The Accuracy and Rationality of Imprecise Credences

Noûs 51 (4):667-685 (2017)
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Abstract

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 imprecise 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.

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Miriam Schoenfield
University of Texas at Austin

Citations of this work

Belief and Credence: Why the Attitude-Type Matters.Elizabeth Grace Jackson - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (9):2477-2496.
Permissivism and the Value of Rationality: A Challenge to the Uniqueness Thesis.Miriam Schoenfield - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (2):286-297.
Interpretations of probability.Alan Hájek - 2007 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Updating for Externalists.J. Dmitri Gallow - 2021 - Noûs 55 (3):487-516.
Imprecise Probabilities.Seamus Bradley - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Accuracy and the Laws of Credence.Richard Pettigrew - 2016 - New York, NY.: Oxford University Press UK.
A nonpragmatic vindication of probabilism.James M. Joyce - 1998 - Philosophy of Science 65 (4):575-603.
Decision theory as philosophy.Mark Kaplan - 1983 - Philosophy of Science 50 (4):549-577.

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