Contents
19 found
Order:
  1. Just probabilities.Chad Lee-Stronach - 2024 - Noûs 58 (4):948-972.
    I defend the thesis that legal standards of proof are reducible to thresholds of probability. Many reject this thesis because it appears to permit finding defendants liable solely on the basis of statistical evidence. To the contrary, I argue – by combining Thomson's (1986) causal analysis of legal evidence with formal methods of causal inference – that legal standards of proof can be reduced to probabilities, but that deriving these probabilities involves more than just statistics.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  2. No Double-Halfer Embarrassment: A Reply to Titelbaum.Joel Pust - 2023 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (3):346-354.
    “Double-halfers” think that throughout the Sleeping Beauty Scenario, Beauty ought to maintain a credence of 1/2 in the proposition that the fair coin toss governing the experimental protocol comes up heads. Titelbaum (2012) introduces a novel variation on the standard scenario, one involving an additional coin toss, and claims that the double-halfer is committed to the absurd and embarrassing result that Beauty’s credence in an indexical proposition concerning the outcome of a future fair coin toss is not 1/2. I argue (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  3. Identity and the Limits of Fair Assessment.Rush T. Stewart - 2022 - Journal of Theoretical Politics 34 (3):415-442.
    In many assessment problems—aptitude testing, hiring decisions, appraisals of the risk of recidivism, evaluation of the credibility of testimonial sources, and so on—the fair treatment of different groups of individuals is an important goal. But individuals can be legitimately grouped in many different ways. Using a framework and fairness constraints explored in research on algorithmic fairness, I show that eliminating certain forms of bias across groups for one way of classifying individuals can make it impossible to eliminate such bias across (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  4. Peirce, Pedigree, Probability.Rush T. Stewart & Tom F. Sterkenburg - 2022 - Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 58 (2):138-166.
    An aspect of Peirce’s thought that may still be underappreciated is his resistance to what Levi calls _pedigree epistemology_, to the idea that a central focus in epistemology should be the justification of current beliefs. Somewhat more widely appreciated is his rejection of the subjective view of probability. We argue that Peirce’s criticisms of subjectivism, to the extent they grant such a conception of probability is viable at all, revert back to pedigree epistemology. A thoroughgoing rejection of pedigree in the (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. Does my total evidence support that I’m a Boltzmann Brain?Sinan Dogramaci - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (12):3717-3723.
    A Boltzmann Brain, haphazardly formed through the unlikely but still possible random assembly of physical particles, is a conscious brain having experiences just like an ordinary person. The skeptical possibility of being a Boltzmann Brain is an especially gripping one: scientific evidence suggests our actual universe’s full history may ultimately contain countless short-lived Boltzmann Brains with experiences just like yours or mine. I propose a solution to the skeptical challenge posed by these countless actual Boltzmann Brains. My key idea is (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  6. Conditional Degree of Belief and Bayesian Inference.Jan Sprenger - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (2):319-335.
    Why are conditional degrees of belief in an observation E, given a statistical hypothesis H, aligned with the objective probabilities expressed by H? After showing that standard replies are not satisfactory, I develop a suppositional analysis of conditional degree of belief, transferring Ramsey’s classical proposal to statistical inference. The analysis saves the alignment, explains the role of chance-credence coordination, and rebuts the charge of arbitrary assessment of evidence in Bayesian inference. Finally, I explore the implications of this analysis for Bayesian (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  7. 'More Likely Than Not' - Knowledge First and the Role of Statistical Evidence in Courts of Law.Michael Blome-Tillmann - 2017 - In Carter Adam, Gordon Emma & Jarvis Benjamin (eds.), Knowledge First,. Oxford University Press. pp. 278-292.
    The paper takes a closer look at the role of knowledge and evidence in legal theory. In particular, the paper examines a puzzle arising from the evidential standard Preponderance of the Evidence and its application in civil procedure. Legal scholars have argued since at least the 1940s that the rule of the Preponderance of the Evidence gives rise to a puzzle concerning the role of statistical evidence in judicial proceedings, sometimes referred to as the Problem of Bare Statistical Evidence. While (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  8. Direct Inference from Imprecise Frequencies.Paul D. Thorn - 2017 - In Michela Massimi, Jan-Willem Romeijn & Gerhard Schurz (eds.), EPSA15 Selected Papers: The 5th conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association in Düsseldorf. Cham: Springer. pp. 347-358.
    It is well known that there are, at least, two sorts of cases where one should not prefer a direct inference based on a narrower reference class, in particular: cases where the narrower reference class is gerrymandered, and cases where one lacks an evidential basis for forming a precise-valued frequency judgment for the narrower reference class. I here propose (1) that the preceding exceptions exhaust the circumstances where one should not prefer direct inference based on a narrower reference class, and (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. On the preference for more specific reference classes.Paul D. Thorn - 2017 - Synthese 194 (6):2025-2051.
    In attempting to form rational personal probabilities by direct inference, it is usually assumed that one should prefer frequency information concerning more specific reference classes. While the preceding assumption is intuitively plausible, little energy has been expended in explaining why it should be accepted. In the present article, I address this omission by showing that, among the principled policies that may be used in setting one’s personal probabilities, the policy of making direct inferences with a preference for frequency information for (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  10. Sensitivity, Causality, and Statistical Evidence in Courts of Law.Michael Blome-Tillmann - 2015 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 4 (2):102-112.
    Recent attempts to resolve the Paradox of the Gatecrasher rest on a now familiar distinction between individual and bare statistical evidence. This paper investigates two such approaches, the causal approach to individual evidence and a recently influential (and award-winning) modal account that explicates individual evidence in terms of Nozick's notion of sensitivity. This paper offers counterexamples to both approaches, explicates a problem concerning necessary truths for the sensitivity account, and argues that either view is implausibly committed to the impossibility of (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  11. Is probabilistic evidence a source of knowledge?Ori Friedman & John Turri - 2015 - Cognitive Science 39 (5):1062-1080.
    We report a series of experiments examining whether people ascribe knowledge for true beliefs based on probabilistic evidence. Participants were less likely to ascribe knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence than for beliefs based on perceptual evidence or testimony providing causal information. Denial of knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence did not arise because participants viewed such beliefs as unjustified, nor because such beliefs leave open the possibility of error. These findings rule out traditional philosophical accounts for why (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  12. Belief, credence, and norms.Lara Buchak - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 169 (2):1-27.
    There are currently two robust traditions in philosophy dealing with doxastic attitudes: the tradition that is concerned primarily with all-or-nothing belief, and the tradition that is concerned primarily with degree of belief or credence. This paper concerns the relationship between belief and credence for a rational agent, and is directed at those who may have hoped that the notion of belief can either be reduced to credence or eliminated altogether when characterizing the norms governing ideally rational agents. It presents a (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   213 citations  
  13. Defeasible Conditionalization.Paul D. Thorn - 2014 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 43 (2-3):283-302.
    The applicability of Bayesian conditionalization in setting one’s posterior probability for a proposition, α, is limited to cases where the value of a corresponding prior probability, PPRI(α|∧E), is available, where ∧E represents one’s complete body of evidence. In order to extend probability updating to cases where the prior probabilities needed for Bayesian conditionalization are unavailable, I introduce an inference schema, defeasible conditionalization, which allows one to update one’s personal probability in a proposition by conditioning on a proposition that represents a (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  14. Two Problems of Direct Inference.Paul D. Thorn - 2012 - Erkenntnis 76 (3):299-318.
    The article begins by describing two longstanding problems associated with direct inference. One problem concerns the role of uninformative frequency statements in inferring probabilities by direct inference. A second problem concerns the role of frequency statements with gerrymandered reference classes. I show that past approaches to the problem associated with uninformative frequency statements yield the wrong conclusions in some cases. I propose a modification of Kyburg’s approach to the problem that yields the right conclusions. Past theories of direct inference have (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  15. The objective Bayesian conceptualisation of proof and reference class problems.James Franklin - 2011 - Sydney Law Review 33 (3):545-561.
    The objective Bayesian view of proof (or logical probability, or evidential support) is explained and defended: that the relation of evidence to hypothesis (in legal trials, science etc) is a strictly logical one, comparable to deductive logic. This view is distinguished from the thesis, which had some popularity in law in the 1980s, that legal evidence ought to be evaluated using numerical probabilities and formulas. While numbers are not always useful, a central role is played in uncertain reasoning by the (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  16. Undercutting defeat via reference properties of differing arity: a reply to Pust.Paul D. Thorn - 2011 - Analysis 71 (4):662-667.
    In a recent article, Joel Pust argued that direct inference based on reference properties of differing arity are incommensurable, and so direct inference cannot be used to resolve the Sleeping Beauty problem. After discussing the defects of Pust's argument, I offer reasons for thinking that direct inferences based on reference properties of differing arity are commensurable, and that we should prefer direct inferences based on logically stronger reference properties, regardless of arity.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  17. Feature selection methods for solving the reference class problem.James Franklin - 2010 - Columbia Law Review Sidebar 110:12-23.
    Probabilistic inference from frequencies, such as "Most Quakers are pacifists; Nixon is a Quaker, so probably Nixon is a pacifist" suffer from the problem that an individual is typically a member of many "reference classes" (such as Quakers, Republicans, Californians, etc) in which the frequency of the target attribute varies. How to choose the best class or combine the information? The article argues that the problem can be solved by the feature selection methods used in contemporary Big Data science: the (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  18. Sleeping beauty and the forgetful bayesian.Bradley Monton - 2002 - Analysis 62 (1):47–53.
    Adam Elga takes the Sleeping Beauty example to provide a counter-example to Reflection, since on Sunday Beauty assigns probability 1/2 to H, and she is certain that on Monday she will assign probability 1/3. I will show that there is a natural way for Bas van Fraassen to defend Reflection in the case of Sleeping Beauty, building on van Fraassen’s treatment of forgetting. This will allow me to identify a lacuna in Elga’s argument for 1/3. I will then argue, however, (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   40 citations  
  19. Resurrecting logical probability.James Franklin - 2001 - Erkenntnis 55 (2):277-305.
    The logical interpretation of probability, or "objective Bayesianism'' – the theory that (some) probabilities are strictly logical degrees of partial implication – is defended. The main argument against it is that it requires the assignment of prior probabilities, and that any attempt to determine them by symmetry via a "principle of insufficient reason" inevitably leads to paradox. Three replies are advanced: that priors are imprecise or of little weight, so that disagreement about them does not matter, within limits; that it (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations