Bayesian humility

Philosophy of Science 83 (3):305-323 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Say that an agent is "epistemically humble" if she is less than certain that her opinions will converge to the truth, given an appropriate stream of evidence. Is such humility rationally permissible? According to the orgulity argument : the answer is "yes" but long-run convergence-to-the-truth theorems force Bayesians to answer "no." That argument has no force against Bayesians who reject countable additivity as a requirement of rationality. Such Bayesians are free to count even extreme humility as rationally permissible.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 91,349

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Bayesian Orgulity.Gordon Belot - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (4):483-503.
Standing humbly before nature.Lisa Gerber - 2002 - Ethics and the Environment 7 (1):39-53.
Humility.James Kellenberger - 2010 - American Philosophical Quarterly 47 (4):321-336.
Epistemic Humility and Causal Structuralism.James Van Cleve - 2011 - In Johannes Roessler, Hemdat Lerman & Naomi Eilan (eds.), Perception, Causation, and Objectivity. Oxford University Press UK. pp. 82.
The Semantic Neighborhood of Intellectual Humility.Markus Christen, Mark Alfano & Brian Robinson - 2014 - Proceedings of the European Conference on Social Intelligence.
Should physicians be bayesian agents?M. Wayne Cooper - 1992 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 13 (4).
Is Humility a Virtue in the Context of Sport?Michael W. Austin - 2013 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2):203-214.
MAIMONIDES ON KINGSHIP The Ethics of Imperial Humility.James A. Diamond - 2006 - Journal of Religious Ethics 34 (1):89-114.
The Values and Varieties of Humility.T. Ryan Byerly - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (4):889-910.
Jewish Ethics and the Virtue of Humility.Ronald Green - 1973 - Journal of Religious Ethics 1:53-63.
Modernizing the Virtue of Humility.G. Alex Sinha - 2012 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (2):259 - 274.
Ramseyan Humility, scepticism and grasp.Alexander Kelly - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (3):705-726.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-09-07

Downloads
133 (#134,561)

6 months
17 (#142,297)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Adam Elga
Princeton University

Citations of this work

Better Foundations for Subjective Probability.Sven Neth - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
Being Rational and Being Wrong.Kevin Dorst - 2023 - Philosophers' Imprint 23 (1).
A Dilemma for Solomonoff Prediction.Sven Neth - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (2):288-306.
Objectivity and Bias.Gordon Belot - 2017 - Mind 126 (503):655-695.
Obligation, Permission, and Bayesian Orgulity.Michael Nielsen & Rush T. Stewart - 2019 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6.

View all 17 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

The Foundations of Statistics.Leonard J. Savage - 1954 - Synthese 11 (1):86-89.
The Logic of Reliable Inquiry.Kevin T. Kelly - 1996 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press USA. Edited by Kevin Kelly.
What Is This Thing Called Science?A. F. Chalmers - 1979 - Erkenntnis 14 (3):393-404.
The Logic of Reliable Inquiry.Kevin Kelly - 1998 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (2):351-354.

View all 18 references / Add more references