Switch to: References

Citations of:

Betting on Theories

Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press (1993)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. (1 other version)Knowledge, Bets, and Interests.Brian Weatherson - 2012 - In Jessica Brown & Mikkel Gerken (eds.), Knowledge Ascriptions. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 75--103.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   76 citations  
  • A Representation Theorem for Frequently Irrational Agents.Edward Elliott - 2017 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 46 (5):467-506.
    The standard representation theorem for expected utility theory tells us that if a subject’s preferences conform to certain axioms, then she can be represented as maximising her expected utility given a particular set of credences and utilities—and, moreover, that having those credences and utilities is the only way that she could be maximising her expected utility. However, the kinds of agents these theorems seem apt to tell us anything about are highly idealised, being always probabilistically coherent with infinitely precise degrees (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • (1 other version)VI-B ayesian E xpressivism.Seth Yalcin - 2012 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 112 (2pt2):123-160.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   61 citations  
  • Reconstructed Empiricism.Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Acta Analytica 32 (1):95-113.
    According to Bas van Fraassen, scientific realists and anti-realists disagree about whether accepting a scientific theory involves believing that the theory is true. On van Fraassen’s own anti-realist empiricist position, accepting a theory involves believing only that the theory is correct in its claims about observable aspects of the world. However, a number of philosophers have argued that acceptance and belief cannot be distinguished and thus that the debate is either confused or trivially settled in favor of the realist. In (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Understanding without Justification or Belief.Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Ratio 30 (3):239-254.
    In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest among epistemologists in the nature of understanding, with some authors arguing that understanding should replace knowledge as the primary focus of epistemology. But what is understanding? According to what is often called the standard view, understanding is a species of knowledge. Although this view has recently been challenged in various ways, even the critics of the standard view have assumed that understanding requires justification and belief. I argue that it requires (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   50 citations  
  • Epistemically Transformative Experience.Jane Friedman - manuscript
    A discussion of L.A. Paul's 'Transformative Experience' from an Author Meets Critics session at the 2015 Pacific APA.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • (1 other version)When betting odds and credences come apart: more worries for Dutch book arguments.Darren Bradley & Hannes Leitgeb - 2006 - Analysis 66 (2):119-127.
    If an agent believes that the probability of E being true is 1/2, should she accept a bet on E at even odds or better? Yes, but only given certain conditions. This paper is about what those conditions are. In particular, we think that there is a condition that has been overlooked so far in the literature. We discovered it in response to a paper by Hitchcock (2004) in which he argues for the 1/3 answer to the Sleeping Beauty problem. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   39 citations  
  • Personhood and future belief: two arguments for something like Reflection.Simon J. Evnine - 2007 - Erkenntnis 67 (1):91-110.
    This paper offers two new arguments for a version of Reflection, the principle that says, roughly, that if one knew now what one would believe in the future, one ought to believe it now. The most prominent existing argument for the principle is the coherence-based Dutch Strategy argument advanced by Bas van Fraassen (and others). My two arguments are quite different. The first is a truth-based argument. On the basis of two substantive premises, that people’s beliefs generally get better over (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Can there be a Bayesian explanationism? On the prospects of a productive partnership.Frank Cabrera - 2017 - Synthese 194 (4):1245–1272.
    In this paper, I consider the relationship between Inference to the Best Explanation and Bayesianism, both of which are well-known accounts of the nature of scientific inference. In Sect. 2, I give a brief overview of Bayesianism and IBE. In Sect. 3, I argue that IBE in its most prominently defended forms is difficult to reconcile with Bayesianism because not all of the items that feature on popular lists of “explanatory virtues”—by means of which IBE ranks competing explanations—have confirmational import. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Probabilistic Alternatives to Bayesianism: The Case of Explanationism.Igor Douven & Jonah N. Schupbach - 2015 - Frontiers in Psychology 6.
    There has been a probabilistic turn in contemporary cognitive science. Far and away, most of the work in this vein is Bayesian, at least in name. Coinciding with this development, philosophers have increasingly promoted Bayesianism as the best normative account of how humans ought to reason. In this paper, we make a push for exploring the probabilistic terrain outside of Bayesianism. Non-Bayesian, but still probabilistic, theories provide plausible competitors both to descriptive and normative Bayesian accounts. We argue for this general (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Preferences and Positivist Methodology in Economics.Christopher Clarke - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (2):192-212.
    I distinguish several doctrines that economic methodologists have found attractive, all of which have a positivist flavour. One of these is the doctrine that preference assignments in economics are just shorthand descriptions of agents' choice behaviour. Although most of these doctrines are problematic, the latter doctrine about preference assignments is a respectable one, I argue. It doesn't entail any of the problematic doctrines, and indeed it is warranted independently of them.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Space–time philosophy reconstructed via massive Nordström scalar gravities? Laws vs. geometry, conventionality, and underdetermination.J. Brian Pitts - 2016 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 53:73-92.
    What if gravity satisfied the Klein-Gordon equation? Both particle physics from the 1920s-30s and the 1890s Neumann-Seeliger modification of Newtonian gravity with exponential decay suggest considering a "graviton mass term" for gravity, which is _algebraic_ in the potential. Unlike Nordström's "massless" theory, massive scalar gravity is strictly special relativistic in the sense of being invariant under the Poincaré group but not the 15-parameter Bateman-Cunningham conformal group. It therefore exhibits the whole of Minkowski space-time structure, albeit only indirectly concerning volumes. Massive (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Introduction: Cognitive attitudes and values in science.Daniel J. McKaughan & Kevin C. Elliott - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 53:57-61.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Chains of Inferences and the New Paradigm in the Psychology of Reasoning.Ulf Hlobil - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (1):1-16.
    The new paradigm in the psychology of reasoning draws on Bayesian formal frameworks, and some advocates of the new paradigm think of these formal frameworks as providing a computational-level theory of rational human inference. I argue that Bayesian theories should not be seen as providing a computational-level theory of rational human inference, where by “Bayesian theories” I mean theories that claim that all rational credal states are probabilistically coherent and that rational adjustments of degrees of belief in the light of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Conservation Biology.Sahotra Sarkar - 2004 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Conservation biology emerged as an organized academic discipline in the United States in the 1980s though much of its theoretical framework was originally developed in Australia. Significant differences of approach in the two traditions were resolved in the late 1990s through the formulation of a consensus framework for the design and adaptive management of conservation area networks. This entry presents an outline of that framework along with a critical analysis of conceptual issues concerning the four theoretical problems that emerge from (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Gigerenzer's normative critique of Kahneman and Tversky.Peter B. M. Vranas - 2000 - Cognition 76 (3):179-193.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Epistemic Decision Theory.Hilary Greaves - 2013 - Mind 122 (488):915-952.
    I explore the prospects for modelling epistemic rationality (in the probabilist setting) via an epistemic decision theory, in a consequentialist spirit. Previous work has focused on cases in which the truth-values of the propositions in which the agent is selecting credences do not depend, either causally or merely evidentially, on the agent’s choice of credences. Relaxing that restriction leads to a proliferation of puzzle cases and theories to deal with them, including epistemic analogues of evidential and causal decision theory, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   94 citations  
  • Foundations of Everyday Practical Reasoning.Hanti Lin - 2013 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 42 (6):831-862.
    “Since today is Saturday, the grocery store is open today and will be closed tomorrow; so let’s go today”. That is an example of everyday practical reasoning—reasoning directly with the propositions that one believes but may not be fully certain of. Everyday practical reasoning is one of our most familiar kinds of decisions but, unfortunately, some foundational questions about it are largely ignored in the standard decision theory: (Q1) What are the decision rules in everyday practical reasoning that connect qualitative (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • The main two arguments for probabilism are flawed.Luigi Secchi - 2014 - Synthese 191 (3):287-295.
    Probabilism, the view that agents have numerical degrees of beliefs that conform to the axioms of probability, has been defended by the vast majority of its proponents by way of either of two arguments, the Dutch Book Argument and the Representation Theorems Argument. In this paper I argue that both arguments are flawed. The Dutch Book Argument is based on an unwarranted, ad hoc premise that cannot be dispensed with. The Representation Theorems Argument hinges on an invalid implication.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Intentionality and partial belief.Weng Hong Tang - 2014 - Synthese 191 (7).
    Suppose we wish to provide a naturalistic account of intentionality. Like several other philosophers, we focus on the intentionality of belief, hoping that we may later supplement our account to accommodate other intentional states like desires and fears. Now suppose that we also take partial beliefs or credences seriously. In cashing out our favoured theory of intentionality, we may for the sake of simplicity talk as if belief is merely binary or all-or-nothing. But we should be able to supplement or (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • What can we Learn from Buridan's Ass?Ruth Weintraub - 2012 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 42 (3):281-301.
    The mythical1 hungry ass, facing two identical bundles of hay equidistant from him, has engendered two related questions. Can he choose one of the bundles, there seemingly being nothing to incline him one way or the other? If he can, the second puzzle — pertaining to rational choice — arises. It seems the ass cannot rationally choose one of the bundles, because there is no sufficient reason for any choice.2In what follows, I will argue that choice is possible even when (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Belief Is Credence One (in Context).Roger Clarke - 2013 - Philosophers' Imprint 13:1-18.
    This paper argues for two theses: that degrees of belief are context sensitive; that outright belief is belief to degree 1. The latter thesis is rejected quickly in most discussions of the relationship between credence and belief, but the former thesis undermines the usual reasons for doing so. Furthermore, identifying belief with credence 1 allows nice solutions to a number of problems for the most widely-held view of the relationship between credence and belief, the threshold view. I provide a sketch (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   126 citations  
  • Conditioning and Interpretation Shifts.Jan-Willem Romeijn - 2012 - Studia Logica 100 (3):583-606.
    This paper develops a probabilistic model of belief change under interpretation shifts, in the context of a problem case from dynamic epistemic logic. Van Benthem [4] has shown that a particular kind of belief change, typical for dynamic epistemic logic, cannot be modelled by standard Bayesian conditioning. I argue that the problems described by van Benthem come about because the belief change alters the semantics in which the change is supposed to be modelled: the new information induces a shift in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Must rational intentions maximize utility?Ralph Wedgwood - 2017 - Philosophical Explorations 20 (sup2):73-92.
    Suppose that it is rational to choose or intend a course of action if and only if the course of action maximizes some sort of expectation of some sort of value. What sort of value should this definition appeal to? According to an influential neo-Humean view, the answer is “Utility”, where utility is defined as a measure of subjective preference. According to a rival neo-Aristotelian view, the answer is “Choiceworthiness”, where choiceworthiness is an irreducibly normative notion of a course of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Coming to Terms with our Human Fallibility: Christensen on the Preface.Mark Kaplan - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (1):1-35.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Outright Belief.Ralph Wedgwood - 2012 - Dialectica 66 (3):309–329.
    Sometimes, we think of belief as a phenomenon that comes in degrees – that is, in the many different levels of confidence that a thinker might have in various different propositions. Sometimes, we think of belief as a simple two-place relation that holds between a thinker and a proposition – that is, as what I shall here call "outright belief".
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   83 citations  
  • Dutch book arguments.Susan Vineberg - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   49 citations  
  • (1 other version)Does murphy’s law apply in epistemology?David Christensen - 2007 - Oxford Studies in Epistemology 2:3-31.
    Formally-inclined epistemologists often theorize about ideally rational agents--agents who exemplify rational ideals, such as probabilistic coherence, that human beings could never fully realize. This approach can be defended against the well-know worry that abstracting from human cognitive imperfections deprives the approach of interest. But a different worry arises when we ask what an ideal agent should believe about her own cognitive perfection (even an agent who is in fact cognitively perfect might, it would seem, be uncertain of this fact). Consideration (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   87 citations  
  • The Epistemic Costs and Benefits of Collaboration.Don Fallis - 2006 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 44 (S1):197-208.
    In “How to Collaborate,” Paul Thagard tries to explain why there is so much collaboration in science, and so little collaboration in philosophy, by giving an epistemic cost-benefit analysis. In this paper, I argue that an adequate explanation requires a more fully developed epistemic value theory than Thagard utilizes. In addition, I offer an alternative to Thagard’s explanation of the lack of collaboration in philosophy. He appeals to its lack of a tradition of collaboration and to the a priori nature (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • From Classical to Intuitionistic Probability.Brian Weatherson - 2003 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 44 (2):111-123.
    We generalize the Kolmogorov axioms for probability calculus to obtain conditions defining, for any given logic, a class of probability functions relative to that logic, coinciding with the standard probability functions in the special case of classical logic but allowing consideration of other classes of "essentially Kolmogorovian" probability functions relative to other logics. We take a broad view of the Bayesian approach as dictating inter alia that from the perspective of a given logic, rational degrees of belief are those representable (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • Representation theorems and the foundations of decision theory.Christopher J. G. Meacham & Jonathan Weisberg - 2011 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (4):641 - 663.
    Representation theorems are often taken to provide the foundations for decision theory. First, they are taken to characterize degrees of belief and utilities. Second, they are taken to justify two fundamental rules of rationality: that we should have probabilistic degrees of belief and that we should act as expected utility maximizers. We argue that representation theorems cannot serve either of these foundational purposes, and that recent attempts to defend the foundational importance of representation theorems are unsuccessful. As a result, we (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   71 citations  
  • Three conceptions of explaining how possibly—and one reductive account.Johannes Persson - 2011 - In Henk W. de Regt (ed.), EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009. Springer. pp. 275--286.
    Philosophers of science have often favoured reductive approaches to how-possibly explanation. This article identifies three alternative conceptions making how-possibly explanation an interesting phenomenon in its own right. The first variety approaches “how possibly X?” by showing that X is not epistemically impossible. This can sometimes be achieved by removing misunderstandings concerning the implications of one’s current belief system but involves characteristically a modification of this belief system so that acceptance of X does not result in contradiction. The second variety offers (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • After Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend: Recent Issues in Theories of Scientific Method.Robert Nola & Howard Sankey (eds.) - 2000 - Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
    Some think that issues to do with scientific method are last century's stale debate; Popper was an advocate of methodology, but Kuhn, Feyerabend, and others are alleged to have brought the debate about its status to an end. The papers in this volume show that issues in methodology are still very much alive. Some of the papers reinvestigate issues in the debate over methodology, while others set out new ways in which the debate has developed in the last decade. The (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Advancing the rationality debate.Keith E. Stanovich & Richard F. West - 2000 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (5):701-717.
    In this response, we clarify several misunderstandings of the understanding/acceptance principle and defend our specific operationalization of that principle. We reiterate the importance of addressing the problem of rational task construal and we elaborate the notion of computational limitations contained in our target article. Our concept of thinking dispositions as variable intentional-level styles of epistemic and behavioral regulation is explained, as is its relation to the rationality debate. Many of the suggestions of the commentators for elaborating two-process models are easily (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • 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, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Begging the Question and Bayesians.Brian Weatherson - 1999 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 30:687-697.
    The arguments for Bayesianism in the literature fall into three broad categories. There are Dutch Book arguments, both of the traditional pragmatic variety and the modern ‘depragmatised’ form. And there are arguments from the so-called ‘representation theorems’. The arguments have many similarities, for example they have a common conclusion, and they all derive epistemic constraints from considerations about coherent preferences, but they have enough differences to produce hostilities between their proponents. In a recent paper, Maher (1997) has argued that the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Epistemic virtues, metavirtues, and computational complexity.Adam Morton - 2004 - Noûs 38 (3):481–502.
    I argue that considerations about computational complexity show that all finite agents need characteristics like those that have been called epistemic virtues. The necessity of these virtues follows in part from the nonexistence of shortcuts, or efficient ways of finding shortcuts, to cognitively expensive routines. It follows that agents must possess the capacities – metavirtues –of developing in advance the cognitive virtues they will need when time and memory are at a premium.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Believing the improbable.Mark Kaplan - 1995 - Philosophical Studies 77 (1):117 - 146.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Representation theorems and realism about degrees of belief.Lyle Zynda - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (1):45-69.
    The representation theorems of expected utility theory show that having certain types of preferences is both necessary and sufficient for being representable as having subjective probabilities. However, unless the expected utility framework is simply assumed, such preferences are also consistent with being representable as having degrees of belief that do not obey the laws of probability. This fact shows that being representable as having subjective probabilities is not necessarily the same as having subjective probabilities. Probabilism can be defended on the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   50 citations  
  • Subjective and objective confirmation.Patrick Maher - 1996 - Philosophy of Science 63 (2):149-174.
    Confirmation is commonly identified with positive relevance, E being said to confirm H if and only if E increases the probability of H. Today, analyses of this general kind are usually Bayesian ones that take the relevant probabilities to be subjective. I argue that these subjective Bayesian analyses are irremediably flawed. In their place I propose a relevance analysis that makes confirmation objective and which, I show, avoids the flaws of the subjective analyses. What I am proposing is in some (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   62 citations  
  • Varieties of Bayesianism.Jonathan Weisberg - 2011
    Handbook of the History of Logic, vol. 10, eds. Dov Gabbay, Stephan Hartmann, and John Woods, forthcoming.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   37 citations  
  • Preference-based arguments for probabilism.David Christensen - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (3):356-376.
    Both Representation Theorem Arguments and Dutch Book Arguments support taking probabilistic coherence as an epistemic norm. Both depend on connecting beliefs to preferences, which are not clearly within the epistemic domain. Moreover, these connections are standardly grounded in questionable definitional/metaphysical claims. The paper argues that these definitional/metaphysical claims are insupportable. It offers a way of reconceiving Representation Theorem arguments which avoids the untenable premises. It then develops a parallel approach to Dutch Book Arguments, and compares the results. In each case (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • Plumbing metaphysical explanatory depth.Nicholas Emmerson - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (9):2091-2112.
    Recent years have seen increasing interest in interventionist analyses of metaphysical explanation. One area where interventionism traditionally shines, is in providing an account of explanatory depth; the sense in which explanation comes in degrees. However, the literature on metaphysical explanation has left the notion of depth almost entirely unexplored. In this paper I shall attempt to rectify this oversight by motivating an interventionist analysis of metaphysical explanatory depth (MED), in terms of the range of interventions under which a metaphysically explanatory (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • On Uncertainty.Brian Weatherson - 1998 - Dissertation, Monash University
    This dissertation looks at a set of interconnected questions concerning the foundations of probability, and gives a series of interconnected answers. At its core is a piece of old-fashioned philosophical analysis, working out what probability is. Or equivalently, investigating the semantic question of what is the meaning of ‘probability’? Like Keynes and Carnap, I say that probability is degree of reasonable belief. This immediately raises an epistemological question, which degrees count as reasonable? To solve that in its full generality would (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Betting on Conspiracy: A Decision Theoretic Account of the Rationality of Conspiracy Theory Belief.Melina Tsapos - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89 (2):1-19.
    The question of the rationality of conspiratorial belief ¬divides philosophers into mainly two camps. The particularists believe that each conspiracy theory ought to be examined on its own merits. The generalist, by contrast, argues that there is something inherently suspect about conspiracy theories that makes belief in them irrational. Recent empirical findings indicate that conspiratorial thinking is commonplace among ordinary people, which has naturally shifted attention to the particularists. Yet, even the particularist must agree that not all conspiracy belief is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Permission to believe: Descriptive and prescriptive beliefs in the Clifford/James debate.Christopher Paul Lawrence - 2020 - Dissertation, University of Cape Town
    This thesis modifies the wording of William Clifford’s 1877 evidence principle (that ‘it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’) to propose an explicitly moral principle, restricted to descriptive beliefs (about what is or is not the case) and excluding prescriptive beliefs (about what ought or ought not to be the case). It considers potential counter-examples, particularly William James’s 1896 defence of religious belief; and concludes that the modified principle survives unscathed. It then searches (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Knowledge and acceptance.Roman Heil - 2023 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (1):1-17.
    In a recent paper, Jie Gao (Synthese 194:1901–17, 2017) has argued that there are acceptance-based counterexamples to the knowledge norm for practical reasoning (KPR). KPR tells us that we may only rely on known propositions in practical reasoning, yet there are cases of practical reasoning in which we seem to permissibly rely on merely accepted propositions, which fail to constitute knowledge. In this paper, I will argue that such cases pose no threat to a more broadly conceived knowledge-based view of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Intellectual courage and inquisitive reasons.Will Fleisher - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (4):1343-1371.
    Intellectual courage requires acting to promote epistemic goods despite significant risk of harm. Courage is distinguished from recklessness and cowardice because the expected epistemic benefit of a courageous action outweighs (in some sense) the threatened harm. Sometimes, however, inquirers pursue theories that are not best supported by their current evidence. For these inquirers, the expected epistemic benefit of their actions cannot be explained by appeal to their evidence alone. The probability of pursuing the true theory cannot contribute enough to the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Accuracy Across Doxastic Attitudes: Recent Work on the Accuracy of Belief.Robert Weston Siscoe - 2022 - American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (2):201-217.
    James Joyce's article “A Nonpragmatic Vindication of Probabilism” introduced an approach to arguing for credal norms by appealing to the epistemic value of accuracy. The central thought was that credences ought to accurately represent the world, a guiding thought that has gone on to generate an entire research paradigm on the rationality of credences. Recently, a number of epistemologists have begun to apply this same thought to full beliefs, attempting to explain and argue for norms of belief in terms of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation