Results for 'Bayesian epistemology'

962 found
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  1. Bayesian Epistemology.Alan Hájek & Stephan Hartmann - 1992 - In Jonathan Dancy & Ernest Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Epistemology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
    Bayesianism is our leading theory of uncertainty. Epistemology is defined as the theory of knowledge. So “Bayesian Epistemology” may sound like an oxymoron. Bayesianism, after all, studies the properties and dynamics of degrees of belief, understood to be probabilities. Traditional epistemology, on the other hand, places the singularly non-probabilistic notion of knowledge at centre stage, and to the extent that it traffics in belief, that notion does not come in degrees. So how can there be a (...)
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  2. Reasons for (prior) belief in Bayesian epistemology.Franz Dietrich & Christian List - 2013 - Synthese 190 (5):781-786.
    Bayesian epistemology tells us with great precision how we should move from prior to posterior beliefs in light of new evidence or information, but says little about where our prior beliefs come from. It offers few resources to describe some prior beliefs as rational or well-justified, and others as irrational or unreasonable. A different strand of epistemology takes the central epistemological question to be not how to change one’s beliefs in light of new evidence, but what reasons (...)
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  3. Confirmational holism and bayesian epistemology.David Christensen - 1992 - Philosophy of Science 59 (4):540-557.
    Much contemporary epistemology is informed by a kind of confirmational holism, and a consequent rejection of the assumption that all confirmation rests on experiential certainties. Another prominent theme is that belief comes in degrees, and that rationality requires apportioning one's degrees of belief reasonably. Bayesian confirmation models based on Jeffrey Conditionalization attempt to bring together these two appealing strands. I argue, however, that these models cannot account for a certain aspect of confirmation that would be accounted for in (...)
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  4. Frá skoðunum til trúnaðar og aftur til baka: Yfirlit um bayesíska þekkingarfræði [English title: "From Belief to Credence and Back Again: An Overview of Bayesian Epistemology"].Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Hugur 28:146-162.
    English abstract: This paper discusses the delicate relationship between traditional epistemology and the increasingly influential probabilistic (or ‘Bayesian’) approach to epistemology. The paper introduces some of the key ideas of probabilistic epistemology, including credences or degrees of belief, Bayes’ theorem, conditionalization, and the Dutch Book argument. The tension between traditional and probabilistic epistemology is brought out by considering the lottery and preface paradoxes as they relate to rational (binary) belief and credence respectively. It is then (...)
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  5. Homeostatic epistemology : reliability, coherence and coordination in a Bayesian virtue epistemology.Susannah Kate Devitt - 2013 - Dissertation,
    How do agents with limited cognitive capacities flourish in informationally impoverished or unexpected circumstances? Aristotle argued that human flourishing emerged from knowing about the world and our place within it. If he is right, then the virtuous processes that produce knowledge, best explain flourishing. Influenced by Aristotle, virtue epistemology defends an analysis of knowledge where beliefs are evaluated for their truth and the intellectual virtue or competences relied on in their creation. However, human flourishing may emerge from how degrees (...)
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  6. Time-Slice Epistemology for Bayesians.Lisa Cassell - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Recently, some have challenged the idea that there are genuine norms of diachronic rationality. Part of this challenge has involved offering replacements for diachronic principles. Skeptics about diachronic rationality believe that we can provide an error theory for it by appealing to synchronic updating rules that, over time, mimic the behavior of diachronic norms. In this paper, I argue that the most promising attempts to develop this position within the Bayesian framework are unsuccessful. I sketch a new synchronic surrogate (...)
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  7. Epistemology without guidance.Nick Hughes - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (1):163-196.
    Epistemologists often appeal to the idea that a normative theory must provide useful, usable, guidance to argue for one normative epistemology over another. I argue that this is a mistake. Guidance considerations have no role to play in theory choice in epistemology. I show how this has implications for debates about the possibility and scope of epistemic dilemmas, the legitimacy of idealisation in Bayesian epistemology, uniqueness versus permissivism, sharp versus mushy credences, and internalism versus externalism.
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  8. A Bayesian analysis of debunking arguments in ethics.Shang Long Yeo - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (5):1673-1692.
    Debunking arguments in ethics contend that our moral beliefs have dubious evolutionary, cultural, or psychological origins—hence concluding that we should doubt such beliefs. Debates about debunking are often couched in coarse-grained terms—about whether our moral beliefs are justified or not, for instance. In this paper, I propose a more detailed Bayesian analysis of debunking arguments, which proceeds in the fine-grained framework of rational confidence. Such analysis promises several payoffs: it highlights how debunking arguments don’t affect all agents, but rather (...)
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  9. A Tale of Two Epistemologies?Alan Hájek & Hanti Lin - 2017 - Res Philosophica 94 (2):207-232.
    So-called “traditional epistemology” and “Bayesian epistemology” share a word, but it may often seem that the enterprises hardly share a subject matter. They differ in their central concepts. They differ in their main concerns. They differ in their main theoretical moves. And they often differ in their methodology. However, in the last decade or so, there have been a number of attempts to build bridges between the two epistemologies. Indeed, many would say that there is just one (...)
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  10. When the (Bayesian) ideal is not ideal.Danilo Fraga Dantas - 2023 - Logos and Episteme 15 (3):271-298.
    Bayesian epistemologists support the norms of probabilism and conditionalization using Dutch book and accuracy arguments. These arguments assume that rationality requires agents to maximize practical or epistemic value in every doxastic state, which is evaluated from a subjective point of view (e.g., the agent’s expectancy of value). The accuracy arguments also presuppose that agents are opinionated. The goal of this paper is to discuss the assumptions of these arguments, including the measure of epistemic value. I have designed AI agents (...)
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  11. The Bayesian and the Dogmatist.Brian Weatherson - 2007 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (1pt2):169-185.
    It has been argued recently that dogmatism in epistemology is incompatible with Bayesianism. That is, it has been argued that dogmatism cannot be modelled using traditional techniques for Bayesian modelling. I argue that our response to this should not be to throw out dogmatism, but to develop better modelling techniques. I sketch a model for formal learning in which an agent can discover a posteriori fundamental epistemic connections. In this model, there is no formal objection to dogmatism.
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  12. A Bayesian Solution to Hallsson's Puzzle.Thomas Mulligan - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (10):1914-1927.
    Politics is rife with motivated cognition. People do not dispassionately engage with the evidence when they form political beliefs; they interpret it selectively, generating justifications for their desired conclusions and reasons why contrary evidence should be ignored. Moreover, research shows that epistemic ability (e.g. intelligence and familiarity with evidence) is correlated with motivated cognition. Bjørn Hallsson has pointed out that this raises a puzzle for the epistemology of disagreement. On the one hand, we typically think that epistemic ability in (...)
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  13. The Bayesian explanation of transmission failure.Geoff Pynn - 2013 - Synthese 190 (9):1519-1531.
    Even if our justified beliefs are closed under known entailment, there may still be instances of transmission failure. Transmission failure occurs when P entails Q, but a subject cannot acquire a justified belief that Q by deducing it from P. Paradigm cases of transmission failure involve inferences from mundane beliefs (e.g., that the wall in front of you is red) to the denials of skeptical hypotheses relative to those beliefs (e.g., that the wall in front of you is not white (...)
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  14. Bayesian coherentism.Lisa Cassell - 2020 - Synthese 198 (10):9563-9590.
    This paper considers a problem for Bayesian epistemology and proposes a solution to it. On the traditional Bayesian framework, an agent updates her beliefs by Bayesian conditioning, a rule that tells her how to revise her beliefs whenever she gets evidence that she holds with certainty. In order to extend the framework to a wider range of cases, Jeffrey (1965) proposed a more liberal version of this rule that has Bayesian conditioning as a special case. (...)
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  15. Basing for the Bayesian.Cameron Gibbs - 2019 - Synthese 196 (9):3815-3840.
    There is a distinction between merely having the right belief, and further basing that belief on the right reasons. Any adequate epistemology needs to be able to accommodate the basing relation that marks this distinction. However, trouble arises for Bayesianism. I argue that when we combine Bayesianism with the standard approaches to the basing relation, we get the result that no agent forms their credences in the right way; indeed, no agent even gets close. This is a serious problem, (...)
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  16. The new Tweety puzzle: arguments against monistic Bayesian approaches in epistemology and cognitive science.Matthias Unterhuber & Gerhard Schurz - 2013 - Synthese 190 (8):1407-1435.
    In this paper we discuss the new Tweety puzzle. The original Tweety puzzle was addressed by approaches in non-monotonic logic, which aim to adequately represent the Tweety case, namely that Tweety is a penguin and, thus, an exceptional bird, which cannot fly, although in general birds can fly. The new Tweety puzzle is intended as a challenge for probabilistic theories of epistemic states. In the first part of the paper we argue against monistic Bayesians, who assume that epistemic states can (...)
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  17. From unreliable sources: Bayesian critique and normative modelling of HUMINT inferences.Aviezer Tucker - 2023 - Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism 18:1-17.
    This paper applies Bayesian theories to critically analyse and offer reforms of intelligence analysis, collection, analysis, and decision making on the basis of Human Intelligence, Signals Intelligence, and Communication Intelligence. The article criticises the reliabilities of existing intelligence methodologies to demonstrate the need for Bayesian reforms. The proposed epistemic reform program for intelligence analysis should generate more reliable inferences. It distinguishes the transmission of knowledge from its generation, and consists of Bayesian three stages modular model for the (...)
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  18. Bayesian updating when what you learn might be false.Richard Pettigrew - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (1):309-324.
    Rescorla (Erkenntnis, 2020) has recently pointed out that the standard arguments for Bayesian Conditionalization assume that whenever I become certain of something, it is true. Most people would reject this assumption. In response, Rescorla offers an improved Dutch Book argument for Bayesian Conditionalization that does not make this assumption. My purpose in this paper is two-fold. First, I want to illuminate Rescorla’s new argument by giving a very general Dutch Book argument that applies to many cases of updating (...)
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  19. Bayesian Variations: Essays on the Structure, Object, and Dynamics of Credence.Aron Vallinder - 2018 - Dissertation, London School of Economics
    According to the traditional Bayesian view of credence, its structure is that of precise probability, its objects are descriptive propositions about the empirical world, and its dynamics are given by conditionalization. Each of the three essays that make up this thesis deals with a different variation on this traditional picture. The first variation replaces precise probability with sets of probabilities. The resulting imprecise Bayesianism is sometimes motivated on the grounds that our beliefs should not be more precise than the (...)
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  20. A Bayesian explanation of the irrationality of sexist and racist beliefs involving generic content.Paul Silva - 2020 - Synthese 197 (6):2465-2487.
    Various sexist and racist beliefs ascribe certain negative qualities to people of a given sex or race. Epistemic allies are people who think that in normal circumstances rationality requires the rejection of such sexist and racist beliefs upon learning of many counter-instances, i.e. members of these groups who lack the target negative quality. Accordingly, epistemic allies think that those who give up their sexist or racist beliefs in such circumstances are rationally responding to their evidence, while those who do not (...)
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  21. Accuracy-First Epistemology Without Additivity.Richard Pettigrew - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (1):128-151.
    Accuracy arguments for the core tenets of Bayesian epistemology differ mainly in the conditions they place on the legitimate ways of measuring the inaccuracy of our credences. The best existing arguments rely on three conditions: Continuity, Additivity, and Strict Propriety. In this paper, I show how to strengthen the arguments based on these conditions by showing that the central mathematical theorem on which each depends goes through without assuming Additivity.
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  22. Crowdsourced science: sociotechnical epistemology in the e-research paradigm.David Watson & Luciano Floridi - 2018 - Synthese 195 (2):741-764.
    Recent years have seen a surge in online collaboration between experts and amateurs on scientific research. In this article, we analyse the epistemological implications of these crowdsourced projects, with a focus on Zooniverse, the world’s largest citizen science web portal. We use quantitative methods to evaluate the platform’s success in producing large volumes of observation statements and high impact scientific discoveries relative to more conventional means of data processing. Through empirical evidence, Bayesian reasoning, and conceptual analysis, we show how (...)
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  23. Bayesian models and simulations in cognitive science.Giuseppe Boccignone & Roberto Cordeschi - 2007 - Workshop Models and Simulations 2, Tillburg, NL.
    Bayesian models can be related to cognitive processes in a variety of ways that can be usefully understood in terms of Marr's distinction among three levels of explanation: computational, algorithmic and implementation. In this note, we discuss how an integrated probabilistic account of the different levels of explanation in cognitive science is resulting, at least for the current research practice, in a sort of unpredicted epistemological shift with respect to Marr's original proposal.
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  24.  34
    Experimental Philosophy Meets Formal Epistemology.Jonah N. Schupbach - 2016 - In Wesley Buckwalter & Justin Sytsma (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 535–544.
    Formal epistemology is just what it sounds like: epistemology done with formal tools. Coinciding with the general rise in popularity of experimental philosophy, formal epistemologists have begun to apply experimental methods in their own work. In this entry, I survey some of the work at the intersection of formal and experimental epistemology. I show that experimental methods have unique roles to play when epistemology is done formally, and I highlight some ways in which results from formal (...)
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  25. The Epistemology of Disagreement: Why Not Bayesianism?Thomas Mulligan - 2021 - Episteme 18 (4):587-602.
    Disagreement is a ubiquitous feature of human life, and philosophers have dutifully attended to it. One important question related to disagreement is epistemological: How does a rational person change her beliefs (if at all) in light of disagreement from others? The typical methodology for answering this question is to endorse a steadfast or conciliatory disagreement norm (and not both) on a priori grounds and selected intuitive cases. In this paper, I argue that this methodology is misguided. Instead, a thoroughgoingly (...) strategy is what's needed. Such a strategy provides conciliatory norms in appropriate cases and steadfast norms in appropriate cases. I argue, further, that the few extant efforts to address disagreement in the Bayesian spirit are laudable but uncompelling. A modelling, rather than a functional, approach gets us the right norms and is highly general, allowing the epistemologist to deal with (1) multiple epistemic interlocutors, (2) epistemic superiors and inferiors (i.e. not just epistemic peers), and (3) dependence between interlocutors. (shrink)
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  26. How to Be a Bayesian Dogmatist.Brian T. Miller - 2016 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (4):766-780.
    ABSTRACTRational agents have consistent beliefs. Bayesianism is a theory of consistency for partial belief states. Rational agents also respond appropriately to experience. Dogmatism is a theory of how to respond appropriately to experience. Hence, Dogmatism and Bayesianism are theories of two very different aspects of rationality. It's surprising, then, that in recent years it has become common to claim that Dogmatism and Bayesianism are jointly inconsistent: how can two independently consistent theories with distinct subject matter be jointly inconsistent? In this (...)
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  27. Saving epistemology from the epistemologists: recent work in the theory of knowledge.Adam Morton - 2000 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51 (4):685-704.
    This is a very selective survey of developments in epistemology, concentrating on work from the past twenty years that is of interest to philosophers of science. The selection is organized around interesting connections between distinct themes. I first connect issues about skepticism to issues about the reliability of belief-acquiring processes. Next I connect discussions of the defeasibility of reasons for belief to accounts of the theory-independence of evidence. Then I connect doubts about Bayesian epistemology to issues about (...)
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  28. What is conditionalization, and why should we do it?Richard Pettigrew - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (11):3427-3463.
    Conditionalization is one of the central norms of Bayesian epistemology. But there are a number of competing formulations, and a number of arguments that purport to establish it. In this paper, I explore which formulations of the norm are supported by which arguments. In their standard formulations, each of the arguments I consider here depends on the same assumption, which I call Deterministic Updating. I will investigate whether it is possible to amend these arguments so that they no (...)
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  29. Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology.Brian C. Barnett (ed.) - 2021 - Rebus Community.
    Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology engages first-time philosophy readers on a guided tour through the core concepts, questions, methods, arguments, and theories of epistemology—the branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge. After a brief overview of the field, the book progresses systematically while placing central ideas and thinkers in historical and contemporary context. The chapters cover the analysis of knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, rationalism vs. empiricism, skepticism, the value of knowledge, the ethics of belief, (...) epistemology, social epistemology, and feminist epistemologies. Along the way, instructors and students will encounter a wealth of additional resources and tools: chapter learning outcomes, key terms, images of philosophers and related art, useful diagrams and tables, boxes containing excerpts and other supplementary material, questions for reflection, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary. For an undergraduate survey epistemology course, Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology is ideal when used as a main text paired with primary sources and scholarly articles. For an introductory philosophy course, select book chapters are best used in combination with chapters from other books in the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series (edited by Christina Hendricks). (shrink)
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  30. Learning from Conditionals.Benjamin Eva, Stephan Hartmann & Soroush Rafiee Rad - 2020 - Mind 129 (514):461-508.
    In this article, we address a major outstanding question of probabilistic Bayesian epistemology: how should a rational Bayesian agent update their beliefs upon learning an indicative conditional? A number of authors have recently contended that this question is fundamentally underdetermined by Bayesian norms, and hence that there is no single update procedure that rational agents are obliged to follow upon learning an indicative conditional. Here we resist this trend and argue that a core set of widely (...)
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  31. Decoupling, Sparsity, Randomization, and Objective Bayesian Inference.Julio Michael Stern - 2008 - Cybernetics and Human Knowing 15 (2):49-68..
    Decoupling is a general principle that allows us to separate simple components in a complex system. In statistics, decoupling is often expressed as independence, no association, or zero covariance relations. These relations are sharp statistical hypotheses, that can be tested using the FBST - Full Bayesian Significance Test. Decoupling relations can also be introduced by some techniques of Design of Statistical Experiments, DSEs, like randomization. This article discusses the concepts of decoupling, randomization and sparsely connected statistical models in the (...)
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  32. (1 other version)The epistemology of social facts: the evidential value of personal experience versus testimony.Luc J. Bovens & Stephen Leeds - 2002 - In Georg Meggle (ed.), Social Facts and Collective Intentionality. Philosophische Forschung / Philosophical research. Dr. Haensel-Hohenhausen. pp. 43-51.
    "The Personal is Political": This was an often-heard slogan of feminist groups in the late sixties and early seventies. The slogan is no doubt open to many interpretations. There is one interpretation which touches on the epistemology of social facts, viz. the slogan claims that in assessing the features of a political system, personal experiences have privileged evidentiary value. For instancte, in the face of third person reports about political corruption, I may remain unmoved in my belief that the (...)
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  33. “Contemporary Analytic Philosophy and Bayesian Subjectivism: Why Both are Incoherent”, Philosophy Study, Vol. 6, No. 10 (Oct. 2016): 578-85. [REVIEW]Tom Vinci - 2016 - Philosophy Study:578-85.
    My purpose in this paper is to argue for two separate, but related theses. The first is that contemporary analytic philosophy is incoherent. This is so, I argue, because its methods contain as an essential constituent a conception of intuition that cannot be rendered consistent with a key tenet of analytic philosophy unless we allow a Bayesian-subjectivist epistemology. I argue for this within a discussion of two theories of intuition: a classical account as proposed by Descartes and a (...)
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  34. Logical ignorance and logical learning.Richard Pettigrew - 2020 - Synthese 198 (10):9991-10020.
    According to certain normative theories in epistemology, rationality requires us to be logically omniscient. Yet this prescription clashes with our ordinary judgments of rationality. How should we resolve this tension? In this paper, I focus particularly on the logical omniscience requirement in Bayesian epistemology. Building on a key insight by Hacking :311–325, 1967), I develop a version of Bayesianism that permits logical ignorance. This includes: an account of the synchronic norms that govern a logically ignorant individual at (...)
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  35.  53
    What Second-Best Epistemology Could Be.Marc-Kevin Daoust - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    According to the Theory of the Second Best, in non-ideal circumstances, approximating ideals might be suboptimal (with respect to a specific interpretation of what “approximating an ideal” means). In this paper, I argue that the formal model underlying the Theory can apply to problems in epistemology. Two applications are discussed: First, in some circumstances, second-best problems arise in Bayesian settings. Second, the division of epistemic labour can be subject to second-best problems. These results matter. They allow us to (...)
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  36. Ad hocness, accommodation and consilience: a Bayesian account.John Wilcox - 2023 - Synthese 201 (2):1-42.
    All of us, including scientists, make judgments about what is true or false, probable or improbable. And in the process, we frequently appeal to concepts such as evidential support or explanation. Bayesian philosophers of science have given illuminating formal accounts of these concepts. This paper aims to follow in their footsteps, providing a novel formal account of various additional concepts: the likelihood-prior trade-off, successful accommodation of evidence, ad hocness, and, finally, consilience—sometimes also called “unification”. Using these accounts, I also (...)
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  37. Toward a Grammar of Bayesian Confirmation.Vincenzo Crupi, Roberto Festa & Carlo Buttasi - 2009 - In M. Suàrez, M. Dorato & M. Rèdei (eds.), EPSA Epistemology and Methodology of Science: Launch of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Springer. pp. 73--93.
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  38. Obligation, Permission, and Bayesian Orgulity.Michael Nielsen & Rush T. Stewart - 2019 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6.
    This essay has two aims. The first is to correct an increasingly popular way of misunderstanding Belot's Orgulity Argument. The Orgulity Argument charges Bayesianism with defect as a normative epistemology. For concreteness, our argument focuses on Cisewski et al.'s recent rejoinder to Belot. The conditions that underwrite their version of the argument are too strong and Belot does not endorse them on our reading. A more compelling version of the Orgulity Argument than Cisewski et al. present is available, however---a (...)
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  39. Almost Ideal: Computational Epistemology and the Limits of Rationality for Finite Reasoners.Danilo Fraga Dantas - 2016 - Dissertation, University of California, Davis
    The notion of an ideal reasoner has several uses in epistemology. Often, ideal reasoners are used as a parameter of (maximum) rationality for finite reasoners (e.g. humans). However, the notion of an ideal reasoner is normally construed in such a high degree of idealization (e.g. infinite/unbounded memory) that this use is unadvised. In this dissertation, I investigate the conditions under which an ideal reasoner may be used as a parameter of rationality for finite reasoners. In addition, I present and (...)
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  40. For True Conditionalizers Weisberg’s Paradox is a False Alarm.Franz Huber - 2014 - Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences 1 (1):111-119.
    Weisberg introduces a phenomenon he terms perceptual undermining. He argues that it poses a problem for Jeffrey conditionalization, and Bayesian epistemology in general. This is Weisberg’s paradox. Weisberg argues that perceptual undermining also poses a problem for ranking theory and for Dempster-Shafer theory. In this note I argue that perceptual undermining does not pose a problem for any of these theories: for true conditionalizers Weisberg’s paradox is a false alarm.
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  41. The Problem of Measure Sensitivity Redux.Peter Brössel - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (3):378-397.
    Fitelson (1999) demonstrates that the validity of various arguments within Bayesian confirmation theory depends on which confirmation measure is adopted. The present paper adds to the results set out in Fitelson (1999), expanding on them in two principal respects. First, it considers more confirmation measures. Second, it shows that there are important arguments within Bayesian confirmation theory and that there is no confirmation measure that renders them all valid. Finally, the paper reviews the ramifications that this "strengthened problem (...)
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  42. Arguments from Expert Opinion – An Epistemological Approach.Christoph Lumer - 2020 - In Catarina Dutilh Novaes, Henrike Jansen, Jan Albert Van Laar & Bart Verheij (eds.), Reason to Dissent. Proceedings of the 3rd European Conference on Argumentation. College Publications. pp. 403-422.
    In times of populist mistrust towards experts, it is important and the aim of the paper to ascertain the rationality of arguments from expert opinion and to reconstruct their rational foundations as well as to determine their limits. The foundational approach chosen is probabilistic. However, there are at least three correct probabilistic reconstructions of such argumentations: statistical inferences, Bayesian updating, and interpretive arguments. To solve this competition problem, the paper proposes a recourse to the arguments' justification strengths achievable in (...)
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  43. Assessing Scientific Theories: The Bayesian Approach.Stephan Hartmann & Radin Dardashti - 2019 - In Dawid Richard, Dardashti Radin & Thebault Karim (eds.), Epistemology of Fundamental Physics: Why Trust a Theory? Cambridge University Press. pp. 67–83.
    Scientific theories are used for a variety of purposes. For example, physical theories such as classical mechanics and electrodynamics have important applications in engineering and technology, and we trust that this results in useful machines, stable bridges, and the like. Similarly, theories such as quantum mechanics and relativity theory have many applications as well. Beyond that, these theories provide us with an understanding of the world and address fundamental questions about space, time, and matter. Here we trust that the answers (...)
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  44. Coin flips, credences and the Reflection Principle.Brett Topey - 2012 - Analysis 72 (3):478-488.
    One recent topic of debate in Bayesian epistemology has been the question of whether imprecise credences can be rational. I argue that one account of imprecise credences, the orthodox treatment as defended by James M. Joyce, is untenable. Despite Joyce’s claims to the contrary, a puzzle introduced by Roger White shows that the orthodox account, when paired with Bas C. van Fraassen’s Reflection Principle, can lead to inconsistent beliefs. Proponents of imprecise credences, then, must either provide a compelling (...)
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  45. Persistent Disagreement and Polarization in a Bayesian Setting.Michael Nielsen & Rush T. Stewart - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (1):51-78.
    For two ideally rational agents, does learning a finite amount of shared evidence necessitate agreement? No. But does it at least guard against belief polarization, the case in which their opinions get further apart? No. OK, but are rational agents guaranteed to avoid polarization if they have access to an infinite, increasing stream of shared evidence? No.
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  46. Bayesianism, convergence and social epistemology.Michael J. Shaffer - 2008 - Episteme 5 (2):pp. 203-219.
    Following the standard practice in sociology, cultural anthropology and history, sociologists, historians of science and some philosophers of science define scientific communities as groups with shared beliefs, values and practices. In this paper it is argued that in real cases the beliefs of the members of such communities often vary significantly in important ways. This has rather dire implications for the convergence defense against the charge of the excessive subjectivity of subjective Bayesianism because that defense requires that communities of (...) inquirers share a significant set of modal beliefs. The important implication is then that given the actual variation in modal beliefs across individuals, either Bayesians cannot claim that actual theories have been objectively confirmed or they must accept that such theories have been confirmed relative only to epistemically insignificant communities. (shrink)
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  47. Learning from experience and conditionalization.Peter Brössel - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (9):2797-2823.
    Bayesianism can be characterized as the following twofold position: (i) rational credences obey the probability calculus; (ii) rational learning, i.e., the updating of credences, is regulated by some form of conditionalization. While the formal aspect of various forms of conditionalization has been explored in detail, the philosophical application to learning from experience is still deeply problematic. Some philosophers have proposed to revise the epistemology of perception; others have provided new formal accounts of conditionalization that are more in line with (...)
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  48. On the role of explanatory and systematic power in scientific reasoning.Peter Brössel - 2015 - Synthese 192 (12):3877-3913.
    The paper investigates measures of explanatory power and how to define the inference schema “Inference to the Best Explanation”. It argues that these measures can also be used to quantify the systematic power of a hypothesis and the inference schema “Inference to the Best Systematization” is defined. It demonstrates that systematic power is a fruitful criterion for theory choice and IBS is truth-conducive. It also shows that even radical Bayesians must admit that systemic power is an integral component of (...) reasoning. Finally, the paper puts the achieved results in perspective with van Fraassen’s famous criticism of IBE. (shrink)
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  49. Genericity and Inductive Inference.Henry Ian Schiller - 2023 - Philosophy of Science:1-18.
    We are often justified in acting on the basis of evidential confirmation. I argue that such evidence supports belief in non-quantificational generic generalizations, rather than universally quantified generalizations. I show how this account supports, rather than undermines, a Bayesian account of confirmation. Induction from confirming instances of a generalization to belief in the corresponding generic is part of a reasoning instinct that is typically (but not always) correct, and allows us to approximate the predictions that formal epistemology would (...)
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  50. A problem for the alternative difference measure of confirmation.Nevin Climenhaga - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (3):643-651.
    Among Bayesian confirmation theorists, several quantitative measures of the degree to which an evidential proposition E confirms a hypothesis H have been proposed. According to one popular recent measure, s, the degree to which E confirms H is a function of the equation P(H|E) − P(H|~E). A consequence of s is that when we have two evidential propositions, E1 and E2, such that P(H|E1) = P(H|E2), and P(H|~E1) ≠ P(H|~E2), the confirmation afforded to H by E1 does not equal (...)
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