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What conditional probability could not be

Synthese 137 (3):273--323 (2003)

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  1. New theory about old evidence. A framework for open-minded Bayesianism.Sylvia9 Wenmackers & Jan-Willem Romeijn - 2016 - Synthese 193 (4).
    We present a conservative extension of a Bayesian account of confirmation that can deal with the problem of old evidence and new theories. So-called open-minded Bayesianism challenges the assumption—implicit in standard Bayesianism—that the correct empirical hypothesis is among the ones currently under consideration. It requires the inclusion of a catch-all hypothesis, which is characterized by means of sets of probability assignments. Upon the introduction of a new theory, the former catch-all is decomposed into a new empirical hypothesis and a new (...)
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  • Probability and Logic.Kenny Easwaran - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (12):876-883.
    Probability and logic are two branches of mathematics that have important philosophical applications. This article discusses several areas of intersection between them. Several involve the role for probability in giving semantics for logic or the role of logic in governing assignments of probability. Some involve probability over non-classical logic or self-referential sentences.
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  • You can’t always get what you want: Some considerations regarding conditional probabilities.Wayne C. Myrvold - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (3):573-603.
    The standard treatment of conditional probability leaves conditional probability undefined when the conditioning proposition has zero probability. Nonetheless, some find the option of extending the scope of conditional probability to include zero-probability conditions attractive or even compelling. This article reviews some of the pitfalls associated with this move, and concludes that, for the most part, probabilities conditional on zero-probability propositions are more trouble than they are worth.
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  • A critique of empiricist propensity theories.Mauricio Suárez - 2014 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 4 (2):215-231.
    I analyse critically what I regard as the most accomplished empiricist account of propensities, namely the long run propensity theory developed by Donald Gillies . Empiricist accounts are distinguished by their commitment to the ‘identity thesis’: the identification of propensities and objective probabilities. These theories are intended, in the tradition of Karl Popper’s influential proposal, to provide an interpretation of probability that renders probability statements directly testable by experiment. I argue that the commitment to the identity thesis leaves empiricist theories, (...)
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  • Dogmatism, Probability, and Logical Uncertainty.David Jehle & Brian Weatherson - 2012 - In Greg Restall & Gillian Kay Russell (eds.), New waves in philosophical logic. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 95--111.
    Many epistemologists hold that an agent can come to justifiably believe that p is true by seeing that it appears that p is true, without having any antecedent reason to believe that visual impressions are generally reliable. Certain reliabilists think this, at least if the agent’s vision is generally reliable. And it is a central tenet of dogmatism (as described by James Pryor) that this is possible. Against these positions it has been argued (e.g. by Stewart Cohen and Roger White) (...)
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  • Against Radical Credal Imprecision.Susanna Rinard - 2013 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 2 (1):157-165.
    A number of Bayesians claim that, if one has no evidence relevant to a proposition P, then one's credence in P should be spread over the interval [0, 1]. Against this, I argue: first, that it is inconsistent with plausible claims about comparative levels of confidence; second, that it precludes inductive learning in certain cases. Two motivations for the view are considered and rejected. A discussion of alternatives leads to the conjecture that there is an in-principle limitation on formal representations (...)
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  • Learning not to be Naïve: A comment on the exchange between Perrine/Wykstra and Draper.Lara Buchak - 2014 - In Justin McBrayer Trent Dougherty (ed.), Skeptical Theism: New Essays. Oxford University Press.
    Does postulating skeptical theism undermine the claim that evil strongly confirms atheism over theism? According to Perrine and Wykstra, it does undermine the claim, because evil is no more likely on atheism than on skeptical theism. According to Draper, it does not undermine the claim, because evil is much more likely on atheism than on theism in general. I show that the probability facts alone do not resolve their disagreement, which ultimately rests on which updating procedure – conditionalizing or updating (...)
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  • Conditionals, indeterminacy, and triviality.Justin Khoo - 2013 - Philosophical Perspectives 27 (1):260-287.
    This paper discusses and relates two puzzles for indicative conditionals: a puzzle about indeterminacy and a puzzle about triviality. Both puzzles arise because of Ramsey's Observation, which states that the probability of a conditional is equal to the conditional probability of its consequent given its antecedent. The puzzle of indeterminacy is the problem of reconciling this fact about conditionals with the fact that they seem to lack truth values at worlds where their antecedents are false. The puzzle of triviality is (...)
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  • Explication of Inductive Probability.Patrick Maher - 2010 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 39 (6):593 - 616.
    Inductive probability is the logical concept of probability in ordinary language. It is vague but it can be explicated by defining a clear and precise concept that can serve some of the same purposes. This paper presents a general method for doing such an explication and then a particular explication due to Carnap. Common criticisms of Carnap's inductive logic are examined; it is shown that most of them are spurious and the others are not fundamental.
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  • (1 other version)Bayesian Expressivism.Seth Yalcin - 2012 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 112 (2pt2):123-160.
    I develop a conception of expressivism according to which it is chiefly a pragmatic thesis about some fragment of discourse, one imposing certain constraints on semantics. The first half of the paper uses credal expressivism about the language of probability as a stalking-horse for this purpose. The second half turns to the question of how one might frame an analogous form of expressivism about the language of deontic modality. Here I offer a preliminary comparison of two expressivist lines. The first, (...)
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  • Chance and Context.Toby Handfield & Alastair Wilson - 2014 - In Alastair Wilson (ed.), Chance and Temporal Asymmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    The most familiar philosophical conception of objective chance renders determinism incompatible with non-trivial chances. This conception – associated in particular with the work of David Lewis – is not a good fit with our use of the word ‘chance’ and its cognates in ordinary discourse. In this paper we show how a generalized framework for chance can reconcile determinism with non-trivial chances, and provide for a more charitable interpretation of ordinary chance-talk. According to our proposal, variation in an admissible ‘evidence (...)
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  • Conditional probability from an ontological point of view.Rani Lill Anjum, Johan Arnt Myrstad & Stephen Mumford - manuscript
    This paper argues that the technical notion of conditional probability, as given by the ratio analysis, is unsuitable for dealing with our pretheoretical and intuitive understanding of both conditionality and probability. This is an ontological account of conditionals that include an irreducible dispositional connection between the antecedent and consequent conditions and where the conditional has to be treated as an indivisible whole rather than compositional. The relevant type of conditionality is found in some well-defined group of conditional statements. As an (...)
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  • Emergent Chance.Christian List & Marcus Pivato - 2015 - Philosophical Review 124 (1):119-152.
    We offer a new argument for the claim that there can be non-degenerate objective chance (“true randomness”) in a deterministic world. Using a formal model of the relationship between different levels of description of a system, we show how objective chance at a higher level can coexist with its absence at a lower level. Unlike previous arguments for the level-specificity of chance, our argument shows, in a precise sense, that higher-level chance does not collapse into epistemic probability, despite higher-level properties (...)
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  • More trouble for regular probabilitites.Matthew W. Parker - 2012
    In standard probability theory, probability zero is not the same as impossibility. But many have suggested that only impossible events should have probability zero. This can be arranged if we allow infinitesimal probabilities, but infinitesimals do not solve all of the problems. We will see that regular probabilities are not invariant over rigid transformations, even for simple, bounded, countable, constructive, and disjoint sets. Hence, regular chances cannot be determined by space-time invariant physical laws, and regular credences cannot satisfy seemingly reasonable (...)
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  • Regularity reformulated.Weng Hong Tang - 2012 - Episteme 9 (4):329-343.
    This paper focuses on the view that rationality requires that our credences be regular. I go through different formulations of the requirement, and show that they face several problems. I then formulate a version of the requirement that solves most of, if not all, these problems. I conclude by showing that an argument thought to support the requirement as traditionally formulated actually does not; if anything, the argument, slightly modified, supports my version of the requirement.Send article to KindleTo send this (...)
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  • Free Acts and Chance: Why The Rollback Argument Fails.Lara Buchak - 2013 - Philosophical Quarterly 63 (250):20-28.
    The ‘rollback argument,’ pioneered by Peter van Inwagen, purports to show that indeterminism in any form is incompatible with free will. The argument has two major premises: the first claims that certain facts about chances obtain in a certain kind of hypothetical situation, and the second that these facts entail that some actual act is not free. Since the publication of the rollback argument, the second claim has been vehemently debated, but everyone seems to have taken the first claim for (...)
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  • Conditional probabilities.A. R. Pruss - 2012 - Analysis 72 (3):488-491.
    A simple argument is given that shows that conditional probabilities do not supervene on unconditional probabilities. In particular, one cannot in general define conditional probabilities using the ratio formula P ( U | V ) = P ( U & V )/ P ( U ), or using any more sophisticated method based on unconditional probabilities.
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  • Chance without Credence.John T. Roberts - 2013 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (1):33-59.
    It is a standard view that the concept of chance is inextricably related to the technical concept of credence . One influential version of this view is that the chance role is specified by (something in the neighborhood of) David Lewis's Principal Principle, which asserts a certain definite relation between chance and credence. If this view is right, then one cannot coherently affirm that there are chance processes in the physical world while rejecting the theoretical framework in which credence is (...)
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  • Regularity and Hyperreal Credences.Kenny Easwaran - 2014 - Philosophical Review 123 (1):1-41.
    Many philosophers have become worried about the use of standard real numbers for the probability function that represents an agent's credences. They point out that real numbers can't capture the distinction between certain extremely unlikely events and genuinely impossible ones—they are both represented by credence 0, which violates a principle known as “regularity.” Following Skyrms 1980 and Lewis 1980, they recommend that we should instead use a much richer set of numbers, called the “hyperreals.” This essay argues that this popular (...)
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  • Bayesianism I: Introduction and Arguments in Favor.Kenny Easwaran - 2011 - Philosophy Compass 6 (5):312-320.
    Bayesianism is a collection of positions in several related fields, centered on the interpretation of probability as something like degree of belief, as contrasted with relative frequency, or objective chance. However, Bayesianism is far from a unified movement. Bayesians are divided about the nature of the probability functions they discuss; about the normative force of this probability function for ordinary and scientific reasoning and decision making; and about what relation (if any) holds between Bayesian and non-Bayesian concepts.
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  • Disagreement, evidence, and agnosticism.Jason Decker - 2012 - Synthese 187 (2):753-783.
    In this paper, I respond to recent attempts by philosophers to deny the existence of something that is both real and significant: reasonable disagreements between epistemic peers. In their arguments against the possibility of such disagreements, skeptical philosophers typically invoke one or more of the following: indifference reasoning , equal weight principles , and uniqueness theses . I take up each of these in turn, finding ample reason to resist them. The arguments for indifference reasoning and equal weight principles tend (...)
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  • Epistemology Formalized.Sarah Moss - 2013 - Philosophical Review 122 (1):1-43.
    This paper argues that just as full beliefs can constitute knowledge, so can properties of your credence distribution. The resulting notion of probabilistic knowledge helps us give a natural account of knowledge ascriptions embedding language of subjective uncertainty, and a simple diagnosis of probabilistic analogs of Gettier cases. Just like propositional knowledge, probabilistic knowledge is factive, safe, and sensitive. And it helps us build knowledge-based norms of action without accepting implausible semantic assumptions or endorsing the claim that knowledge is interest-relative.
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  • Sets of probability distributions, independence, and convexity.Fabio G. Cozman - 2012 - Synthese 186 (2):577-600.
    This paper analyzes concepts of independence and assumptions of convexity in the theory of sets of probability distributions. The starting point is Kyburg and Pittarelli’s discussion of “convex Bayesianism” (in particular their proposals concerning E-admissibility, independence, and convexity). The paper offers an organized review of the literature on independence for sets of probability distributions; new results on graphoid properties and on the justification of “strong independence” (using exchangeability) are presented. Finally, the connection between Kyburg and Pittarelli’s results and recent developments (...)
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  • Objective Probabilities in Number Theory.J. Ellenberg & E. Sober - 2011 - Philosophia Mathematica 19 (3):308-322.
    Philosophers have explored objective interpretations of probability mainly by considering empirical probability statements. Because of this focus, it is widely believed that the logical interpretation and the actual-frequency interpretation are unsatisfactory and the hypothetical-frequency interpretation is not much better. Probabilistic assertions in pure mathematics present a new challenge. Mathematicians prove theorems in number theory that assign probabilities. The most natural interpretation of these probabilities is that they describe actual frequencies in finite sets and limits of actual frequencies in infinite sets. (...)
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  • Probability, logic, and probability logic.Alan Hójek - 2001 - In Lou Goble (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Philosophical Logic. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 362--384.
    ‘Probability logic’ might seem like an oxymoron. Logic traditionally concerns matters immutable, necessary and certain, while probability concerns the uncertain, the random, the capricious. Yet our subject has a distinguished pedigree. Ramsey begins his classic “Truth and Probability” with the words: “In this essay the Theory of Probability is taken as a branch of logic. … “speaks of “the logic of the probable.” And more recently, regards probabilities as estimates of truth values, and thus probability theory as a natural outgrowth (...)
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  • What is Probability?Patrick Maher - unknown
    In October 2009 I decided to stop doing philosophy. This meant, in particular, stopping work on the book that I was writing on the nature of probability. At that time, I had no intention of making my unfinished draft available to others. However, I recently noticed how many people are reading the lecture notes and articles on my web site. Since this draft book contains some important improvements on those materials, I decided to make it available to anyone who wants (...)
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  • Bayesian Epistemology.William Talbott - 2006 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    ‘Bayesian epistemology’ became an epistemological movement in the 20th century, though its two main features can be traced back to the eponymous Reverend Thomas Bayes (c. 1701-61). Those two features are: (1) the introduction of a formal apparatus for inductive logic; (2) the introduction of a pragmatic self-defeat test (as illustrated by Dutch Book Arguments) for epistemic rationality as a way of extending the justification of the laws of deductive logic to include a justification for the laws of inductive logic. (...)
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  • The Metaphysics of Chance.Rachael Briggs - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (11):938-952.
    This article surveys several interrelated issues in the metaphysics of chance. First, what is the relationship between the probabilities associated with types of trials (for instance, the chance that a twenty‐eight‐year old develops diabetes before age thirty) and the probabilities associated with individual token trials (for instance, the chance that I develop diabetes before age thirty)? Second, which features of the the world fix the chances: are there objective chances at all, and if so, are there non‐chancy facts on which (...)
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  • A Probabilistic Analysis of Causation.Luke Glynn - 2011 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (2):343-392.
    The starting point in the development of probabilistic analyses of token causation has usually been the naïve intuition that, in some relevant sense, a cause raises the probability of its effect. But there are well-known examples both of non-probability-raising causation and of probability-raising non-causation. Sophisticated extant probabilistic analyses treat many such cases correctly, but only at the cost of excluding the possibilities of direct non-probability-raising causation, failures of causal transitivity, action-at-a-distance, prevention, and causation by absence and omission. I show that (...)
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  • Probability Operators.Seth Yalcin - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (11):916-37.
    This is a study in the meaning of natural language probability operators, sentential operators such as probably and likely. We ask what sort of formal structure is required to model the logic and semantics of these operators. Along the way we investigate their deep connections to indicative conditionals and epistemic modals, probe their scalar structure, observe their sensitivity to contex- tually salient contrasts, and explore some of their scopal idiosyncrasies.
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  • Deterministic Probability: Neither chance nor credence.Aidan Lyon - 2011 - Synthese 182 (3):413-432.
    Some have argued that chance and determinism are compatible in order to account for the objectivity of probabilities in theories that are compatible with determinism, like Classical Statistical Mechanics (CSM) and Evolutionary Theory (ET). Contrarily, some have argued that chance and determinism are incompatible, and so such probabilities are subjective. In this paper, I argue that both of these positions are unsatisfactory. I argue that the probabilities of theories like CSM and ET are not chances, but also that they are (...)
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  • Formal Representations of Belief.Franz Huber - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. Belief is thus central to epistemology. It comes in a qualitative form, as when Sophia believes that Vienna is the capital of Austria, and a quantitative form, as when Sophia's degree of belief that Vienna is the capital of Austria is at least twice her degree of belief that tomorrow it will be sunny in Vienna. Formal epistemology, as opposed to mainstream epistemology (Hendricks 2006), is epistemology done in a formal way, (...)
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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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  • Degrees of belief.Franz Huber & Christoph Schmidt-Petri (eds.) - 2009 - London: Springer.
    Various theories try to give accounts of how measures of this confidence do or ought to behave, both as far as the internal mental consistency of the agent as ...
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  • Frege’s Puzzle and the Objects of Credence.David J. Chalmers - 2011 - Mind 120 (479):587-635.
    The objects of credence are the entities to which credences are assigned for the purposes of a successful theory of credence. I use cases akin to Frege's puzzle to argue against referentialism about credence : the view that objects of credence are determined by the objects and properties at which one's credence is directed. I go on to develop a non-referential account of the objects of credence in terms of sets of epistemically possible scenarios.
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  • Deterministic Chance.Antony Eagle - 2010 - Noûs 45 (2):269 - 299.
    I sketch a new constraint on chance, which connects chance ascriptions closely with ascriptions of ability, and more specifically with 'CAN'-claims. This connection between chance and ability has some claim to be a platitude; moreover, it exposes the debate over deterministic chance to the extensive literature on (in)compatibilism about free will. The upshot is that a prima facie case for the tenability of deterministic chance can be made. But the main thrust of the paper is to draw attention to the (...)
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  • Deterministic chance.Luke Glynn - 2010 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (1):51–80.
    I argue that there are non-trivial objective chances (that is, objective chances other than 0 and 1) even in deterministic worlds. The argument is straightforward. I observe that there are probabilistic special scientific laws even in deterministic worlds. These laws project non-trivial probabilities for the events that they concern. And these probabilities play the chance role and so should be regarded as chances as opposed, for example, to epistemic probabilities or credences. The supposition of non-trivial deterministic chances might seem to (...)
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  • On the provenance of judgments of conditional probability.Jiaying Zhao, Anuj Shah & Daniel Osherson - 2009 - Cognition 113 (1):26-36.
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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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  • (1 other version)Challenges to Bayesian Confirmation Theory.John D. Norton - 2011 - In Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay & Malcolm Forster (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 7: Philosophy of Statistics. Elsevier B.V.. pp. 391-440.
    Proponents of Bayesian confirmation theory believe that they have the solution to a significant, recalcitrant problem in philosophy of science. It is the identification of the logic that governs evidence and its inductive bearing in science. That is the logic that lets us say that our catalog of planetary observations strongly confirms Copernicus’ heliocentric hypothesis; or that the fossil record is good evidence for the theory of evolution; or that the 3oK cosmic background radiation supports big bang cosmology. The definitive (...)
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  • (1 other version)Interpretations of probability.Alan Hájek - 2007 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Unlearning what you have learned.Michael Titelbaum - 2007
    Bayesian modeling techniques have proven remarkably successful at representing rational constraints on agents’ degrees of belief. Yet Frank Arntzenius’s “Shangri-La” example shows that these techniques fail for stories involving forgetting. This paper presents a formalized, expanded Bayesian modeling framework that generates intuitive verdicts about agents’ degrees of belief after losing information. The framework’s key result, called Generalized Conditionalization, yields applications like a version of Bas van Fraassen’s Reflection Principle for forgetting. These applications lead to questions about why agents should coordinate (...)
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  • Can quantum mechanics be shown to be incomplete in principle?Carsten Held - unknown
    The paper presents an argument for the incompleteness in principle of quantum mechanics. I introduce four principles (P0–P3) concerning the interpretation of probability, in general and in quantum mechanics, and argue that the defender of completeness must reject either P0 or all of P1–P3, which options both seem unacceptable. The problem is shown to be more fundamental than the measurement problem and to have implications for our understanding of quantum-mechanical contextuality.
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  • Detection of unfaithfulness and robust causal inference.Jiji Zhang & Peter Spirtes - 2008 - Minds and Machines 18 (2):239-271.
    Much of the recent work on the epistemology of causation has centered on two assumptions, known as the Causal Markov Condition and the Causal Faithfulness Condition. Philosophical discussions of the latter condition have exhibited situations in which it is likely to fail. This paper studies the Causal Faithfulness Condition as a conjunction of weaker conditions. We show that some of the weaker conjuncts can be empirically tested, and hence do not have to be assumed a priori. Our results lead to (...)
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  • Belief and Degrees of Belief.Franz Huber - 2009 - In Franz Huber & Christoph Schmidt-Petri (eds.), Degrees of belief. London: Springer.
    Degrees of belief are familiar to all of us. Our confidence in the truth of some propositions is higher than our confidence in the truth of other propositions. We are pretty confident that our computers will boot when we push their power button, but we are much more confident that the sun will rise tomorrow. Degrees of belief formally represent the strength with which we believe the truth of various propositions. The higher an agent’s degree of belief for a particular (...)
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  • Have your cake and eat it too: The old principal principle reconciled with the new.Peter B. M. Vranas - 2004 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (2):368–382.
    David Lewis (1980) proposed the Principal Principle (PP) and a “reformulation” which later on he called ‘OP’ (Old Principle). Reacting to his belief that these principles run into trouble, Lewis (1994) concluded that they should be replaced with the New Principle (NP). This conclusion left Lewis uneasy, because he thought that an inverse form of NP is “quite messy”, whereas an inverse form of OP, namely the simple and intuitive PP, is “the key to our concept of chance”. I argue (...)
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  • A causal theory of chance? [REVIEW]Antony Eagle - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 35 (4):883-890.
    An essay review of Richard Johns "A Theory of Physical Probability" (University of Toronto Press, 2002). Forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.
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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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  • Assertion, knowledge, and rational credibility.Igor Douven - 2006 - Philosophical Review 115 (4):449-485.
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  • When to defer to supermajority testimony — and when not.Christian List - 2014 - In Jennifer Lackey (ed.), Essays in Collective Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 240-249.
    Pettit (2006) argues that deferring to majority testimony is not generally rational: it may lead to inconsistent beliefs. He suggests that “another ... approach will do better”: deferring to supermajority testimony. But this approach may also lead to inconsistencies. In this paper, I describe conditions under which deference to supermajority testimony ensures consistency, and conditions under which it does not. I also introduce the concept of “consistency of degree k”, which is weaker than full consistency by ruling out only “blatant” (...)
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