Brandolini 
Fundamental Uncertainty 
Rationality and Plausible Reasoning

This volume addresses the subject of uncertainty from the point of view of an extended conception of rationality. In particular, the contributions explore the premises and implications of plausible reasoning when probabilities are non-measurable or unknown, and when the space of possible events is only partially identified.

Table of Content

Fundamental Uncertainty and Plausible Reasoning: Introduction ; S.Marzetti & R.Scazzieri Logic, Empiricism and Probability Structures; H.Kyburg The Weight of Argument; I.Levi Inductive Intuition; V.Fano A Theory of Similarity and Uncertainty; R.Scazzieri Generalized Theory of Uncertainty: Principal Concepts and Ideas; L.Zadeh The Weight of Argument and Economic Decisions; A.Vercelli The Relevance Quotient and Probabilistic Equilibrium; D.Costantini & U.Garibaldi Non Self-Averaging Phenomena in Macroeconomics: Neglected Sources of Uncertainty and Policy Ineffectiveness; M.Aoki Induction and Atomic Universe: A Critical Reorientation of Keynes’s Economic and Philosophical Thoughts; I.Hishiyama Uncertainty and Rationality: Keynes and Modern Economics; J.Kregel & E.Nasica Moral Good and Right Conduct: A General Theory of Welfare Under Fundamental Uncertainty; S.Marzetti

About the author

SILVA MARZETTI DALL’ASTE BRANDOLINI is Professor of Economics, University of Bologna, Italy. She has published, amongst other research papers, ‘Il comportamento razionale del policy maker’, Economia Politica, 1998; ‘Economic and Social Demand for Coastal Protection’, Coastal Engineering, 2005 (co-authored); ‘Happiness and Sustainability: A Modern Paradox’, in L. Bruni and P. L. Porta (eds), Handbook on the Economics of Happiness, Cheltenham, U.K. and Northampton, Mass., 2007; ‘Recreational Demand Functions for Different Categories of Beach Visitors’, Tourism Economics, 2009. She has also edited (in collaboration with A. Pasquinelli), John Maynard Keynes, Trattato sulla probabilità (Italian translation of J. M. Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability) and (in collaboration with R. Scazzieri), La probabilità in Keynes, Bologna, 1999.

ROBERTO SCAZZIERI is Professor of Economic Analysis, University of Bologna; Senior Member, Gonville and Caius College and Clare Hall, Cambridge. He won the St Vincent Prize for Economics, 1984 and the Linceo Prize for Economics, 2004. He has authored A Theory of Production. Tasks, Processes and Technical Practices, Oxford, 1993; co-edited Foundations of Economics. Structures of Inquiry and Economic Theory, Oxford, 1986; Production and Economic Dynamics, Cambridge, 1996; Knowledge, Social Institutions and the Division of Labour, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, US, 2001; Reasoning, Rationality and Probability, Stanford, 2008; The Migration of Ideas, Sagamore Beach, 2008; Markets, Money and Capital. Hicksian Economics for the 21st Century, Cambridge, 2008; and Capital, Time and Transitional Dynamics, London and New York, 2009.