Results for 'Bayesianism'

171 found
Order:
  1. Bayesianism for Non-ideal Agents.Mattias Skipper & Jens Christian Bjerring - 2020 - Erkenntnis 87 (1):93-115.
    Orthodox Bayesianism is a highly idealized theory of how we ought to live our epistemic lives. One of the most widely discussed idealizations is that of logical omniscience: the assumption that an agent’s degrees of belief must be probabilistically coherent to be rational. It is widely agreed that this assumption is problematic if we want to reason about bounded rationality, logical learning, or other aspects of non-ideal epistemic agency. Yet, we still lack a satisfying way to avoid logical omniscience (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  2. Impermissive Bayesianism.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2013 - Erkenntnis 79 (Suppl 6):1185-1217.
    This paper examines the debate between permissive and impermissive forms of Bayesianism. It briefly discusses some considerations that might be offered by both sides of the debate, and then replies to some new arguments in favor of impermissivism offered by Roger White. First, it argues that White’s (Oxford studies in epistemology, vol 3. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 161–186, 2010) defense of Indifference Principles is unsuccessful. Second, it contends that White’s (Philos Perspect 19:445–459, 2005) arguments against permissive views do (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   93 citations  
  3. 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 that are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  4. Bayesianism and Explanatory Unification: A Compatibilist Account.Thomas Blanchard - 2018 - Philosophy of Science 85 (4):682-703.
    Proponents of IBE claim that the ability of a hypothesis to explain a range of phenomena in a unifying way contributes to the hypothesis’s credibility in light of these phenomena. I propose a Bayesian justification of this claim that reveals a hitherto unnoticed role for explanatory unification in evaluating the plausibility of a hypothesis: considerations of explanatory unification enter into the determination of a hypothesis’s prior by affecting its ‘explanatory coherence’, that is, the extent to which the hypothesis offers mutually (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  5. Troubles with Bayesianism: An introduction to the psychological immune system.Eric Mandelbaum - 2018 - Mind and Language 34 (2):141-157.
    A Bayesian mind is, at its core, a rational mind. Bayesianism is thus well-suited to predict and explain mental processes that best exemplify our ability to be rational. However, evidence from belief acquisition and change appears to show that we do not acquire and update information in a Bayesian way. Instead, the principles of belief acquisition and updating seem grounded in maintaining a psychological immune system rather than in approximating a Bayesian processor.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   49 citations  
  6. Empirical evidence for moral Bayesianism.Haim Cohen, Ittay Nissan-Rozen & Anat Maril - 2024 - Philosophical Psychology 37 (4):801-830.
    Many philosophers in the field of meta-ethics believe that rational degrees of confidence in moral judgments should have a probabilistic structure, in the same way as do rational degrees of belief. The current paper examines this position, termed “moral Bayesianism,” from an empirical point of view. To this end, we assessed the extent to which degrees of moral judgments obey the third axiom of the probability calculus, ifP(A∩B)=0thenP(A∪B)=P(A)+P(B), known as finite additivity, as compared to degrees of beliefs on the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  7. (1 other version)Objective Bayesianism and the Abductivist Response to Scepticism.Darren Bradley - 2021 - Episteme 1:1-15.
    An important line of response to scepticism appeals to the best explanation. But anti-sceptics have not engaged much with work on explanation in the philosophy of science. I plan to investigate whether plausible assumptions about best explanations really do favour anti-scepticism. I will argue that there are ways of constructing sceptical hypotheses in which the assumptions do favour anti-scepticism, but the size of the support for anti-scepticism is small.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  8. 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  9. A comparison of imprecise Bayesianism and Dempster–Shafer theory for automated decisions under ambiguity.Mantas Radzvilas, William Peden, Daniele Tortoli & Francesco De Pretis - forthcoming - Journal of Logic and Computation.
    Ambiguity occurs insofar as a reasoner lacks information about the relevant physical probabilities. There are objections to the application of standard Bayesian inductive logic and decision theory in contexts of significant ambiguity. A variety of alternative frameworks for reasoning under ambiguity have been proposed. Two of the most prominent are Imprecise Bayesianism and Dempster–Shafer theory. We compare these inductive logics with respect to the Ambiguity Dilemma, which is a problem that has been raised for Imprecise Bayesianism. We develop (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Can Bayesianism Solve Frege’s Puzzle?Jesse Fitts - 2020 - Philosophia 49 (3):989-998.
    Chalmers, responding to Braun, continues arguments from Chalmers for the conclusion that Bayesian considerations favor the Fregean in the debate over the objects of belief in Frege’s puzzle. This short paper gets to the heart of the disagreement over whether Bayesian considerations can tell us anything about Frege’s puzzle and answers, no, they cannot.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. Bayesianism And Self-Locating Beliefs.Darren Bradley - 2007 - Dissertation, Stanford University
    How should we update our beliefs when we learn new evidence? Bayesian confirmation theory provides a widely accepted and well understood answer – we should conditionalize. But this theory has a problem with self-locating beliefs, beliefs that tell you where you are in the world, as opposed to what the world is like. To see the problem, consider your current belief that it is January. You might be absolutely, 100%, sure that it is January. But you will soon believe it (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Four questions about Quantum Bayesianism (QBism) and their answers by Ontology of Knowledge (OK) issue 20231208.Jean-Louis Boucon - unknown - Academia.
    The following article will attempt to highlight four questions which, in my opinion, are left unanswered (or overlooked) by QBism and to show the answers that the Ontology of Knowledge (OK) can provide. ● How does the subject come to exist for itself, individuated and persistent? ● From what common reality do world, mind, and meaning emerge? ● How does meaning emerge from the mathematical fact of probabilistic expectation? ● Is meaning animated by its own nature?
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13. 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 Bayesian (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  14. Reasoning with comparative moral judgements: an argument for Moral Bayesianism.Ittay Nissan-Rozen - 2017 - In Gillman Payette & Rafał Urbaniak (eds.), Applications of Formal Philosophy: The Road Less Travelled. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG. pp. 113-136.
    The paper discusses the notion of reasoning with comparative moral judgements (i.e judgements of the form “act a is morally superior to act b”) from the point of view of several meta-ethical positions. Using a simple formal result, it is argued that only a version of moral cognitivism that is committed to the claim that moral beliefs come in degrees can give a normatively plausible account of such reasoning. Some implications of accepting such a version of moral cognitivism are discussed.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  15. A Theory of Bayesian Groups.Franz Dietrich - 2017 - Noûs 53 (3):708-736.
    A group is often construed as one agent with its own probabilistic beliefs (credences), which are obtained by aggregating those of the individuals, for instance through averaging. In their celebrated “Groupthink”, Russell et al. (2015) require group credences to undergo Bayesian revision whenever new information is learnt, i.e., whenever individual credences undergo Bayesian revision based on this information. To obtain a fully Bayesian group, one should often extend this requirement to non-public or even private information (learnt by not all or (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  16. Support for Geometric Pooling.Jean Baccelli & Rush T. Stewart - 2023 - Review of Symbolic Logic 16 (1):298-337.
    Supra-Bayesianism is the Bayesian response to learning the opinions of others. Probability pooling constitutes an alternative response. One natural question is whether there are cases where probability pooling gives the supra-Bayesian result. This has been called the problem of Bayes-compatibility for pooling functions. It is known that in a common prior setting, under standard assumptions, linear pooling cannot be nontrivially Bayes-compatible. We show by contrast that geometric pooling can be nontrivially Bayes-compatible. Indeed, we show that, under certain assumptions, geometric (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  17. Chalmers on the objects of credence.Jesse Fitts - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 170 (2):343-358.
    Chalmers (Mind 120(479): 587–636, 2011a) presents an argument against “referentialism” (and for his own view) that employs Bayesianism. He aims to make progress in a debate over the objects of belief, which seems to be at a standstill between referentialists and non-referentialists. Chalmers’ argument, in sketch, is that Bayesianism is incompatible with referentialism, and natural attempts to salvage the theory, Chalmers contends, requires giving up referentialism. Given the power and success of Bayesianism, the incompatibility is prima facie (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  18. 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  19. Can there be a Bayesian explanationism? On the prospects of a productive partnership.Frank Cabrera - 2017 - Synthese 194 (4):1245–1272.
    In this paper, I consider the relationship between Inference to the Best Explanation and Bayesianism, both of which are well-known accounts of the nature of scientific inference. In Sect. 2, I give a brief overview of Bayesianism and IBE. In Sect. 3, I argue that IBE in its most prominently defended forms is difficult to reconcile with Bayesianism because not all of the items that feature on popular lists of “explanatory virtues”—by means of which IBE ranks competing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  20. A Quantum-Bayesian Route to Quantum-State Space.Christopher A. Fuchs & Rüdiger Schack - 2011 - Foundations of Physics 41 (3):345-356.
    In the quantum-Bayesian approach to quantum foundations, a quantum state is viewed as an expression of an agent’s personalist Bayesian degrees of belief, or probabilities, concerning the results of measurements. These probabilities obey the usual probability rules as required by Dutch-book coherence, but quantum mechanics imposes additional constraints upon them. In this paper, we explore the question of deriving the structure of quantum-state space from a set of assumptions in the spirit of quantum Bayesianism. The starting point is the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  21. Bayesian Orgulity.Gordon Belot - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (4):483-503.
    A piece of folklore enjoys some currency among philosophical Bayesians, according to which Bayesian agents that, intuitively speaking, spread their credence over the entire space of available hypotheses are certain to converge to the truth. The goals of the present discussion are to show that kernel of truth in this folklore is in some ways fairly small and to argue that Bayesian convergence-to-the-truth results are a liability for Bayesianism as an account of rationality, since they render a certain sort (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  22. The Fate of Explanatory Reasoning in the Age of Big Data.Frank Cabrera - 2021 - Philosophy and Technology 34 (4):645-665.
    In this paper, I critically evaluate several related, provocative claims made by proponents of data-intensive science and “Big Data” which bear on scientific methodology, especially the claim that scientists will soon no longer have any use for familiar concepts like causation and explanation. After introducing the issue, in Section 2, I elaborate on the alleged changes to scientific method that feature prominently in discussions of Big Data. In Section 3, I argue that these methodological claims are in tension with a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  23. Understanding Conditionalization.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2015 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (5):767-797.
    At the heart of the Bayesianism is a rule, Conditionalization, which tells us how to update our beliefs. Typical formulations of this rule are underspecified. This paper considers how, exactly, this rule should be formulated. It focuses on three issues: when a subject’s evidence is received, whether the rule prescribes sequential or interval updates, and whether the rule is narrow or wide scope. After examining these issues, it argues that there are two distinct and equally viable versions of Conditionalization (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  24. Coherence & Confirmation: The Epistemic Limitations of the Impossibility Theorems.Ted Poston - 2022 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 36 (1):83-111.
    It is a widespread intuition that the coherence of independent reports provides a powerful reason to believe that the reports are true. Formal results by Huemer, M. 1997. “Probability and Coherence Justification.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 35: 463–72, Olsson, E. 2002. “What is the Problem of Coherence and Truth?” Journal of Philosophy XCIX : 246–72, Olsson, E. 2005. Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification. Oxford University Press., Bovens, L., and S. Hartmann. 2003. Bayesian Epistemology. Oxford University Press, prove that, under (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  25. 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  26. O Problema da Indução.Eduardo Castro & Diogo Fernandes - 2014 - Compêndio Em Linha de Problemas de Filosofia Analítica.
    State of the art paper on the problem of induction: how to justify the conclusion that ‘all Fs are Gs’ from the premise that ‘all observed Fs are Gs’. The most prominent theories of contemporary philosophical literature are discussed and analysed, such as: inductivism, reliabilism, perspective of laws of nature, rationalism, falsificationism, the material theory of induction and probabilistic approaches, according to Carnap, Reichenbach and Bayesianism. In the end, we discuss the new problem of induction of Goodman, raised by (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  27. Evidential Probabilities and Credences.Anna-Maria Asunta Eder - 2023 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (1):1 -23.
    Enjoying great popularity in decision theory, epistemology, and philosophy of science, Bayesianism as understood here is fundamentally concerned with epistemically ideal rationality. It assumes a tight connection between evidential probability and ideally rational credence, and usually interprets evidential probability in terms of such credence. Timothy Williamson challenges Bayesianism by arguing that evidential probabilities cannot be adequately interpreted as the credences of an ideal agent. From this and his assumption that evidential probabilities cannot be interpreted as the actual credences (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  28. Review of Ted Poston's Reason and explanation: A defense of explanatory coherentism (2014, Palgrave Macmillan). [REVIEW]Roche William - 2015 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:1-7.
    Ted Poston's book Reason and Explanation: A Defense of Explanatory Coherentism is a book worthy of careful study. Poston develops and defends an explanationist theory of (epistemic) justification on which justification is a matter of explanatory coherence which in turn is a matter of conservativeness, explanatory power, and simplicity. He argues that his theory is consistent with Bayesianism. He argues, moreover, that his theory is needed as a supplement to Bayesianism. There are seven chapters. I provide a chapter-by-chapter (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29. Failure of Calibration is Typical.Gordon Belot - 2013 - Statistics and Probability Letters 83:2316--2318.
    Schervish (1985b) showed that every forecasting system is noncalibrated for uncountably many data sequences that it might see. This result is strengthened here: from a topological point of view, failure of calibration is typical and calibration rare. Meanwhile, Bayesian forecasters are certain that they are calibrated---this invites worries about the connection between Bayesianism and rationality.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  30. The heuristic conception of inference to the best explanation.Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 175 (7):1745-1766.
    An influential suggestion about the relationship between Bayesianism and inference to the best explanation holds that IBE functions as a heuristic to approximate Bayesian reasoning. While this view promises to unify Bayesianism and IBE in a very attractive manner, important elements of the view have not yet been spelled out in detail. I present and argue for a heuristic conception of IBE on which IBE serves primarily to locate the most probable available explanatory hypothesis to serve as a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  31. Awareness growth and dispositional attitudes.Anna Mahtani - 2020 - Synthese 198 (9):8981-8997.
    Richard Bradley and others endorse Reverse Bayesianism as the way to model awareness growth. I raise a problem for Reverse Bayesianism—at least for the general version that Bradley endorses—and argue that there is no plausible way to restrict the principle that will give us the right results. To get the right results, we need to pay attention to the attitudes that agents have towards propositions of which they are unaware. This raises more general questions about how awareness growth (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  32. The Bayesian Objection.Luca Moretti - 2020 - In Seemings and Epistemic Justification: how appearances justify beliefs. Cham: Springer.
    In this chapter I analyse an objection to phenomenal conservatism to the effect that phenomenal conservatism is unacceptable because it is incompatible with Bayesianism. I consider a few responses to it and dismiss them as misled or problematic. Then, I argue that this objection doesn’t go through because it rests on an implausible formalization of the notion of seeming-based justification. In the final part of the chapter, I investigate how seeming-based justification and justification based on one’s reflective belief that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  33. Bayesian confirmation of theories that incorporate idealizations.Michael J. Shaffer - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (1):36-52.
    Following Nancy Cartwright and others, I suggest that most (if not all) theories incorporate, or depend on, one or more idealizing assumptions. I then argue that such theories ought to be regimented as counterfactuals, the antecedents of which are simplifying assumptions. If this account of the logic form of theories is granted, then a serious problem arises for Bayesians concerning the prior probabilities of theories that have counterfactual form. If no such probabilities can be assigned, the the posterior probabilities will (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  34. Evidence of Evidence as Higher Order Evidence.Anna-Maria A. Eder & Peter Brössel - 2019 - In Mattias Skipper & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen (eds.), Higher-Order Evidence: New Essays. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 62-83.
    In everyday life and in science we acquire evidence of evidence and based on this new evidence we often change our epistemic states. An assumption underlying such practice is that the following EEE Slogan is correct: 'evidence of evidence is evidence' (Feldman 2007, p. 208). We suggest that evidence of evidence is best understood as higher-order evidence about the epistemic state of agents. In order to model evidence of evidence we introduce a new powerful framework for modelling epistemic states, Dyadic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  35. Binding and its consequences.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 149 (1):49-71.
    In “Bayesianism, Infinite Decisions, and Binding”, Arntzenius et al. (Mind 113:251–283, 2004 ) present cases in which agents who cannot bind themselves are driven by standard decision theory to choose sequences of actions with disastrous consequences. They defend standard decision theory by arguing that if a decision rule leads agents to disaster only when they cannot bind themselves, this should not be taken to be a mark against the decision rule. I show that this claim has surprising implications for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   30 citations  
  36. 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  37. 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  38. Is QBism the Future of Quantum Physics? [REVIEW]Kelvin McQueen - 2017 - Quantum Times 2017.
    The purpose of this book is to explain Quantum Bayesianism (‘QBism’) to “people without easy access to mathematical formulas and equations” (4-5). Qbism is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that “doesn’t meddle with the technical aspects of the theory [but instead] reinterprets the fundamental terms of the theory and gives them new meaning” (3). The most important motivation for QBism, enthusiastically stated on the book’s cover, is that QBism provides “a way past quantum theory’s paradoxes and puzzles” such that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  39. Resolving the Raven Paradox: Simple Random Sampling, Stratified Random Sampling, and Inference to Best Explanation.Barry Ward - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (2):360-377.
    Simple random sampling resolutions of the raven paradox relevantly diverge from scientific practice. We develop a stratified random sampling model, yielding a better fit and apparently rehabilitating simple random sampling as a legitimate idealization. However, neither accommodates a second concern, the objection from potential bias. We develop a third model that crucially invokes causal considerations, yielding a novel resolution that handles both concerns. This approach resembles Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and relates the generalization’s confirmation to confirmation of an (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  40. 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 Bayesian epistemology?
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   35 citations  
  41. Subjective Probabilities as Basis for Scientific Reasoning?Franz Huber - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (1):101-116.
    Bayesianism is the position that scientific reasoning is probabilistic and that probabilities are adequately interpreted as an agent's actual subjective degrees of belief, measured by her betting behaviour. Confirmation is one important aspect of scientific reasoning. The thesis of this paper is the following: if scientific reasoning is at all probabilistic, the subjective interpretation has to be given up in order to get right confirmation—and thus scientific reasoning in general. The Bayesian approach to scientific reasoning Bayesian confirmation theory The (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  42. Inference to the Best Explanation and the Screening-Off Challenge.William Roche & Elliott Sober - 2019 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 38:121-142.
    We argue in Roche and Sober (2013) that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant in that Pr(H | O&EXPL) = Pr(H | O), where H is a hypothesis, O is an observation, and EXPL is the proposition that if H and O were true, then H would explain O. This is a “screening-off” thesis. Here we clarify that thesis, reply to criticisms advanced by Lange (2017), consider alternative formulations of Inference to the Best Explanation, discuss a strengthened screening-off thesis, and consider how (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  43. Updating, undermining, and perceptual learning.Brian T. Miller - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (9):2187-2209.
    As I head home from work, I’m not sure whether my daughter’s new bike is green, and I’m also not sure whether I’m on drugs that distort my color perception. One thing that I am sure about is that my attitudes towards those possibilities are evidentially independent of one another, in the sense that changing my confidence in one shouldn’t affect my confidence in the other. When I get home and see the bike it looks green, so I increase my (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  44. (1 other version)The skeptical import of motivated reasoning: A closer look at the evidence.Maarten van Doorn - 2023 - Thinking and Reasoning 1 (1):1-31.
    Central to many discussions of motivated reasoning is the idea that it runs afoul of epistemic normativity. Reasoning differently about information supporting our prior beliefs versus information contradicting those beliefs, is frequently equated with motivated irrationality. By analyzing the normative status of belief polarization, selective scrutiny, biased assimilation and the myside bias, I show this inference is often not adequately supported. Contrary to what’s often assumed, these phenomena need not indicate motivated irrationality, even though they are instances of belief-consistent information (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  45. 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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  46. How Explanation Guides Confirmation.Nevin Climenhaga - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (2):359-68.
    Where E is the proposition that [If H and O were true, H would explain O], William Roche and Elliot Sober have argued that P(H|O&E) = P(H|O). In this paper I argue that not only is this equality not generally true, it is false in the very kinds of cases that Roche and Sober focus on, involving frequency data. In fact, in such cases O raises the probability of H only given that there is an explanatory connection between them.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  47. Begging the Question and Bayesians.Brian Weatherson - 1999 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 30:687-697.
    The arguments for Bayesianism in the literature fall into three broad categories. There are Dutch Book arguments, both of the traditional pragmatic variety and the modern ‘depragmatised’ form. And there are arguments from the so-called ‘representation theorems’. The arguments have many similarities, for example they have a common conclusion, and they all derive epistemic constraints from considerations about coherent preferences, but they have enough differences to produce hostilities between their proponents. In a recent paper, Maher (1997) has argued that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  48. 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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   72 citations  
  49. Probability and Informed Consent.Nir Ben-Moshe, Benjamin A. Levinstein & Jonathan Livengood - 2023 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 44 (6):545-566.
    In this paper, we illustrate some serious difficulties involved in conveying information about uncertain risks and securing informed consent for risky interventions in a clinical setting. We argue that in order to secure informed consent for a medical intervention, physicians often need to do more than report a bare, numerical probability value. When probabilities are given, securing informed consent generally requires communicating how probability expressions are to be interpreted and communicating something about the quality and quantity of the evidence for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  50. Reid's defense of common sense.P. D. Magnus - 2008 - Philosophers' Imprint 8:1-14.
    Thomas Reid is often misread as defending common sense, if at all, only by relying on illicit premises about God or our natural faculties. On these theological or reliabilist misreadings, Reid makes common sense assertions where he cannot give arguments. This paper attempts to untangle Reid's defense of common sense by distinguishing four arguments: (a) the argument from madness, (b) the argument from natural faculties, (c) the argument from impotence, and (d) the argument from practical commitment. Of these, (a) and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
1 — 50 / 171