Imprecise evidence without imprecise credences

Philosophical Studies 177 (9):2735-2758 (2020)
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Abstract

Does rationality require imprecise credences? Many hold that it does: imprecise evidence requires correspondingly imprecise credences. I argue that this is false. The imprecise view faces the same arbitrariness worries that were meant to motivate it in the first place. It faces these worries because it incorporates a certain idealization. But doing away with this idealization effectively collapses the imprecise view into a particular kind of precise view. On this alternative, our attitudes should reflect a kind of normative uncertainty: uncertainty about what to believe. This view refutes the claim that precise credences are inappropriately informative or committal. Some argue that indeterminate evidential support requires imprecise credences; but I argue that indeterminate evidential support instead places indeterminate requirements on credences, and is compatible with the claim that rational credences may always be precise.

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Jennifer Rose Carr
University of California, San Diego

Citations of this work

Rational Polarization.Kevin Dorst - 2023 - Philosophical Review 132 (3):355-458.
Being Rational and Being Wrong.Kevin Dorst - 2023 - Philosophers' Imprint 23 (1).
Be modest: you're living on the edge.Kevin Dorst - 2022 - Analysis 81 (4):611-621.

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