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. How Belief-Credence Dualism Explains Away Pragmatic Encroachment.Elizabeth Jackson - 2019 - Philosophical Quarterly 69 (276):511-533.
    Belief-credence dualism is the view that we have both beliefs and credences and neither attitude is reducible to the other. Pragmatic encroachment is the view that practical stakes can affect the epistemic rationality of states like knowledge or justified belief. In this paper, I argue that dualism offers a unique explanation of pragmatic encroachment cases. First, I explain pragmatic encroachment and what motivates it. Then, I explain dualism and outline a particular argument for dualism. Finally, I show how dualism can (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Credence for Epistemic Discourse.Paolo Santorio - manuscript
    Many recent theories of epistemic discourse exploit an informational notion of consequence, i.e. a notion that defines entailment as preservation of support by an information state. This paper investigates how informational consequence fits with probabilistic reasoning. I raise two problems. First, all informational inferences that are not also classical inferences are, intuitively, probabilistically invalid. Second, all these inferences can be exploited, in a systematic way, to generate triviality results. The informational theorist is left with two options, both of them radical: (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • A Theory of Epistemic Risk.Boris Babic - 2019 - Philosophy of Science 86 (3):522-550.
    I propose a general alethic theory of epistemic risk according to which the riskiness of an agent’s credence function encodes her relative sensitivity to different types of graded error. After motivating and mathematically developing this approach, I show that the epistemic risk function is a scaled reflection of expected inaccuracy. This duality between risk and information enables us to explore the relationship between attitudes to epistemic risk, the choice of scoring rules in epistemic utility theory, and the selection of priors (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • A new puzzle about belief and credence.Andrew Moon - 2018 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (2):272-291.
    I present a puzzle about belief and credence, which takes the form of three independently supported views that are mutually inconsistent. The first is the view that S has a modal belief that p (e.g., S believes that probably-p) if and only if S has a corresponding credence that p. The second is the view that S believes that p only if S has some credence that p. The third is the view that, possibly, S believes that p without a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Belief and Credence: Why the Attitude-Type Matters.Elizabeth Grace Jackson - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (9):2477-2496.
    In this paper, I argue that the relationship between belief and credence is a central question in epistemology. This is because the belief-credence relationship has significant implications for a number of current epistemological issues. I focus on five controversies: permissivism, disagreement, pragmatic encroachment, doxastic voluntarism, and the relationship between doxastic attitudes and prudential rationality. I argue that each debate is constrained in particular ways, depending on whether the relevant attitude is belief or credence. This means that epistemologists should pay attention (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   42 citations  
  • Rational endorsement.Will Fleisher - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (10):2649-2675.
    It is valuable for inquiry to have researchers who are committed advocates of their own theories. However, in light of pervasive disagreement, such a commitment is not well explained by the idea that researchers believe their theories. Instead, this commitment, the rational attitude to take toward one’s favored theory during the course of inquiry, is what I call endorsement. Endorsement is a doxastic attitude, but one which is governed by a different type of epistemic rationality. This inclusive epistemic rationality is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   49 citations  
  • Lockeans Maximize Expected Accuracy.Kevin Dorst - 2019 - Mind 128 (509):175-211.
    The Lockean Thesis says that you must believe p iff you’re sufficiently confident of it. On some versions, the 'must' asserts a metaphysical connection; on others, it asserts a normative one. On some versions, 'sufficiently confident' refers to a fixed threshold of credence; on others, it varies with proposition and context. Claim: the Lockean Thesis follows from epistemic utility theory—the view that rational requirements are constrained by the norm to promote accuracy. Different versions of this theory generate different versions of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   98 citations  
  • What Else Justification Could Be1.Martin Smith - 2010 - Noûs 44 (1):10-31.
    According to a captivating picture, epistemic justification is essentially a matter of epistemic or evidential likelihood. While certain problems for this view are well known, it is motivated by a very natural thought—if justification can fall short of epistemic certainty, then what else could it possibly be? In this paper I shall develop an alternative way of thinking about epistemic justification. On this conception, the difference between justification and likelihood turns out to be akin to the more widely recognised difference (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   127 citations  
  • Exploiting Cyclic Preference.Arif Ahmed - 2017 - Mind 126 (504):975-1022.
    Probably many people have cyclic preferences: they prefer A to B, B to C and C to A for some objects of choice A, B and C. Recent work has resurrected the objection to cyclic preference that agents possessing them are open to exploitation by means of ‘money pumps’. The paper briefly reviews this work and proposes a general approach to problems of sequential choice that makes cyclic preference immune to exploitation by means of these new mechanisms.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Fallibilism, Verisimilitude, and the Preface Paradox.Gustavo Cevolani - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (1):169-183.
    The Preface Paradox apparently shows that it is sometimes rational to believe logically incompatible propositions. In this paper, I propose a way out of the paradox based on the ideas of fallibilism and verisimilitude. More precisely, I defend the view that a rational inquirer can fallibly believe or accept a proposition which is false, or likely false, but verisimilar; and I argue that this view makes the Preface Paradox disappear. Some possible objections to my proposal, and an alternative view of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 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   51 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)Money Pumps and Diachronic Books.Isaac Levi - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (S3):S235-S247.
    The idea that rational agents should have acyclic preferences and should obey conditionalization has been defended on the grounds that otherwise an agent is threatened with becoming a “money pump.” This essay argues that such arguments fail to prove their claims.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Locating IBE in the Bayesian Framework.Jonathan Weisberg - 2009 - Synthese 167 (1):125-143.
    Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and Bayesianism are our two most prominent theories of scientific inference. Are they compatible? Van Fraassen famously argued that they are not, concluding that IBE must be wrong since Bayesianism is right. Writers since then, from both the Bayesian and explanationist camps, have usually considered van Fraassen’s argument to be misguided, and have plumped for the view that Bayesianism and IBE are actually compatible. I argue that van Fraassen’s argument is actually not so misguided, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   81 citations  
  • The Concept of Inductive Probability.Patrick Maher - 2006 - Erkenntnis 65 (2):185-206.
    The word ‘probability’ in ordinary language has two different senses, here called inductive and physical probability. This paper examines the concept of inductive probability. Attempts to express this concept in other words are shown to be either incorrect or else trivial. In particular, inductive probability is not the same as degree of belief. It is argued that inductive probabilities exist; subjectivist arguments to the contrary are rebutted. Finally, it is argued that inductive probability is an important concept and that it (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 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  
  • 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  
  • 'Along an imperfectly-lighted path': practical rationality and normative uncertainty.Andrew Sepielli - unknown
    Nobody's going to object to the advice "Do the right thing", but that doesn't mean everyone's always going to follow it. Sometimes this is because of our volitional limitations; we cannot always bring ourselves to make the sacrifices that right action requires. But sometimes this is because of our cognitive limitations; we cannot always be sure of what is right. Sometimes we can't be sure of what's right because we don't know the non-normative facts. But sometimes, even if we were (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 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  
  • Finite additivity, another lottery paradox and conditionalisation.Colin Howson - 2014 - Synthese 191 (5):1-24.
    In this paper I argue that de Finetti provided compelling reasons for rejecting countable additivity. It is ironical therefore that the main argument advanced by Bayesians against following his recommendation is based on the consistency criterion, coherence, he himself developed. I will show that this argument is mistaken. Nevertheless, there remain some counter-intuitive consequences of rejecting countable additivity, and one in particular has all the appearances of a full-blown paradox. I will end by arguing that in fact it is no (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  • Epistemic Utility and Norms for Credences.Richard Pettigrew - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (10):897-908.
    Beliefs come in different strengths. An agent's credence in a proposition is a measure of the strength of her belief in that proposition. Various norms for credences have been proposed. Traditionally, philosophers have tried to argue for these norms by showing that any agent who violates them will be lead by her credences to make bad decisions. In this article, we survey a new strategy for justifying these norms. The strategy begins by identifying an epistemic utility function and a decision-theoretic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   40 citations  
  • 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  
  • 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  
  • 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  
  • Multiple Studies and Evidential Defeat.Matthew Kotzen - 2011 - Noûs 47 (1):154-180.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 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  
  • (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  
  • The foundations of causal decision theory. [REVIEW]Mirek Janusz - 2001 - Philosophical Review 110 (2):296-300.
    This book makes a significant contribution to the standard decision theory, that is, the theory of choice built around the principle of maximizing expected utility, both to its causal version and to the more traditional noncausal approach. The author’s success in clarifying the foundations of the standard decision theory in general, and causal decision theory in particular, also makes the book uniquely suitable for a person whose research in philosophy has led her to want to learn about contemporary decision theory. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   153 citations  
  • (1 other version)Survey article. Verisimilitude: the third period.Ilkka Niiniluoto - 1998 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1):1-29.
    The modern history of verisimilitude can be divided into three periods. The first began in 1960, when Karl Popper proposed his qualitative definition of what it is for one theory to be more truthlike than another theory, and lasted until 1974, when David Miller and Pavel Trichý published their refutation of Popper's definition. The second period started immediately with the attempt to explicate truthlikeness by means of relations of similarity or resemblance between states of affairs (or their linguistic representations); the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   46 citations  
  • Representation theorems and the foundations of decision theory.Christopher 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  
  • (1 other version)Coherence and analogy articles.Paul Thagard - manuscript
    Barnes, A. and P. Thagard Empathy and analogy. Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 36: 705-720. HTML Croft, D., & Thagard, P.. Dynamic imagery: A computational model of motion and visual analogy. In L. Magnani and N. Nersessian, Model-based reasoning: Science, technology, values. New York: Kluwer/Plenum, 259-274. PDF only. HTML description of program and code for DIVA.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • 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  
  • Reason and the grain of belief.Scott Sturgeon - 2008 - Noûs 42 (1):139–165.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   188 citations  
  • Coherence as an ideal of rationality.Lyle Zynda - 1996 - Synthese 109 (2):175 - 216.
    Probabilistic coherence is not an absolute requirement of rationality; nevertheless, it is an ideal of rationality with substantive normative import. An idealized rational agent who avoided making implicit logical errors in forming his preferences would be coherent. In response to the challenge, recently made by epistemologists such as Foley and Plantinga, that appeals to ideal rationality render probabilism either irrelevant or implausible, I argue that idealized requirements can be normatively relevant even when the ideals are unattainable, so long as they (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  • Practical reasoning as figuring out what is best: Against constructivism.Ralph Wedgwood - 2002 - Topoi 21 (1-2):139-152.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • A bayesian way to make stopping rules matter.Daniel Steel - 2003 - Erkenntnis 58 (2):213--227.
    Disputes between advocates of Bayesians and more orthodox approaches to statistical inference presuppose that Bayesians must regard must regard stopping rules, which play an important role in orthodox statistical methods, as evidentially irrelevant.In this essay, I show that this is not the case and that the stopping rule is evidentially relevant given some Bayesian confirmation measures that have been seriously proposed. However, I show that accepting a confirmation measure of this sort comes at the cost of rejecting two useful ancillaryBayesian (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 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  
  • The coherence argument against conditionalization.Matthias Hild - 1998 - Synthese 115 (2):229-258.
    I re-examine Coherence Arguments (Dutch Book Arguments, No Arbitrage Arguments) for diachronic constraints on Bayesian reasoning. I suggest to replace the usual game–theoretic coherence condition with a new decision–theoretic condition ('Diachronic Sure Thing Principle'). The new condition meets a large part of the standard objections against the Coherence Argument and frees it, in particular, from a commitment to additive utilities. It also facilitates the proof of the Converse Dutch Book Theorem. I first apply the improved Coherence Argument to van Fraassen's (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  • Resurrecting logical probability.James Franklin - 2001 - Erkenntnis 55 (2):277-305.
    The logical interpretation of probability, or "objective Bayesianism'' – the theory that (some) probabilities are strictly logical degrees of partial implication – is defended. The main argument against it is that it requires the assignment of prior probabilities, and that any attempt to determine them by symmetry via a "principle of insufficient reason" inevitably leads to paradox. Three replies are advanced: that priors are imprecise or of little weight, so that disagreement about them does not matter, within limits; that it (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Plantinga’s Probability Arguments Against Evolutionary Naturalism.Branden Fitelson & Elliott Sober - 1998 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (2):115–129.
    In Chapter 12 of Warrant and Proper Function, Alvin Plantinga constructs two arguments against evolutionary naturalism, which he construes as a conjunction E&N .The hypothesis E says that “human cognitive faculties arose by way of the mechanisms to which contemporary evolutionary thought directs our attention (p.220).”1 With respect to proposition N , Plantinga (p. 270) says “it isn’t easy to say precisely what naturalism is,” but then adds that “crucial to metaphysical naturalism, of course, is the view that there is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • Logic and probability.Colin Howson - 1997 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (4):517-531.
    This paper argues that Ramsey's view of the calculus of subjective probabilities as, in effect, logical axioms is the correct view, with powerful heuristic value. This heuristic value is seen particularly in the analysis of the role of conditionalization in the Bayesian theory, where a semantic criterion of synchronic coherence is employed as the test of soundness, which the traditional formulation of conditionalization fails. On the other hand, there is a generally sound rule which supports conditionalization in appropriate contexts, though (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Justifying conditionalization: Conditionalization maximizes expected epistemic utility.Hilary Greaves & David Wallace - 2006 - Mind 115 (459):607-632.
    According to Bayesian epistemology, the epistemically rational agent updates her beliefs by conditionalization: that is, her posterior subjective probability after taking account of evidence X, pnew, is to be set equal to her prior conditional probability pold(·|X). Bayesians can be challenged to provide a justification for their claim that conditionalization is recommended by rationality—whence the normative force of the injunction to conditionalize? There are several existing justifications for conditionalization, but none directly addresses the idea that conditionalization will be epistemically rational (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   239 citations