Results for 'imprecise credence'

489 found
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  1. Scoring Imprecise Credences: A Mildly Immodest Proposal.Conor Mayo-Wilson & Gregory Wheeler - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (1):55-78.
    Jim Joyce argues for two amendments to probabilism. The first is the doctrine that credences are rational, or not, in virtue of their accuracy or “closeness to the truth” (1998). The second is a shift from a numerically precise model of belief to an imprecise model represented by a set of probability functions (2010). We argue that both amendments cannot be satisfied simultaneously. To do so, we employ a (slightly-generalized) impossibility theorem of Seidenfeld, Schervish, and Kadane (2012), who show (...)
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  2. Reliabilism and imprecise credences.Weng Hong Tang - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (5):1463-1480.
    What is it for an imprecise credence to be justified? It might be thought that this is not a particularly urgent question for friends of imprecise credences to answer. For one might think that its answer just depends on how a well-trodden issue in epistemology plays out—namely, that of which theory of doxastic justification, be it reliabilism, evidentialism, or some other theory, is correct. I’ll argue, however, that it’s difficult for reliabilists to accommodate imprecise credences, at (...)
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  3. A forward looking decision rule for imprecise credences.Rohan Sud - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (1):119-139.
    Adam Elga (Philosophers’ Imprint, 10(5), 1–11, 2010) presents a diachronic puzzle to supporters of imprecise credences and argues that no acceptable decision rule for imprecise credences can deliver the intuitively correct result. Elga concludes that agents should not hold imprecise credences. In this paper, I argue for a two-part thesis. First, I show that Elga’s argument is incomplete: there is an acceptable decision rule that delivers the intuitive result. Next, I repair the argument by offering a more (...)
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  4. Deference Principles for Imprecise Credences.Giacomo Molinari - manuscript
    This essay gives an account of epistemic deference for agents with imprecise credences. I look at the two main imprecise deference principles in the literature, known as Identity Reflection and Pointwise Reflection (Moss, 2021). I show that Pointwise Reflection is strictly weaker than Identity Reflection, and argue that, if you are certain you will update by conditionalisation, you should defer to your future self according to Identity Reflection. Then I give a more general justification for Pointwise and Identity (...)
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  5. Vagueness and Imprecise Credence.Anna Mahtani - 2019 - In Richard Dietz (ed.), Vagueness and Rationality in Language Use and Cognition. Springer Verlag. pp. 7-30.
    In this paper I investigate an alternative to imprecise probabilism. Imprecise probabilism is a popular revision of orthodox Bayesianism: while the orthodox Bayesian claims that a rational agent’s belief-state can be represented by a single credence function, the imprecise probabilist claims instead that a rational agent’s belief-state can be represented by a set of such functions. The alternative that I put forward in this paper is to claim that the expression ‘credence’ is vague, and then (...)
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  6. Chilling out on epistemic rationality: A defense of imprecise credences.Miriam Schoenfield - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 158 (2):197-219.
    A defense of imprecise credences (and other imprecise doxastic attitudes).
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  7. The Accuracy and Rationality of Imprecise Credences.Miriam Schoenfield - 2015 - Noûs 51 (4):667-685.
    It has been claimed that, in response to certain kinds of evidence, agents ought to adopt imprecise credences: doxastic states that are represented by sets of credence functions rather than single ones. In this paper I argue that, given some plausible constraints on accuracy measures, accuracy-centered epistemologists must reject the requirement to adopt imprecise credences. I then show that even the claim that imprecise credences are permitted is problematic for accuracy-centered epistemology. It follows that if (...) credal states are permitted or required in the cases that their defenders appeal to, then the requirements of rationality can outstrip what would be warranted by an interest in accuracy. (shrink)
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  8. Accuracy and Credal Imprecision.Dominik Berger & Nilanjan Das - 2019 - Noûs 54 (3):666-703.
    Many have claimed that epistemic rationality sometimes requires us to have imprecise credal states (i.e. credal states representable only by sets of credence functions) rather than precise ones (i.e. credal states representable by single credence functions). Some writers have recently argued that this claim conflicts with accuracy-centered epistemology, i.e., the project of justifying epistemic norms by appealing solely to the overall accuracy of the doxastic states they recommend. But these arguments are far from decisive. In this essay, (...)
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  9. Imprecise Bayesianism and Global Belief Inertia.Aron Vallinder - 2018 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (4):1205-1230.
    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 (...)
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  10. Against Radical Credal Imprecision.Susanna Rinard - 2013 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 2 (1):157-165.
    A number of Bayesians claim that, if one has no evidence relevant to a proposition P, then one's credence in P should be spread over the interval [0, 1]. Against this, I argue: first, that it is inconsistent with plausible claims about comparative levels of confidence; second, that it precludes inductive learning in certain cases. Two motivations for the view are considered and rejected. A discussion of alternatives leads to the conjecture that there is an in-principle limitation on formal (...)
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  11. Symmetry, Invariance, and Imprecise Probability.Zachary Goodsell & Jacob M. Nebel - forthcoming - Mind.
    It is tempting to think that a process of choosing a point at random from the surface of a sphere can be probabilistically symmetric, in the sense that any two regions of the sphere which differ by a rotation are equally likely to include the chosen point. Isaacs, Hájek, and Hawthorne (2022) argue from such symmetry principles and the mathematical paradoxes of measure to the existence of imprecise chances and the rationality of imprecise credences. Williamson (2007) has argued (...)
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  12. 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 (...)
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  13. Dutch Book Arguments and Imprecise Probabilities.Seamus Bradley - 2012 - In D. Dieks, S. Hartmann, T. Uebel & M. Weber (eds.), Probabilities, Laws and Structure. Springer.
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  14. Imprecise Probabilities.Anna Mahtani - 2019 - In Richard Pettigrew & Jonathan Weisberg (eds.), The Open Handbook of Formal Epistemology. PhilPapers Foundation. pp. 107-130.
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  15. Imprecise Probabilities and Unstable Betting Behaviour.Anna Mahtani - 2014 - Noûs 52 (1):69-87.
    Many have argued that a rational agent's attitude towards a proposition may be better represented by a probability range than by a single number. I show that in such cases an agent will have unstable betting behaviour, and so will behave in an unpredictable way. I use this point to argue against a range of responses to the ‘two bets’ argument for sharp probabilities.
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  16. The dispositional account of credence.Anna Mahtani - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 177 (3):727-745.
    In this paper I offer an alternative - the ‘dispositional account’ - to the standard account of imprecise probabilism. Whereas for the imprecise probabilist, an agent’s credal state is modelled by a set of credence functions, on the dispositional account an agent’s credal state is modelled by a set of sets of credence functions. On the face of it, the dispositional account looks less elegant than the standard account – so why should we be interested? I (...)
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  17. Imprecise Probability and Higher Order Vagueness.Susanne Rinard - 2017 - Res Philosophica 94 (2):257-273.
    There is a trade-off between specificity and accuracy in existing models of belief. Descriptions of agents in the tripartite model, which recognizes only three doxastic attitudes—belief, disbelief, and suspension of judgment—are typically accurate, but not sufficiently specific. The orthodox Bayesian model, which requires real-valued credences, is perfectly specific, but often inaccurate: we often lack precise credences. I argue, first, that a popular attempt to fix the Bayesian model by using sets of functions is also inaccurate, since it requires us to (...)
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  18. How to be an imprecise impermissivist.Seamus Bradley - manuscript
    Rational credence should be coherent in the sense that your attitudes should not leave you open to a sure loss. Rational credence should be such that you can learn when confronted with relevant evidence. Rational credence should not be sensitive to irrelevant differences in the presentation of the epistemic situation. We explore the extent to which orthodox probabilistic approaches to rational credence can satisfy these three desiderata and find them wanting. We demonstrate that an imprecise (...)
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  19. The Principle of Indifference and Imprecise Probability.Susanna Rinard - 2014 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 3 (2):110-114.
    Sometimes different partitions of the same space each seem to divide that space into propositions that call for equal epistemic treatment. Famously, equal treatment in the form of equal point-valued credence leads to incoherence. Some have argued that equal treatment in the form of equal interval-valued credence solves the puzzle. This paper shows that, once we rule out intervals with extreme endpoints, this proposal also leads to incoherence.
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  20. Dilating and contracting arbitrarily.David Builes, Sophie Horowitz & Miriam Schoenfield - 2020 - Noûs 56 (1):3-20.
    Standard accuracy-based approaches to imprecise credences have the consequence that it is rational to move between precise and imprecise credences arbitrarily, without gaining any new evidence. Building on the Educated Guessing Framework of Horowitz (2019), we develop an alternative accuracy-based approach to imprecise credences that does not have this shortcoming. We argue that it is always irrational to move from a precise state to an imprecise state arbitrarily, however it can be rational to move from an (...)
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  21. 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 (...)
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  22. For Bayesians, Rational Modesty Requires Imprecision.Brian Weatherson - 2015 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 2.
    Gordon Belot has recently developed a novel argument against Bayesianism. He shows that there is an interesting class of problems that, intuitively, no rational belief forming method is likely to get right. But a Bayesian agent’s credence, before the problem starts, that she will get the problem right has to be 1. This is an implausible kind of immodesty on the part of Bayesians. My aim is to show that while this is a good argument against traditional, precise Bayesians, (...)
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  23. Pascal’s Wager and Decision-making with Imprecise Probabilities.André Neiva - 2022 - Philosophia 51 (3):1479-1508.
    Unlike other classical arguments for the existence of God, Pascal’s Wager provides a pragmatic rationale for theistic belief. Its most popular version says that it is rationally mandatory to choose a way of life that seeks to cultivate belief in God because this is the option of maximum expected utility. Despite its initial attractiveness, this long-standing argument has been subject to various criticisms by many philosophers. What is less discussed, however, is the rationality of this choice in situations where the (...)
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  24. Normative Decision Theory.Edward Elliott - 2019 - Analysis 79 (4):755-772.
    A review of some major topics of debate in normative decision theory from circa 2007 to 2019. Topics discussed include the ongoing debate between causal and evidential decision theory, decision instability, risk-weighted expected utility theory, decision-making with incomplete preferences, and decision-making with imprecise credences.
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  25. Decision making in the face of parity.Miriam Schoenfield - 2014 - Philosophical Perspectives 28 (1):263-277.
    Abstract: This paper defends a constraint that any satisfactory decision theory must satisfy. I show how this constraint is violated by all of the decision theories that have been endorsed in the literature that are designed to deal with cases in which opinions or values are represented by a set of functions rather than a single one. Such a decision theory is necessary to account for the existence of what Ruth Chang has called “parity” (as well as for cases in (...)
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  26. Comparative Opinion Loss.Benjamin Eva & Reuben Stern - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (3):613-637.
    It is a consequence of the theory of imprecise credences that there exist situations in which rational agents inevitably become less opinionated toward some propositions as they gather more evidence. The fact that an agent's imprecise credal state can dilate in this way is often treated as a strike against the imprecise approach to inductive inference. Here, we show that dilation is not a mere artifact of this approach by demonstrating that opinion loss is countenanced as rational (...)
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  27. 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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  28. Why Should We Try to be Sustainable? Expected Consequences and the Ethics of Making an Indeterminate Difference.Howard Nye - 2021 - In Chelsea Miya, Oliver Rossier & Geoffrey Rockwell (eds.), Right Research: Modelling Sustainable Research Practices in the Anthropocene. Open Book Publishers. pp. 3-35.
    Why should we refrain from doing things that, taken collectively, are environmentally destructive, if our individual acts seem almost certain to make no difference? According to the expected consequences approach, we should refrain from doing these things because our individual acts have small risks of causing great harm, which outweigh the expected benefits of performing them. Several authors have argued convincingly that this provides a plausible account of our moral reasons to do things like vote for policies that will reduce (...)
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  29. Against the possibility of a formal account of rationality.Shivaram Lingamneni - manuscript
    I analyze a recent exchange between Adam Elga and Julian Jonker concerning unsharp (or imprecise) credences and decision-making over them. Elga holds that unsharp credences are necessarily irrational; I agree with Jonker's reply that they can be rational as long as the agent switches to a nonlinear valuation. Through the lens of computational complexity theory, I then argue that even though nonlinear valuations can be rational, they come in general at the price of computational intractability, and that this problematizes (...)
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  30. Changes in attitude.Daniel Drucker - 2021 - Philosophical Perspectives 35 (1):151-169.
    I formulate and tentatively defend the view that we cannot be rationally required to have one type of doxastic attitude (e.g., beliefs, credences, imprecise credences, etc.) because we have another type; in other words, we can only be required to have, say, given credences because we have some other credences already. I explore an argument that appeals to the idea that there is no good reasoning from one type to the other type. I consider some important possible responses, and (...)
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  31. 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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  32. On Choosing how to Choose.Richard Pettigrew - manuscript
    A decision theory is self-recommending if, when you ask it which decision theory you should use, it considers itself to be among the permissible options. I show that many alternatives to expected utility theory are not self-recommending, and I argue that this tells against them.
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  33. Are You Now or Have You Ever Been an Impermissivist? --- A conversation among friends and enemies of epistemic freedom.Sophie Horowitz, Sinan Dogramaci & Miriam Schoenfield - 2024 - In Blake Roeber, Matthias Steup, Ernest Sosa & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Wiley-Blackwell.
    We debate whether permissivism is true. We start off by assuming an accuracy-oriented framework, and then discuss metaepistemological questions about how our epistemic evaluations promote accuracy.
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  34. Real and ideal rationality.Robert Weston Siscoe - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (3):879-910.
    Formal epistemologists often claim that our credences should be representable by a probability function. Complete probabilistic coherence, however, is only possible for ideal agents, raising the question of how this requirement relates to our everyday judgments concerning rationality. One possible answer is that being rational is a contextual matter, that the standards for rationality change along with the situation. Just like who counts as tall changes depending on whether we are considering toddlers or basketball players, perhaps what counts as rational (...)
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  35. Belief, Credence, and Pragmatic Encroachment.Jacob Ross & Mark Schroeder - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (2):259-288.
    This paper compares two alternative explanations of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge (i.e., the claim that whether an agent knows that p can depend on pragmatic factors). After reviewing the evidence for such pragmatic encroachment, we ask how it is best explained, assuming it obtains. Several authors have recently argued that the best explanation is provided by a particular account of belief, which we call pragmatic credal reductivism. On this view, what it is for an agent to believe a proposition is (...)
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  36. Belief, Credence, and Evidence.Elizabeth Jackson - 2020 - Synthese 197 (11):5073-5092.
    I explore how rational belief and rational credence relate to evidence. I begin by looking at three cases where rational belief and credence seem to respond differently to evidence: cases of naked statistical evidence, lotteries, and hedged assertions. I consider an explanation for these cases, namely, that one ought not form beliefs on the basis of statistical evidence alone, and raise worries for this view. Then, I suggest another view that explains how belief and credence relate to (...)
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  37. Belief, credence, and norms.Lara Buchak - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 169 (2):1-27.
    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. (...)
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  38. Should credence be sensitive to practical factors? A cost–benefit analysis.Jie Gao - 2023 - Mind and Language 38 (5):1238-1257.
    According to evidentialist views, credence in a proposition p should be proportional to the degree of evidential support that one has in favor of p. However, empirical evidence suggests that our credences are systematically sensitive to practical factors. In this article, I provide a cost–benefit analysis of credences' practical sensitivity. The upshot of this analysis is that credences sensitive to practical factors fare better than practically insensitive ones along several dimensions. All things considered, our credences should be sensitive to (...)
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  39. Credence: A Belief-First Approach.Andrew Moon & Elizabeth Jackson - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (5):652–669.
    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 (...)
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  40. Credences and suspended judgments as transitional attitudes.Julia Staffel - 2019 - Philosophical Issues 29 (1):281-294.
    In this paper, I highlight an interesting difference between belief on the one hand, and suspended judgment and credence on the other hand. This difference is the following: credences and suspended judgments are suitable to serve as transitional as well as terminal attitudes in our reasoning, whereas beliefs are only appropriate as terminal attitudes. The notion of a transitional attitude is not an established one in the literature, but I argue that introducing it helps us better understand the different (...)
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  41. Why Credences Are Not Beliefs.Elizabeth Jackson - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (2):360-370.
    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 (...)
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  42. Religious Credence is not Factual Belief.Neil Van Leeuwen - 2014 - Cognition 133 (3):698-715.
    I argue that psychology and epistemology should posit distinct cognitive attitudes of religious credence and factual belief, which have different etiologies and different cognitive and behavioral effects. I support this claim by presenting a range of empirical evidence that religious cognitive attitudes tend to lack properties characteristic of factual belief, just as attitudes like hypothesis, fictional imagining, and assumption for the sake of argument generally lack such properties. Furthermore, religious credences have distinctive properties of their own. To summarize: factual (...)
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  43. (1 other version)Parity, Imprecise Comparability and the Repugnant Conclusion.Ruth Chang - 2016 - Theoria 82 (2):182-214.
    This article explores the main similarities and differences between Derek Parfit’s notion of imprecise comparability and a related notion I have proposed of parity. I argue that the main difference between imprecise comparability and parity can be understood by reference to ‘the standard view’. The standard view claims that 1) differences between cardinally ranked items can always be measured by a scale of units of the relevant value, and 2) all rankings proceed in terms of the trichotomy of (...)
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  44. Belief, Credence, and Moral Encroachment.Elizabeth Jackson & James Fritz - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):1387–1408.
    Radical moral encroachment is the view that belief itself is morally evaluable, and that some moral properties of belief itself make a difference to epistemic rationality. To date, almost all proponents of radical moral encroachment hold to an asymmetry thesis: the moral encroaches on rational belief, but not on rational credence. In this paper, we argue against the asymmetry thesis; we show that, insofar as one accepts the most prominent arguments for radical moral encroachment on belief, one should likewise (...)
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  45. Belief, Credence, and Faith.Elizabeth Jackson - 2019 - Religious Studies 55 (2):153-168.
    In this article, I argue that faith’s going beyond the evidence need not compromise faith’s epistemic rationality. First, I explain how some of the recent literature on belief and credence points to a distinction between what I call B-evidence and C-evidence. Then, I apply this distinction to rational faith. I argue that if faith is more sensitive to B-evidence than to C-evidence, faith can go beyond the evidence and still be epistemically rational.
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  46. 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 (...)
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  47. Rational Credence Through Reasoning.Sinan Dogramaci - 2018 - Philosophers' Imprint 18.
    Whereas Bayesians have proposed norms such as probabilism, which requires immediate and permanent certainty in all logical truths, I propose a framework on which credences, including credences in logical truths, are rational because they are based on reasoning that follows plausible rules for the adoption of credences. I argue that my proposed framework has many virtues. In particular, it resolves the problem of logical omniscience.
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  48. Are Credences Different From Beliefs?Roger Clarke & Julia Staffel - 2024 - In Blake Roeber, Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley-Blackwell.
    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 (...)
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  49. Imprecise lexical superiority and the (slightly less) Repugnant Conclusion.James Fanciullo - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (8):2103-2117.
    Recently, Derek Parfit has offered a novel solution to the “Repugnant Conclusion” that compared with the existence of many people whose quality of life would be very high, there is some much larger number of people whose existence would be better but whose lives would be barely worth living. On this solution, qualitative differences between two populations will often entail that the populations are merely “imprecisely” comparable. According to Parfit, this fact allows us to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion without violating (...)
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  50. 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: (...)
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