Episteme 14 (1):59-69 (
2017)
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Abstract
Pettigrew offers new axiomatic constraints on legitimate measures of inaccuracy.
His axiom called ‘Decomposition’ stipulates that legitimate measures of inaccuracy
evaluate a credence function in part based on its level of calibration at a world. I
argue that if calibration is valuable, as Pettigrew claims, then this fact is an explanandum
for accuracy-rst epistemologists, not an explanans, for three reasons. First,
the intuitive case for the importance of calibration isn’t as strong as Pettigrew
believes. Second, calibration is a perniciously global property that both contravenes
Pettigrew’s own views about the nature of credence functions themselves
and undercuts the achievements and ambitions of accuracy-rst epistemology.
Finally, Decomposition introduces a new kind of value compatible with but separate
from accuracy-proper in violation of Pettigrew’s alethic monism.
introduction