Why are conditional degrees of belief in an observation E, given a statistical hypothesis H, aligned with the objective probabilities expressed by H? After showing that standard replies are not satisfactory, I develop a suppositional analysis of conditional degree of belief, transferring Ramsey’s classical proposal to statistical inference. The analysis saves the alignment, explains the role of chance-credence coordination, and rebuts the charge of arbitrary assessment of evidence in Bayesian inference. Finally, I explore the implications of this (...) analysis for Bayesian reasoning with idealized models in science. (shrink)

The main question of this paper is: how do we manage to know what our own degrees of belief are? Section 1 briefly reviews and criticizes the traditional functionalist view, a view notably associated with David Lewis and sometimes called the theory-theory. I use this criticism to motivate the approach I want to promote. Section 2, the bulk of the paper, examines and begins to develop the view that we have a special kind of introspective access to our degrees (...) of belief. I give an initial assessment of the view by examining its compatibility with leading theories of introspection. And I identify a challenge for the view, and explain why I'm optimistic that the view can overcome it. (shrink)

Agents are often assumed to have degrees of belief (“credences”) and also binary beliefs (“beliefs simpliciter”). How are these related to each other? A much-discussed answer asserts that it is rational to believe a proposition if and only if one has a high enough degree of belief in it. But this answer runs into the “lottery paradox”: the set of believed propositions may violate the key rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure. In earlier work, we showed (...) that this problem generalizes: there exists no local function from degrees of belief to binary beliefs that satisfies some minimal conditions of rationality and non-triviality. “Locality” means that the binary belief in each proposition depends only on the degree of belief in that proposition, not on the degrees of belief in others. One might think that the impossibility can be avoided by dropping the assumption that binary beliefs are a function of degrees of belief. We prove that, even if we drop the “functionality” restriction, there still exists no local relation between degrees of belief and binary beliefs that satisfies some minimal conditions. Thus functionality is not the source of the impossibility; its source is the condition of locality. If there is any non-trivial relation between degrees of belief and binary beliefs at all, it must be a “holistic” one. We explore several concrete forms this “holistic” relation could take. (shrink)

According to the recent Perceptual Confidence view, perceptual experiences possess not only a representational content, but also a degree of confidence in that content. The motivations for this view are partly phenomenological and partly epistemic. We discuss both the phenomenological and epistemic motivations for the view, and the resulting account of the interface between perceptual experiences and degrees of belief. We conclude that, in their present state of development, orthodox accounts of perceptual experience are still to be favoured (...) over the perceptual confidence view. (shrink)

A question of recent interest in epistemology and philosophy of mind is how belief and credence relate to each other. A number of philosophers argue for a belief-first view of the relationship between belief and credence. On the belief-first view, what it is to have a credence just is to have a particular kind of belief, that is, a belief whose content involves probabilities or epistemic modals. Here, I argue against the belief-first view: (...) specifically, I argue that it cannot account for agents who have credences in propositions they barely comprehend. I conclude that, however credences differ from beliefs, they do not differ in virtue of adding additional content to the believed proposition. (shrink)

This is a three-part exchange on the relationship between belief and credence. It begins with an opening essay by Roger Clarke that argues for the claim that the notion of credence generalizes the notion of belief. Julia Staffel argues in her reply that we need to distinguish between mental states and models representing them, and that this helps us explain what it could mean that belief is a special case of credence. Roger Clarke's final essay reflects on (...) the compatibility of the previously discussed views with dualist and monist interpretations of our mental states and our ways of modeling them. (shrink)

This paper addresses a largely neglected question in ongoing debates over disagreement: what is the relation, if any, between disagreements involving credences and disagreements involving outright beliefs? The first part of the paper offers some desiderata for an adequate account of credal and full disagreement. The second part of the paper argues that both phenomena can be subsumed under a schematic definition which goes as follows: A and B disagree if and only if the accuracy conditions of A's doxastic attitude (...) are such that, if they were fulfilled, this would ipso facto make B's doxastic attitude inaccurate, or vice-versa. (shrink)

I examine the relationship between belief and credences and distinguish between a dogmatic, a Lockean, an agentic, and an abductive notion of belief. I conclude with some thoughts on voluntarism and evidentialism.

There are currently two robust traditions in philosophy dealing with doxastic attitudes: the tradition that is concerned primarily with all-or-nothing belief, and the tradition that is concerned primarily with degree of belief or credence. This paper concerns the relationship between belief and credence for a rational agent, and is directed at those who may have hoped that the notion of belief can either be reduced to credence or eliminated altogether when characterizing the norms governing ideally (...) rational agents. It presents a puzzle which lends support to two theses. First, that there is no formal reduction of a rational agent’s beliefs to her credences, because belief and credence are each responsive to different features of a body of evidence. Second, that if our traditional understanding of our practices of holding each other responsible is correct, then belief has a distinctive role to play, even for ideally rational agents, that cannot be played by credence. The question of which avenues remain for the credence-only theorist is considered. (shrink)

Belief is a familiar attitude: taking something to be the case or regarding it as true. But we are more confident in some of our beliefs than in others. For this reason, many epistemologists appeal to a second attitude, called credence, similar to a degree of confidence. This raises the question: how do belief and credence relate to each other? On a belief-first view, beliefs are more fundamental and credences are a species of beliefs, e.g. beliefs (...) about probabilities. On a credence-first view, credences are more fundamental and beliefs are a species of credence, e.g. credence above some threshold. In this thesis, I develop and defend a third view that I call belief-credence dualism. On this view, belief and credence are independent, equally fundamental attitudes, and neither reduces to the other. I begin by motivating the project: why should we care about the relationship between belief and credence? I argue it has broad implications for many debates in epistemology and beyond. Then, I defend dualism, arguing that it can explain features of our mental lives that a credence-first view and a belief-first view cannot. I also argue that dualism has attractive, interesting implications when applied to the pragmatic encroachment debate. Finally, I explore implications of dualism, both for the nature of evidence and how faith might go beyond the evidence but nonetheless be epistemically rational. I conclude that the human mind is, in some ways, complex, but we should be happy with this conclusion also long as each mental state we posit has a clear role to play. (shrink)

Reliabilists hold that a belief is doxastically justified if and only if it is caused by a reliable process. But since such a process is one that tends to produce a high ratio of true to false beliefs, reliabilism is on the face of it applicable to binary beliefs, but not to degrees of confidence or credences. For while beliefs admit of truth or falsity, the same cannot be said of credences in general. A natural question now arises: Can (...) reliability theories of justified belief be extended or modified to account for justified credence? In this paper, I address this question. I begin by showing that, as it stands, reliabilism cannot account for justified credence. I then consider three ways in which the reliabilist may try to do so by extending or modifying her theory, but I argue that such attempts face certain problems. After that, I turn to a version of reliabilism that incorporates evidentialist elements and argue that it allows us to avoid the problems that the other theories face. If I am right, this gives reliabilists a reason, aside from those given recently by Comesaña and Goldman, to move towards such a kind of hybrid theory. (shrink)

On one view of the traditional doxastic attitudes, belief is credence 1, disbelief is credence 0 and suspension is any precise credence between 0 and 1. In ‘Rational agnosticism and degrees of belief’ (2013) Jane Friedman argues, against this view, that there are cases where a credence of 0 is required but where suspension is permitted. If this were so, belief, disbelief and suspension could not be identified or reduced to the aforementioned credences. I argue that Friedman (...) relies on two different notions of epistemic rationality and two different kinds of evidential absence. I clarify these distinctions and show that her argument is either not valid or includes implausible premisses, twice over. If this is so, the view that belief is credence 1, disbelief is credence 0 and suspension is any precise credence between 0 and 1 cannot be rejected on the grounds that Friedman proposes. (shrink)

Philosophers commonly say that beliefs come in degrees. Drawing from the literature, I make precise three arguments for this claim: an argument from degrees of confidence, an argument from degrees of firmness, and an argument from natural language. I show that they all fail. I also advance three arguments that beliefs do not come in degrees: an argument from natural language, an argument from intuition, and an argument from the metaphysics of degrees. On the basis of these arguments, I conclude (...) that beliefs do not come in degrees. (shrink)

This paper explains and defends a belief-first view of the relationship between belief and credence. On this view, credences are a species of beliefs, and the degree of credence is determined by the content of what is believed. We begin by developing what we take to be the most plausible belief-first view. Then, we offer several arguments for it. Finally, we show how it can resist objections that have been raised to belief-first views. We conclude (...) that the belief-first view is more plausible than many have previously supposed. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's pseudonym Johannes Climacus famously defines faith as a risky “venture” that requires “holding fast” to “objective uncertainty.” Yet puzzlingly, he emphasizes that faith requires resolute conviction and certainty. Moreover, Climacus claims that all beliefs about contingent propositions about the external world “exclude doubt” and “nullify uncertainty,” but also that uncertainty is “continually present” in these very same beliefs. This paper argues that these apparent contradictions can be resolved by interpreting Climacus as a belief‐credence dualist. That is, Climacus holds (...) that beliefs and credences (i.e., degrees of belief) are two irreducibly distinct types of mental states. Beliefs are resolutions that close inquiry, thereby excluding doubt and reflecting subjective certainty by disregarding the possibility of error. Credences, by contrast, reflect assessments of evidential probabilities, thereby encoding a recognition of “objective uncertainty” by acknowledging the possibility of error. In addition to solving a vexing interpretive puzzle and showing how Kierkegaard anticipates contemporary views about the nature of belief and credence, this paper demonstrates that Kierkegaard developed a sophisticated account of the nature of belief, doubt, and certainty that merits serious philosophical consideration. (shrink)

Sometimes epistemologists theorize about belief, a tripartite attitude on which one can believe, withhold belief, or disbelieve a proposition. In other cases, epistemologists theorize about credence, a fine-grained attitude that represents one’s subjective probability or confidence level toward a proposition. How do these two attitudes relate to each other? This article explores the relationship between belief and credence in two categories: descriptive and normative. It then explains the broader significance of the belief-credence connection and concludes with (...) general lessons from the debate thus far. (shrink)

Credences are similar to levels of confidence, represented as a value on the [0,1] interval. This chapter sheds light on questions about credence, including its relationship to full belief, with an eye toward the empirical relevance of credence. First, I’ll provide a brief epistemological history of credence and lay out some of the main theories of the nature of credence. Then, I’ll provide an overview of the main views on how credences relate to full beliefs. Finally, I’ll turn to (...) the empirical, and suggest some ways that cognitive science does and could answer questions about credence, such as what credences one has, how credences relate to beliefs, and the extent to which we can control our credences. (shrink)

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 argued that this (...) tension can be alleviated by rejecting the requirement that rational (binary) beliefs must be consistent and closed under logical entailment. Instead, it is suggested that this logical requirement applies to a different type of binary propositional attitude, viz. acceptance. (shrink)

In “Can it be rational to have faith?”, it was argued that to have faith in some proposition consists, roughly speaking, in stopping one’s search for evidence and committing to act on that proposition without further evidence. That paper also outlined when and why stopping the search for evidence and acting is rationally required. Because the framework of that paper was that of formal decision theory, it primarily considered the relationship between faith and degrees of belief, rather than between (...) faith and belief full stop. This paper explores the relationship between rational faith and justified belief, by considering four prominent proposals about the relationship between belief and degrees of belief, and by examining what follows about faith and belief according to each of these proposals. It is argued that we cannot reach consensus concerning the relationship between faith and belief at present because of the more general epistemological lack of consensus over how belief relates to rationality: in particular, over how belief relates to the degrees of belief it is rational to have given one’s evidence. (shrink)

According to an increasingly popular view in epistemology and philosophy of mind, beliefs are sensitive to contextual factors such as practical factors and salient error possibilities. A prominent version of this view, called credal sensitivism, holds that the context-sensitivity of belief is due to the context-sensitivity of degrees of belief or credence. Credal sensitivism comes in two variants: while credence-one sensitivism (COS) holds that maximal confidence (credence one) is necessary for belief, threshold credal sensitivism (TCS) holds that (...) belief consists in having credence above some threshold, where this threshold doesn’t require maximal confidence. In this paper, I argue that COS has difficulties in accounting for three important features about belief: i) the compatibility between believing p and assigning non-zero credence to certain error possibilities that one takes to entail not-p, ii) the fact that outright beliefs can occur in different strengths, and iii) beliefs held by unconscious subjects. I also argue that TCS can easily avoid these problems. Finally, I consider an alleged advantage of COS over TCS in terms of explaining beliefs about lotteries. I argue that lottery cases are rather more problematic for COS than TCS. In conclusion, TCS is the most plausible version of credal sensitivitism. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article(s): Jackson, E., Philosophy Compass 15/6 (2020) pp. 1-13 10.1111/phc3.12668.x.

Credences are beliefs about evidential probabilities. We give the view an assessment-sensitive formulation, show how it evades the standard objections, and give several arguments in support.

People often act in ways that appear incompatible with their sincere assertions. But how might we explain such cases? On the shifting view, subjects’ degrees of belief may be highly sensitive to changes in context. This paper articulates and refines this view, after defending it against recent criticisms. It details two mechanisms by which degrees of beliefs may shift.

Traditional Bayesianism requires that an agent’s degrees of belief be represented by a real-valued, probabilistic credence function. However, in many cases it seems that our evidence is not rich enough to warrant such precision. In light of this, some have proposed that we instead represent an agent’s degrees of belief as a set of credence functions. This way, we can respect the evidence by requiring that the set, often called the agent’s credal state, includes all credence functions that (...) are in some sense compatible with the evidence. One known problem for this evidentially motivated imprecise view is that in certain cases, our imprecise credence in a particular proposition will remain the same no matter how much evidence we receive. In this article I argue that the problem is much more general than has been appreciated so far, and that it’s difficult to avoid it without compromising the initial evidentialist motivation. _1_ Introduction _2_ Precision and Its Problems _3_ Imprecise Bayesianism and Respecting Ambiguous Evidence _4_ Local Belief Inertia _5_ From Local to Global Belief Inertia _6_ Responding to Global Belief Inertia _7_ Conclusion. (shrink)

What is the relationship between degrees of belief and binary beliefs? Can the latter be expressed as a function of the former—a so-called “belief-binarization rule”—without running into difficulties such as the lottery paradox? We show that this problem can be usefully analyzed from the perspective of judgment-aggregation theory. Although some formal similarities between belief binarization and judgment aggregation have been noted before, the connection between the two problems has not yet been studied in full generality. In this (...) paper, we seek to fill this gap. The paper is organized around a baseline impossibility theorem, which we use to map out the space of possible solutions to the belief-binarization problem. Our theorem shows that, except in limiting cases, there exists no belief-binarization rule satisfying four initially plausible desiderata. Surprisingly, this result is a direct corollary of the judgment-aggregation variant of Arrow’s classic impossibility theorem in social choice theory. (shrink)

One's inaccuracy for a proposition is defined as the squared difference between the truth value (1 or 0) of the proposition and the credence (or subjective probability, or degree of belief) assigned to the proposition. One should have the epistemic goal of minimizing the expected inaccuracies of one's credences. We show that the method of minimizing expected inaccuracy can be used to solve certain probability problems involving information loss and self-locating beliefs (where a self-locating belief of a (...) temporal part of an individual is a belief about where or when that temporal part is located). We analyze the Sleeping Beauty problem, the duplication version of the Sleeping Beauty problem, and various related problems. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 2, Page 343-363, March 2022.

Traditionally epistemologists have taken doxastic states to come in three varieties—belief, disbelief, and suspension. Recently many epistemologists have taken our doxastic condition to be usefully represented by credences—quantified degrees of belief. Moreover, some have thought that this new credal picture is sufficient to account for everything we want to explain with the old traditional picture. Therefore, belief, disbelief, and suspension must map onto the new picture somehow. In this paper I challenge that possibility. Approaching the question from (...) the angle of suspension, I argue that all possible credal accounts face serious challenges. They either (i) falsify central claims that uphold the credal picture itself or (ii) do not permit suspension in cases where it is permissible or (iii) rule out the possibility of plainly possible confidence comparisons. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and defend a novel account of doubt. In Part 1, I make some preliminary observations about the nature of doubt. In Part 2, I introduce a new puzzle about the relationship between three psychological states: doubt, belief, and confidence. I present this puzzle because my account of doubt emerges as a possible solution to it. Lastly, in Part 3, I elaborate on and defend my account of doubt. Roughly, one has doubt if and only (...) if one believes one might be wrong; I argue that this is superior to the account that says that one has doubt if and only if one has less than the highest degree of confidence. (shrink)

In a recent article, Krauss (2017) raises some fundamental questions concerning (i) what the desiderata of a definition of lying are, and (ii) how definitions of lying can account for partial beliefs. This paper aims to provide an adequate answer to both questions. Regarding (i), it shows that there can be a tension between two desiderata for a definition of lying: 'descriptive accuracy' (meeting intuitions about our ordinary concept of lying), and 'moral import' (meeting intuitions about what is wrong with (...) lying), vindicating the primacy of the former desideratum. Regarding (ii), it shows that Krauss' proposed 'worse-off requirement' meets neither of these desiderata, whereas the 'comparative insincerity condition' (Marsili 2014) can meet both. The conclusion is that lies are assertions that the speaker takes to be more likely to be false than true, and their distinctive blameworthiness is a function of the extent to which they violate a sincerity norm. (shrink)

Degrees of belief are familiar to all of us. Our confidence in the truth of some propositions is higher than our confidence in the truth of other propositions. We are pretty confident that our computers will boot when we push their power button, but we are much more confident that the sun will rise tomorrow. Degrees of belief formally represent the strength with which we believe the truth of various propositions. The higher an agent’s degree of (...) class='Hi'>belief for a particular proposition, the higher her confidence in the truth of that proposition. For instance, Sophia’s degree of belief that it will be sunny in Vienna tomorrow might be .52, whereas her degree of belief that the train will leave on time might be .23. The precise meaning of these statements depends, of course, on the underlying theory of degrees of belief. These theories offer a formal tool to measure degrees of belief, to investigate the relations between various degrees of belief in different propositions, and to normatively evaluate degrees of belief. (shrink)

Schwitzgebel (2001) — henceforth 'S' — offers three examples in order to convince us that there are situations in which individuals are neither accurately describable as believing that p or failing to so believe, but are rather in 'in-between states of belief'. He then argues that there are no 'Bayesian' or representational strategies for explicating these, and proposes a dispositional account. I do not have any fundamental objection to the idea that there might be 'in-between states of belief'. (...) What I shall argue, rather, is that: (I) S does not provide a convincing argument that there really are such states; (II) S does not show, as he claims, that 'in-between states of belief' could not be accounted for in terms of degrees of belief; (III) S’s dispositional account of 'in-between states of belief' is more problematic than the 'degree of belief' alternative. (shrink)

Is there an interesting relation between the Preface paradox and the Sorites paradox that might be used to illuminate either or both of those paradoxes and the phenomena of rationality and vagueness with which they, respectively, are bound up? In particular, if we consider the analogy alongside a familiar response to the Preface Paradox that employs degrees of belief, does this give any support to the thought that we should adopt some kind of degree-theoretic treatment of vagueness and (...) the sorites? This chapter argues that it does not; indeed exploring the disanalogies contributes to a case against such a treatment of vagueness more generally. Among other views, it considers Edgington’s account of vagueness that employs a probabilistic structure of “verities”. It then contends that appeal to the framework of supervaluationism yields a better guide to reasoning in vague language than the degree-theoretic treatment can sustain. (shrink)

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 (...) of belief and full knowledge of all a priori truths. Ordinary subjects do not look very rational when compared to the kinds of agents usually talked about in decision theory. In this paper, I will develop an expected utility representation theorem aimed at the representation of those who are neither probabilistically coherent, logically omniscient, nor expected utility maximisers across the board—that is, agents who are frequently irrational. The agents in question may be deductively fallible, have incoherent credences, limited representational capacities, and fail to maximise expected utility for all but a limited class of gambles. (shrink)

I argue that when we use ‘probability’ language in epistemic contexts—e.g., when we ask how probable some hypothesis is, given the evidence available to us—we are talking about degrees of support, rather than degrees of belief. The epistemic probability of A given B is the mind-independent degree to which B supports A, not the degree to which someone with B as their evidence believes A, or the degree to which someone would or should believe A if (...) they had B as their evidence. My central argument is that the degree-of-support interpretation lets us better model good reasoning in certain cases involving old evidence. Degree-of-belief interpretations make the wrong predictions not only about whether old evidence confirms new hypotheses, but about the values of the probabilities that enter into Bayes’ Theorem when we calculate the probability of hypotheses conditional on old evidence and new background information. (shrink)

The article proceeds upon the assumption that the beliefs and degrees of belief of rational agents satisfy a number of constraints, including: consistency and deductive closure for belief sets, conformity to the axioms of probability for degrees of belief, and the Lockean Thesis concerning the relationship between belief and degree of belief. Assuming that the beliefs and degrees of belief of both individuals and collectives satisfy the preceding three constraints, I discuss what further (...) constraints may be imposed on the aggregation of beliefs and degrees of belief. Some possibility and impossibility results are presented. The possibility results suggest that the three proposed rationality constraints are compatible with reasonable aggregation procedures for belief and degree of belief. (shrink)

According to a standard assumption in epistemology, if one only partially believes that p , then one cannot thereby have knowledge that p. For example, if one only partially believes that that it is raining outside, one cannot know that it is raining outside; and if one only partially believes that it is likely that it will rain outside, one cannot know that it is likely that it will rain outside. Many epistemologists will agree that epistemic agents are capable of (...) partial beliefs in addition to full beliefs and that partial beliefs can be epistemically assessed along some dimensions. However, it has been generally assumed that such doxastic attitudes cannot possibly amount to knowledge. In Probabilistic Knowledge, Moss challenges this standard assumption and provides a formidable defense of the claim that probabilistic beliefs—a class of doxastic attitudes including credences and degrees of beliefs—can amount to knowledge too. Call this the probabilistic knowledge claim . Throughout the book, Moss goes to great lengths to show that probabilistic knowledge can be fruitfully applied to a variety of debates in epistemology and beyond. My goal in this essay is to explore a further application for probabilistic knowledge. I want to look at the role of probabilistic knowledge within a “knowledge-centered” psychology—a kind of psychology that assigns knowledge a central stage in explanations of intentional behavior. My suggestion is that Moss’s notion of probabilistic knowledge considerably helps further both a knowledge-centered psychology and a broadly intellectualist picture of action and know-how that naturally goes along with it. At the same time, though, it raises some interesting issues about the notion of explanation afforded by the resulting psychology. (shrink)

The best and most popular argument for probabilism is the accuracy-dominance argument, which purports to show that alethic considerations alone support the view that an agent’s degrees of belief should always obey the axioms of probability. I argue that extant versions of the accuracy-dominance argument face a problem. In order for the mathematics of the argument to function as advertised, we must assume that every omniscient credence function is classically consistent; there can be no worlds in the set of (...) dominance-relevant worlds that obey some other logic. This restriction cannot be motivated on alethic grounds unless we’re also willing to accept that rationality requires belief in every metaphysical necessity, as the distinction between a priori logical necessities and a posteriori metaphysical ones is not an alethic distinction. To justify the restriction to classically consistent worlds, non-alethic motivation is required. And thus, if there is a version of the accuracy-dominance argument in support of probabilism, it isn’t one that is grounded in alethic considerations alone. (shrink)

A Lockean metaphysics of belief that understands outright belief as a determinable with degrees of confidence as determinates is supposed to effect a unification of traditional coarse-grained epistemology of belief with fine-grained epistemology of confidence. But determination of belief by confidence would not by itself yield the result that norms for confidence carry over to norms for outright belief unless belief and high confidence are token identical. We argue that this token-identity thesis is incompatible (...) with the neglected phenomenon of “mistuned knowledge” – knowledge in the absence of rational confidence. We show how partial epistemological unification can be secured, even without token identity, given determination of outright belief by degrees of confidence. Finally, we suggest a direction for the pursuit of thoroughgoing epistemological unification. (shrink)

Much of the literature on the relationship between belief and credence has focused on the reduction question: that is, whether either belief or credence reduces to the other. This debate, while important, only scratches the surface of the belief-credence connection. Even on the anti-reductive dualist view, belief and credence could still be very tightly connected. Here, I explore questions about the belief-credence connection that go beyond reduction. This paper is dedicated to what I call the (...) independence question: just how independent are belief and credence? I look at this question from two angles: a descriptive one (as a psychological matter, how much can belief and credence come apart?) and a normative one (for a rational person, how closely connected are belief and credence?) Ultimately, I suggest that the two attitudes are more independent than one might think. (shrink)

I defend belief-credence dualism, the view that we have both beliefs and credences and both attitudes are equally fundamental. First, I explain belief, credence, and three views on their relationship. Then, I argue for dualism. I do so first by painting a picture of the mind on which belief and credence are two cognitive tools that we use for different purposes. Finally, I respond to two objections to dualism. I conclude that dualism is a promising view, and (...) one that both epistemologists and philosophers of mind should take seriously. (shrink)

This chapter will review selected aspects of the terrain of discussions about probabilities in statistical mechanics (with no pretensions to exhaustiveness, though the major issues will be touched upon), and will argue for a number of claims. None of the claims to be defended is entirely original, but all deserve emphasis. The first, and least controversial, is that probabilistic notions are needed to make sense of statistical mechanics. The reason for this is the same reason that convinced Maxwell, Gibbs, and (...) Boltzmann that probabilities would be needed, namely, that the second law of thermodynamics, which in its original formulation says that certain processes are impossible, must, on the kinetic theory, be replaced by a weaker formulation according to which what the original version deems impossible is merely improbable. Second is that we ought not take the standard measures invoked in equilibrium statistical mechanics as giving, in any sense, the correct probabilities about microstates of the system. We can settle for a much weaker claim: that the probabilities for outcomes of experiments yielded by the standard distributions are effectively the same as those yielded by any distribution that we should take as a representing probabilities over microstates. Lastly, (and most controversially): in asking about the status of probabilities in statistical mechanics, the familiar dichotomy between epistemic probabilities (credences, or degrees of belief) and ontic (physical) probabilities is insufficient; the concept of probability that is best suited to the needs of statistical mechanics is one that combines epistemic and physical considerations. (shrink)

In statistics, there are two main paradigms: classical and Bayesian statistics. The purpose of this article is to investigate the extent to which classicists and Bayesians can agree. My conclusion is that, in certain situations, they cannot. The upshot is that, if we assume that the classicist is not allowed to have a higher degree of belief in a null hypothesis after he has rejected it than before, then he has to either have trivial or incoherent credences to (...) begin with or fail to update his credences by conditionalization. (shrink)

According to doxastic pragmatism, certain perceived practical factors, such as high stakes and urgency, have systematic effects on normal subjects’ outright beliefs. Upholders of doxastic pragmatism have so far endorsed a particular version of this view, which we may call threshold pragmatism. This view holds that the sensitivity of belief to the relevant practical factors is due to a corresponding sensitivity of the threshold on the degree of credence necessary for outright belief. According to an alternative but (...) yet unrecognised version of doxastic pragmatism, practical factors affect credence rather than the threshold on credence. Let’s call this alternative view credal pragmatism. In this paper, I argue that credal pragmatism is more plausible than threshold pragmatism. I show that the former view better accommodates a cluster of intuitive and empirical data. I conclude by considering the issue of whether our doxastic attitudes’ sensitivity to practical factors can be considered rational, and if yes, in what sense. (shrink)

In the philosophical literature on the definition of lying, the analysis is generally restricted to cases of flat-out belief. This chapter considers the complex phenomenon of lies involving partial beliefs – beliefs ranging from mere uncertainty to absolute certainty. The first section analyses lies uttered while holding a graded belief in the falsity of the assertion, and presents a revised insincerity condition, requiring that the liar believes the assertion to be more likely to be false than true. The (...) second section analyses assertions that express graded beliefs, exploring how mitigation and reinforcement can alter the insincerity conditions for lying. The last section considers the case of lies that attack certainty (knowledge-lies), understood as attempt to alter the hearer's graded beliefs. (shrink)

[1] You have a crystal ball. Unfortunately, it’s defective. Rather than predicting the future, it gives you the chances of future events. Is it then of any use? It certainly seems so. You may not know for sure whether the stock market will crash next week; but if you know for sure that it has an 80% chance of crashing, then you should be 80% confident that it will—and you should plan accordingly. More generally, given that the chance of a (...) proposition A is x%, your conditional credence in A should be x%. This is a chance-credence principle: a principle relating chance (objective probability) with credence (subjective probability, degree of belief). Let’s call it the Minimal Principle (MP). (shrink)

I present an argument against the thesis of Uniqueness and in favour of Permissivism. Counterexamples to Uniqueness are provided, based on ‘Safespot’ propositions – i.e. a proposition that is guaranteed to be true provided the subject adopts a certain attitude towards it. The argument relies on a plausible principle: (roughly stated) If S knows that her believing p would be a true belief, then it is rationally permitted for S to believe p. One motivation for denying this principle – (...) viz. opposition to ‘epistemic consequentialism’ – is briefly discussed. The principle is extended to cover degrees of belief and compared with a couple of other well-known constraints on rational degrees of belief. (shrink)

The Dutch Book Argument for Probabilism assumes Ramsey's Thesis (RT), which purports to determine the prices an agent is rationally required to pay for a bet. Recently, a new objection to Ramsey's Thesis has emerged (Hedden 2013, Wronski & Godziszewski 2017, Wronski 2018)--I call this the Expected Utility Objection. According to this objection, it is Maximise Subjective Expected Utility (MSEU) that determines the prices an agent is required to pay for a bet, and this often disagrees with Ramsey's Thesis. I (...) suggest two responses to Hedden's objection. First, we might be permissive: agents are permitted to pay any price that is required or permitted by RT, and they are permitted to pay any price that is required or permitted by MSEU. This allows us to give a revised version of the Dutch Book Argument for Probabilism, which I call the Permissive Dutch Book Argument. Second, I suggest that even the proponent of the Expected Utility Objection should admit that RT gives the correct answer in certain very limited cases, and I show that, together with MSEU, this very restricted version of RT gives a new pragmatic argument for Probabilism, which I call the Bookless Pragmatic Argument. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe a problem for calibrationism: a view about higher order evidence according to which one's credences should be calibrated to one's expected degree of reliability. Calibrationism is attractive, in part, because it explains our intuitive judgments, and provides a strong motivation for certain theories about higher order evidence and peer disagreement. However, I will argue that calibrationism faces a dilemma: There are two versions of the view one might adopt. The first version, (...) I argue, has the implausible consequence that, in a wide range of cases, calibrationism is the only constraint on rational belief. The second version, in addition to having some puzzling consequences, is unmotivated. At the end of the paper I sketch a possible solution. (shrink)