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  1. The Confirmational Significance of Agreeing Measurements.Casey Helgeson - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (5):721-732.
    Agreement between "independent" measurements of a theoretically posited quantity is intuitively compelling evidence that a theory is, loosely speaking, on the right track. But exactly what conclusion is warranted by such agreement? I propose a new account of the phenomenon's epistemic significance within the framework of Bayesian epistemology. I contrast my proposal with the standard Bayesian treatment, which lumps the phenomenon under the heading of "evidential diversity".
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  • Explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant, or inference to the best explanation meets Bayesian confirmation theory.W. Roche & E. Sober - 2013 - Analysis 73 (4):659-668.
    In the world of philosophy of science, the dominant theory of confirmation is Bayesian. In the wider philosophical world, the idea of inference to the best explanation exerts a considerable influence. Here we place the two worlds in collision, using Bayesian confirmation theory to argue that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant.
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  • The Problem of Measure Sensitivity Redux.Peter Brössel - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (3):378-397.
    Fitelson (1999) demonstrates that the validity of various arguments within Bayesian confirmation theory depends on which confirmation measure is adopted. The present paper adds to the results set out in Fitelson (1999), expanding on them in two principal respects. First, it considers more confirmation measures. Second, it shows that there are important arguments within Bayesian confirmation theory and that there is no confirmation measure that renders them all valid. Finally, the paper reviews the ramifications that this "strengthened problem of measure (...)
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  • Inductive Logic.Franz Huber - 2008 - In J. Lachs R. Talisse (ed.), Encyclopedia of American Philosophy. Routledge.
    Logic is the study of the quality of arguments. An argument consists of a set of premises and a conclusion. The quality of an argument depends on at least two factors: the truth of the premises, and the strength with which the premises confirm the conclusion. The truth of the premises is a contingent factor that depends on the state of the world. The strength with which the premises confirm the conclusion is supposed to be independent of the state of (...)
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  • Irrelevant conjunction and the ratio measure or historical skepticism.J. Brian Pitts - 2013 - Synthese 190 (12):2117-2139.
    It is widely believed that one should not become more confident that all swans are white and all lions are brave simply by observing white swans. Irrelevant conjunction or “tacking” of a theory onto another is often thought problematic for Bayesianism, especially given the ratio measure of confirmation considered here. It is recalled that the irrelevant conjunct is not confirmed at all. Using the ratio measure, the irrelevant conjunction is confirmed to the same degree as the relevant conjunct, which, it (...)
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  • Revamping Hypothetico-Deductivism: A Dialectic Account of Confirmation. [REVIEW]Gregor Betz - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (5):991-1009.
    We use recently developed approaches in argumentation theory in order to revamp the hypothetico-deductive model of confirmation, thus alleviating the well-known paradoxes the H-D account faces. More specifically, we introduce the concept of dialectic confirmation on the background of the so-called theory of dialectical structures (Betz 2010, 2012b). Dialectic confirmation generalises hypothetico-deductive confirmation and mitigates the raven paradox, the grue paradox, the tacking paradox, the paradox from conceptual difference, and the problem of surprising evidence.
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  • A problem for the alternative difference measure of confirmation.Nevin Climenhaga - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (3):643-651.
    Among Bayesian confirmation theorists, several quantitative measures of the degree to which an evidential proposition E confirms a hypothesis H have been proposed. According to one popular recent measure, s, the degree to which E confirms H is a function of the equation P(H|E) − P(H|~E). A consequence of s is that when we have two evidential propositions, E1 and E2, such that P(H|E1) = P(H|E2), and P(H|~E1) ≠ P(H|~E2), the confirmation afforded to H by E1 does not equal the (...)
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  • Bayesianism II: Applications and Criticisms.Kenny Easwaran - 2011 - Philosophy Compass 6 (5):321-332.
    In the first paper, I discussed the basic claims of Bayesianism (that degrees of belief are important, that they obey the axioms of probability theory, and that they are rationally updated by either standard or Jeffrey conditionalization) and the arguments that are often used to support them. In this paper, I will discuss some applications these ideas have had in confirmation theory, epistemol- ogy, and statistics, and criticisms of these applications.
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  • The whole truth about Linda: probability, verisimilitude and a paradox of conjunction.Gustavo Cevolani, Vincenzo Crupi & Roberto Festa - 2010 - In Marcello D'Agostino, Federico Laudisa, Giulio Giorello, Telmo Pievani & Corrado Sinigaglia (eds.), New Essays in Logic and Philosophy of Science. College Publications. pp. 603--615.
    We provide a 'verisimilitudinarian' analysis of the well-known Linda paradox or conjunction fallacy, i.e., the fact that most people judge the probability of the conjunctive statement "Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement" (B & F) as more probable than the isolated statement "Linda is a bank teller" (B), contrary to an uncontroversial principle of probability theory. The basic idea is that experimental participants may judge B & F a better hypothesis about Linda as compared (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Comments and Criticism: Measuring Confirmation and Evidence.Ellery Eells & Branden Fitelson - 2000 - Journal of Philosophy 97 (12):663-672.
    Bayesian epistemology suggests various ways of measuring the support that a piece of evidence provides a hypothesis. Such measures are defined in terms of a subjective probability assignment, pr, over propositions entertained by an agent. The most standard measure (where “H” stands for “hypothesis” and “E” stands for “evidence”) is: the difference measure: d(H,E) = pr(H/E) - pr(H).0 This may be called a “positive (probabilistic) relevance measure” of confirmation, since, according to it, a piece of evidence E qualitatively confirms a (...)
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  • Approaching the truth via belief change in propositional languages.Gustavo Cevolani & Francesco Calandra - 2009 - In M. Suàrez, M. Dorato & M. Rèdei (eds.), EPSA Epistemology and Methodology of Science: Launch of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Springer. pp. 47--62.
    Starting from the sixties of the past century theory change has become a main concern of philosophy of science. Two of the best known formal accounts of theory change are the post-Popperian theories of verisimilitude (PPV for short) and the AGM theory of belief change (AGM for short). In this paper, we will investigate the conceptual relations between PPV and AGM and, in particular, we will ask whether the AGM rules for theory change are effective means for approaching the truth, (...)
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  • Probability, confirmation, and the conjunction fallacy.Crupi Vincenzo, Fitelson Branden & Tentori Katya - 2008 - Thinking and Reasoning 14 (2):182-199.
    The conjunction fallacy has been a key topic in debates on the rationality of human reasoning and its limitations. Despite extensive inquiry, however, the attempt of providing a satisfactory account of the phenomenon has proven challenging. Here, we elaborate the suggestion (first discussed by Sides et al., 2001) that in standard conjunction problems the fallacious probability judgments experimentally observed are typically guided by sound assessments of confirmation relations, meant in terms of contemporary Bayesian confirmation theory. Our main formal result is (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Place of Probability in Science: In Honor of Ellery Eells (1953-2006).Ellery Eells & James H. Fetzer (eds.) - 2010 - Springer.
    To clarify and illuminate the place of probability in science Ellery Eells and James H. Fetzer have brought together some of the most distinguished philosophers ...
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  • Inductive Logic.James Hawthorne - 2011 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Sections 1 through 3 present all of the main ideas behind the probabilistic logic of evidential support. For most readers these three sections will suffice to provide an adequate understanding of the subject. Those readers who want to know more about how the logic applies when the implications of hypotheses about evidence claims (called likelihoods) are vague or imprecise may, after reading sections 1-3, skip to section 6. Sections 4 and 5 are for the more advanced reader who wants a (...)
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  • A case of confusing probability and confirmation.Jeanne Peijnenburg - 2012 - Synthese 184 (1):101-107.
    Tom Stoneham put forward an argument purporting to show that coherentists are, under certain conditions, committed to the conjunction fallacy. Stoneham considers this argument a reductio ad absurdum of any coherence theory of justification. I argue that Stoneham neglects the distinction between degrees of confirmation and degrees of probability. Once the distinction is in place, it becomes clear that no conjunction fallacy has been committed.
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  • Declarations of independence.Branden Fitelson & Alan Hájek - 2017 - Synthese 194 (10):3979-3995.
    According to orthodox (Kolmogorovian) probability theory, conditional probabilities are by definition certain ratios of unconditional probabilities. As a result, orthodox conditional probabilities are undefined whenever their antecedents have zero unconditional probability. This has important ramifications for the notion of probabilistic independence. Traditionally, independence is defined in terms of unconditional probabilities (the factorization of the relevant joint unconditional probabilities). Various “equivalent” formulations of independence can be given using conditional probabilities. But these “equivalences” break down if conditional probabilities are permitted to have (...)
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  • Notes on bayesian confirmation theory.Michael Strevens -
    Bayesian confirmation theory—abbreviated to in these notes—is the predominant approach to confirmation in late twentieth century philosophy of science. It has many critics, but no rival theory can claim anything like the same following. The popularity of the Bayesian approach is due to its flexibility, its apparently effortless handling of various technical problems, the existence of various a priori arguments for its validity, and its injection of subjective and contextual elements into the process of confirmation in just the places where (...)
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  • Qualitative confirmation and the ravens paradox.Patrick Maher - 2005 - Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 83 (1):89-108.
    In From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism Theo Kuipers presents a theory of qualitative confirmation that is supposed to not assume the existence of quantitative probabilities. He claims that this theory is able to resolve some paradoxes in confirmation theory, including the ravens paradox. This paper shows that there are flaws in Kuipers' qualitative confirmation theory and in his application of it to the ravens paradox.
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  • The degree of epistemic justification and the conjunction fallacy.Tomoji Shogenji - 2012 - Synthese 184 (1):29-48.
    This paper describes a formal measure of epistemic justification motivated by the dual goal of cognition, which is to increase true beliefs and reduce false beliefs. From this perspective the degree of epistemic justification should not be the conditional probability of the proposition given the evidence, as it is commonly thought. It should be determined instead by the combination of the conditional probability and the prior probability. This is also true of the degree of incremental confirmation, and I argue that (...)
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  • (1 other version)A bayesian account of independent evidence with applications.Branden Fitelson - 2000 - Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2001 (3):S123-.
    outlined. This account is partly inspired by the work of C.S. Peirce. When we want to consider how degree of confirmation varies with changing I show that a large class of quantitative Bayesian measures of con-.
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  • Confirmation and Induction.Franz Huber - 2007 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Bayes' theorem.James Joyce - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Bayes' Theorem is a simple mathematical formula used for calculating conditional probabilities. It figures prominently in subjectivist or Bayesian approaches to epistemology, statistics, and inductive logic. Subjectivists, who maintain that rational belief is governed by the laws of probability, lean heavily on conditional probabilities in their theories of evidence and their models of empirical learning. Bayes' Theorem is central to these enterprises both because it simplifies the calculation of conditional probabilities and because it clarifies significant features of subjectivist position. Indeed, (...)
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  • Is the conjunction fallacy tied to probabilistic confirmation?Jonah N. Schupbach - 2012 - Synthese 184 (1):13-27.
    Crupi et al. (2008) offer a confirmation-theoretic, Bayesian account of the conjunction fallacy—an error in reasoning that occurs when subjects judge that Pr( h 1 & h 2 | e ) > Pr( h 1 | e ). They introduce three formal conditions that are satisfied by classical conjunction fallacy cases, and they show that these same conditions imply that h 1 & h 2 is confirmed by e to a greater extent than is h 1 alone. Consequently, they suggest (...)
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  • What Is the Point of Confirmation?Franz Huber - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (5):1146-1159.
    Philosophically, one of the most important questions in the enterprise termed confirmation theory is this: Why should one stick to well confirmed theories rather than to any other theories? This paper discusses the answers to this question one gets from absolute and incremental Bayesian confirmation theory. According to absolute confirmation, one should accept ''absolutely well confirmed'' theories, because absolute confirmation takes one to true theories. An examination of two popular measures of incremental confirmation suggests the view that one should stick (...)
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  • Probability, confirmation, and the conjunction fallacy.Vincenzo Crupi, Branden Fitelson & Katya Tentori - 2007 - Thinking and Reasoning 14 (2):182 – 199.
    The conjunction fallacy has been a key topic in debates on the rationality of human reasoning and its limitations. Despite extensive inquiry, however, the attempt to provide a satisfactory account of the phenomenon has proved challenging. Here we elaborate the suggestion (first discussed by Sides, Osherson, Bonini, & Viale, 2002) that in standard conjunction problems the fallacious probability judgements observed experimentally are typically guided by sound assessments of _confirmation_ relations, meant in terms of contemporary Bayesian confirmation theory. Our main formal (...)
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  • Hempel's Raven paradox: A lacuna in the standard bayesian solution.Peter B. M. Vranas - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (3):545-560.
    According to Hempel's paradox, evidence (E) that an object is a nonblack nonraven confirms the hypothesis (H) that every raven is black. According to the standard Bayesian solution, E does confirm H but only to a minute degree. This solution relies on the almost never explicitly defended assumption that the probability of H should not be affected by evidence that an object is nonblack. I argue that this assumption is implausible, and I propose a way out for Bayesians. Introduction Hempel's (...)
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  • Degree-of-belief and degree-of-support: Why bayesians need both notions.James Hawthorne - 2005 - Mind 114 (454):277-320.
    I argue that Bayesians need two distinct notions of probability. We need the usual degree-of-belief notion that is central to the Bayesian account of rational decision. But Bayesians also need a separate notion of probability that represents the degree to which evidence supports hypotheses. Although degree-of-belief is well suited to the theory of rational decision, Bayesians have tried to apply it to the realm of hypothesis confirmation as well. This double duty leads to the problem of old evidence, a problem (...)
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  • The plausibility-informativeness theory.Franz Huber - 2007 - In Vincent Hendricks (ed.), New Waves in Epistemology. Aldershot, England and Burlington, VT, USA: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    The problem adressed in this paper is “the main epistemic problem concerning science”, viz. “the explication of how we compare and evaluate theories [...] in the light of the available evidence” (van Fraassen 1983, 27).
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  • Bayesian confirmation and auxiliary hypotheses revisited: A reply to Strevens.Branden Fitelson & Andrew Waterman - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (2):293-302.
    has proposed an interesting and novel Bayesian analysis of the Quine-Duhem (Q–D) problem (i.e., the problem of auxiliary hypotheses). Strevens's analysis involves the use of a simplifying idealization concerning the original Q–D problem. We will show that this idealization is far stronger than it might appear. Indeed, we argue that Strevens's idealization oversimplifies the Q–D problem, and we propose a diagnosis of the source(s) of the oversimplification. Some background on Quine–Duhem Strevens's simplifying idealization Indications that (I) oversimplifies Q–D Strevens's argument (...)
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  • (1 other version)Symmetries and asymmetries in evidential support.Ellery Eells & Branden Fitelson - 2002 - Philosophical Studies 107 (2):129 - 142.
    Several forms of symmetry in degrees of evidential support areconsidered. Some of these symmetries are shown not to hold in general. This has implications for the adequacy of many measures of degree ofevidential support that have been proposed and defended in the philosophical literature.
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  • Too Odd (Not) to Be True? A Reply to Olsson.Luc Bovens, Branden Fitelson, Stephan Hartmann & Josh Snyder - 2002 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (4):539-563.
    Corroborating Testimony, Probability and Surprise’, Erik J. Olsson ascribes to L. Jonathan Cohen the claims that if two witnesses provide us with the same information, then the less probable the information is, the more confident we may be that the information is true (C), and the stronger the information is corroborated (C*). We question whether Cohen intends anything like claims (C) and (C*). Furthermore, he discusses the concurrence of witness reports within a context of independent witnesses, whereas the witnesses in (...)
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  • Varieties of Bayesianism.Jonathan Weisberg - 2011
    Handbook of the History of Logic, vol. 10, eds. Dov Gabbay, Stephan Hartmann, and John Woods, forthcoming.
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  • The Logic of Theory Assessment.Franz Huber - 2007 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 36 (5):511-538.
    This paper starts by indicating the analysis of Hempel's conditions of adequacy for any relation of confirmation (Hempel, 1945) as presented in Huber (submitted). There I argue contra Carnap (1962, Section 87) that Hempel felt the need for two concepts of confirmation: one aiming at plausible theories and another aiming at informative theories. However, he also realized that these two concepts are conflicting, and he gave up the concept of confirmation aiming at informative theories. The main part of the paper (...)
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  • Discussion: Re‐solving irrelevant conjunction with probabilistic independence.James Hawthorne & Branden Fitelson - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (4):505-514.
    Naive deductivist accounts of confirmation have the undesirable consequence that if E confirms H, then E also confirms the conjunction H·X, for any X—even if X is completely irrelevant to E and H. Bayesian accounts of confirmation may appear to have the same problem. In a recent article in this journal Fitelson (2002) argued that existing Bayesian attempts to resolve of this problem are inadequate in several important respects. Fitelson then proposes a new‐and‐improved Bayesian account that overcomes the problem of (...)
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  • Putting the irrelevance back into the problem of irrelevant conjunction.Branden Fitelson - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (4):611-622.
    Naive deductive accounts of confirmation have the undesirable consequence that if E confirms H, then E also confirms the conjunction H & X, for any X—even if X is utterly irrelevant to H (and E). Bayesian accounts of confirmation also have this property (in the case of deductive evidence). Several Bayesians have attempted to soften the impact of this fact by arguing that—according to Bayesian accounts of confirmation— E will confirm the conjunction H & X less strongly than E confirms (...)
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  • Bayesian Networks and the Problem of Unreliable Instruments.Luc Bovens & Stephan Hartmann - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (1):29-72.
    We appeal to the theory of Bayesian Networks to model different strategies for obtaining confirmation for a hypothesis from experimental test results provided by less than fully reliable instruments. In particular, we consider (i) repeated measurements of a single test consequence of the hypothesis, (ii) measurements of multiple test consequences of the hypothesis, (iii) theoretical support for the reliability of the instrument, and (iv) calibration procedures. We evaluate these strategies on their relative merits under idealized conditions and show some surprising (...)
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  • (1 other version)A New Condition for Transitivity of Probabilistic Support.David Atkinson & Jeanne Peijnenburg - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (1):253-265.
    As is well known, implication is transitive but probabilistic support is not. Eells and Sober, followed by Shogenji, showed that screening off is a sufficient constraint for the transitivity of probabilistic support. Moreover, this screening off condition can be weakened without sacrificing transitivity, as was demonstrated by Suppes and later by Roche. In this paper we introduce an even weaker sufficient condition for the transitivity of probabilistic support, in fact one that can be made as weak as one wishes. We (...)
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  • A probabilistic analysis of cross‐examination using Bayesian networks.Marcello Di Bello - 2021 - Philosophical Issues 31 (1):41-65.
    Philosophical Issues, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 41-65, October 2021.
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  • On argument strength.Niki Pfeifer - 2012 - In Frank Zenker (ed.), Bayesian Argumentation – The Practical Side of Probability. Springer. pp. 185-193.
    Everyday life reasoning and argumentation is defeasible and uncertain. I present a probability logic framework to rationally reconstruct everyday life reasoning and argumentation. Coherence in the sense of de Finetti is used as the basic rationality norm. I discuss two basic classes of approaches to construct measures of argument strength. The first class imposes a probabilistic relation between the premises and the conclusion. The second class imposes a deductive relation. I argue for the second class, as the first class is (...)
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  • Inference to the Best Explanation, Cleaned Up and Made Respectable.Jonah N. Schupbach - 2017 - In Kevin McCain & Ted Poston (eds.), Best Explanations: New Essays on Inference to the Best Explanation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 39-61.
    Despite decades of focused philosophical investigation, Inference to the Best Explanation still lacks a precise articulation and compelling defense. The primary reason for this is that it is not at all clear what it means for a hypothesis to be the best available explanation of the evidence. This paper first seeks to rectify this problem by developing a formal explication of the explanatory virtue of power. A resulting account of IBE is then evaluated as a form of uncertain inference. Overall, (...)
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  • Truth-Seeking by Abduction.Ilkka Niiniluoto - 2018 - Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
    This book examines the philosophical conception of abductive reasoning as developed by Charles S. Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism. It explores the historical and systematic connections of Peirce's original ideas and debates about their interpretations. Abduction is understood in a broad sense which covers the discovery and pursuit of hypotheses and inference to the best explanation. The analysis presents fresh insights into this notion of reasoning, which derives from effects to causes or from surprising observations to explanatory theories. The (...)
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  • Undesigned Coincidences and Coherence for an Hypothesis.Lydia McGrew - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (4):801-828.
    Testimonial evidence that is particularly helpful to confirmation combines agreement on some content with variation of detail. I examine the phenomenon of “undesigned coincidences” from a probabilistic point of view to explain how varied reports, including those that dovetail in detail, assist confirmation of an hypothesis. The formal analysis uses recent work in probability theory surrounding the concepts of dependence, independence, and varied evidence. I also discuss the connection between these types of report connections and an hypothesis about the reliability (...)
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  • Nagelian Reduction and Coherence.Philippe van Basshuysen - 2014 - Romanian Journal of Analytic Philosophy 8 (1):63-94.
    It can be argued (cf. Dizadji‑Bahmani et al. 2010) that an increase in coherence is one goal that drives reductionist enterprises. Consequently, the question if or how well this goal is achieved can serve as an epistemic criterion for evaluating both a concrete case of a purported reduction and our model of reduction : what conditions on the model allow for an increase in coherence ? In order to answer this question, I provide an analysis of the relation between the (...)
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  • Rational Relations Between Perception and Belief: The Case of Color.Peter Brössel - 2017 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (4):721-741.
    The present paper investigates the first step of rational belief acquisition. It, thus, focuses on justificatory relations between perceptual experiences and perceptual beliefs, and between their contents, respectively. In particular, the paper aims at outlining how it is possible to reason from the content of perceptual experiences to the content of perceptual beliefs. The paper thereby approaches this aim by combining a formal epistemology perspective with an eye towards recent advances in philosophy of cognition. Furthermore the paper restricts its focus, (...)
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  • A Representation Theorem for Absolute Confirmation.Michael Schippers - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (1):82-91.
    Proposals for rigorously explicating the concept of confirmation in probabilistic terms abound. To foster discussions on the formal properties of the proposed measures, recent years have seen the upshot of a number of representation theorems that uniquely determine a confirmation measure based on a number of desiderata. However, the results that have been presented so far focus exclusively on the concept of incremental confirmation. This leaves open the question whether similar results can be obtained for the concept of absolute confirmation. (...)
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  • Semantic Information Measure with Two Types of Probability for Falsification and Confirmation.Lu Chenguang - manuscript
    Logical Probability (LP) is strictly distinguished from Statistical Probability (SP). To measure semantic information or confirm hypotheses, we need to use sampling distribution (conditional SP function) to test or confirm fuzzy truth function (conditional LP function). The Semantic Information Measure (SIM) proposed is compatible with Shannon’s information theory and Fisher’s likelihood method. It can ensure that the less the LP of a predicate is and the larger the true value of the proposition is, the more information there is. So the (...)
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  • Confirmation and Reduction: a Bayesian Account.Foad Dizadji-Bahmani, Roman Frigg & Stephan Hartmann - 2011 - Synthese 179 (2):321-338.
    Various scientific theories stand in a reductive relation to each other. In a recent article, we have argued that a generalized version of the Nagel-Schaffner model (GNS) is the right account of this relation. In this article, we present a Bayesian analysis of how GNS impacts on confirmation. We formalize the relation between the reducing and the reduced theory before and after the reduction using Bayesian networks, and thereby show that, post-reduction, the two theories are confirmatory of each other. We (...)
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  • Equivalent testimonies as a touchstone of coherence measures.Mark Siebel & Werner Wolff - 2008 - Synthese 161 (2):167-182.
    Over the past years, a number of probabilistic measures of coherence have been proposed. As shown in the paper, however, many of them do not conform to the intuitition that equivalent testimonies are highly coherent, regardless of their prior probability.
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  • Bayesian Confirmation Theory and The Likelihood Principle.Daniel Steel - 2007 - Synthese 156 (1):53-77.
    The likelihood principle (LP) is a core issue in disagreements between Bayesian and frequentist statistical theories. Yet statements of the LP are often ambiguous, while arguments for why a Bayesian must accept it rely upon unexamined implicit premises. I distinguish two propositions associated with the LP, which I label LP1 and LP2. I maintain that there is a compelling Bayesian argument for LP1, based upon strict conditionalization, standard Bayesian decision theory, and a proposition I call the practical relevance principle. In (...)
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  • Against Probabilistic Measures of Coherence.Mark Siebel - 2005 - Erkenntnis 63 (3):335-360.
    It is shown that the probabilistic theories of coherence proposed up to now produce a number of counter-intuitive results. The last section provides some reasons for believing that no probabilistic measure will ever be able to adequately capture coherence. First, there can be no function whose arguments are nothing but tuples of probabilities, and which assigns different values to pairs of propositions {A, B} and {A, C} if A implies both B and C, or their negations, and if P(B)=P(C). But (...)
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