British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:1-21 (2019)
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Abstract |
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 of human agents either, he concludes that no interpretation of evidential probabilities in terms of credence is adequate. I argue to the contrary. My overarching aim is to show on behalf of Bayesians how one can still interpret evidential probabilities in terms of ideally rational credence and how one can maintain a tight connection between evidential probabilities and ideally rational credence even if the former cannot be interpreted in terms of the latter. By achieving this aim I illuminate the limits and prospects of Bayesianism.
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Keywords | Ideal Rationality Credences Bayesianism Moore-Paradoxical Propositions Logical Omniscience |
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Reprint years | 2019 |
DOI | 10.1093/bjps/axz043 |
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References found in this work BETA
A Theory of Conditionals.Robert C. Stalnaker - 1968 - In Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory (American Philosophical Quarterly Monographs 2). Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 98-112.
The Enterprise of Knowledge: An Essay on Knowledge, Credal Probability, and Chance.Isaac Levi - 1980 - MIT Press.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2):452-458.
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Citations of this work BETA
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 University Press. pp. 62-83.
Epistemic Paradise Lost: Saving What We Can with Stable Support.Anna-Maria A. Eder - forthcoming - In Nick Hughes (ed.), Epistemic Dilemmas. Oxford University Press.
Disagreement in a Group: Aggregation, Respect for Evidence, and Synergy.Anna-Maria A. Eder - 2021 - In Fernando Broncano-Berrocal & Adam Carter (eds.), The Epistemology of Group Disagreement. Routledge. pp. 184-210.
View all 6 citations / Add more citations
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