Hinge epistemology and Bayesianism are two prominent approaches in contemporary epistemology, but the relationship between these approaches has not been systematically studied. This paper formalizes the central commitments of hinge epistemology in a Bayesian framework and argues for the following two theses: (1) many of the types of claims that are treated as paradigmatic hinges in the hinge epistemology literature, such as the claim that there exists an external world of physical objects, are not capable of enabling rational inquiry, even (...) though this is typically regarded as a central property of hinges; (2) the standard Bayesian story of how rational inquiry proceeds is incorrect or at best incomplete. (shrink)

Theories of rational decision making often abstract away from computational and other resource limitations faced by real agents. An alternative approach known as resource rationality puts such matters front and center, grounding choice and decision in the rational use of finite resources. Anticipated by earlier work in economics and in computer science, this approach has recently seen rapid development and application in the cognitive sciences. Here, the theory of rationality plays a dual role, both as a framework for normative assessment (...) and as a source of scientific hypotheses about how mental processes in fact work. The latter project, often called rational analysis, depends for its success on a fine-grained characterization of the computational problem facing a decision maker, which may in turn depend on realistic assumptions about what the relevant agent is like. As a consequence, resource rationality involves a delicate, but often fruitful interplay between the normative and the descriptive. (shrink)

Conditionalization governs how to reallocate credence in light of new evidence. One prominent argument in favor of Conditionalization holds that an agent who violates it is vulnerable to a diachronic Dutch book: a series of acceptable bets offered at multiple times that inflict a sure loss. van Fraassen argues that an agent who violates the Principle of Reflection is likewise vulnerable to a diachronic Dutch book. He concludes that agents should conform to both Conditionalization and Reflection. Some authors reply that (...) Reflection is implausible and hence that there must be something wrong with diachronic Dutch book arguments. Other authors try to isolate a principled difference between the Dutch book argument for Conditionalization and the Dutch book argument for Reflection, such that the former argument may succeed even though the latter fails. I pursue a version of this strategy. I contend that, once we properly elucidate the notion of sure loss, non‐reflectors are not vulnerable to a sure loss. An agent who violates Reflection is not thereby subject to a diachronic Dutch book. Appearances to the contrary result from an unmotivated focus upon an overly narrow set of gambling scenarios. (shrink)

It has been argued that if the rigidity condition is satisfied, a rational agent operating with uncertain evidence should update her subjective probabilities by Jeffrey conditionalization or else a series of bets resulting in a sure loss could be made against her. We show, however, that even if the rigidity condition is satisfied, it is not always safe to update probability distributions by JC because there exist such sequences of non-misleading uncertain observations where it may be foreseen that an agent (...) who updates her subjective probabilities by JC will end up nearly certain that a false hypothesis is true. We analyze the features of JC that lead to this problem, specify the conditions in which it arises and respond to potential objections. (shrink)

Two of the most influential arguments for Bayesian updating ("Conditionalization") -- Hilary Greaves' and David Wallace's Accuracy Argument and David Lewis' Diachronic Dutch Book Argument-- turn out to impose a strong and surprising limitation on rational uncertainty: that one can never be rationally uncertain of what one's evidence is. Many philosophers ("externalists") reject that claim, and now seem to face a difficult choice: either to endorse the arguments and give up Externalism, or to reject the arguments and lose some of (...) the best justifications of Bayesianism. The author argues that the key to resolving this conflict lies in recognizing that both arguments are plan-based, in that they argue for Conditionalization by first arguing that one should planto conditionalize. With this in view, we can identify the culprit common to both arguments: for an externalist, they misconceive the requirement to carry out a plan made at an earlier time. They should therefore not persuade us to reject Externalism. Furthermore, rethinking the nature of this requirement allows us to give two new arguments for Conditionalization that do not rule out rational uncertainty about one's evidence and that can thus serve as common ground in the debate between externalists and their opponents. (shrink)

Wordly internalists claim that while internal duplicates always share the same evidence, our evidence includes non-trivial propositions about our environment. It follows that some evidence is false. Worldly internalism is thought to provide a more satisfying answer to scepticism than classical internalist views that deny that these propositions about our environment might belong to our evidence and to provide a generally more attractive account of rationality and reasons for belief. We argue that worldly internalism faces serious difficulties and that its (...) apparent advantages are illusory. First, it cannot adequately handle some not terribly strange cases of perceptual error. Second, it cannot explain why one should plan to use their evidence to update their beliefs. The second issue allows us to explain why cases of misplaced certainty do not require us to introduce false evidence into our views and that why the alleged advantage of worldly internalism in resisting sceptical pressures is illusory. (shrink)

A vexing question in Bayesian epistemology is how an agent should update on evidence which she assigned zero prior credence. Some theorists have suggested that, in such cases, the agent should update by Kolmogorov conditionalization, a norm based on Kolmogorov’s theory of regular conditional distributions. However, it turns out that in some situations, a Kolmogorov conditionalizer will plan to always assign a posterior credence of zero to the evidence she learns. Intuitively, such a plan is irrational and easily Dutch bookable. (...) In this paper, we propose a revised norm, Kolmogorov-Blackwell conditionalization, which avoids this problem. We prove a Dutch book theorem and converse Dutch book theorem for this revised norm, and relate our results to those of Rescorla (2018). (shrink)

Lewis proved a Dutch book theorem for Conditionalization. The theorem shows that an agent who follows any credal update rule other than Conditionalization is vulnerable to bets that inflict a sure loss. Lewis’s theorem is tailored to factive formulations of Conditionalization, i.e. formulations on which the conditioning proposition is true. Yet many scientific and philosophical applications of Bayesian decision theory require a non-factive formulation, i.e. a formulation on which the conditioning proposition may be false. I prove a Dutch book theorem (...) tailored to non-factive Conditionalization. I also discuss the theorem’s significance. (shrink)