Shuford, Albert and Massengill proved, a half century ago, that the logarithmic scoring rule is the only proper measure of inaccuracy determined by a differentiable function of probability assigned the actual cell of a scored partition. In spite of this, the log rule has gained less traction in applied disciplines and among formal epistemologists that one might expect. In this paper we show that the differentiability criterion in the Shuford et. al. result is unnecessary and use the resulting simplified characterization (...) of the logarithmic rule to give novel arguments in favor of it. (shrink)

Schoenfield has constructed examples of proper inaccuracy measures that value verisimilitude (in a certain sense) in spaces of worlds equipped with a particular variety of verisimilitude metric. However, Schoenfield left it as an open question whether ‘for every space of worlds, there is a proper inaccuracy measure that values verisimilitude’. Here I answer this question in the affirmative.

Adams' Thesis states that the probability of a conditional is the probability of the consequent conditional on the antecedent. S. Kaufmann introduced a rival method, the so-called ``local interpretation'', for calculating the probability of a conditional that, according to a purported majority, squares better with intuition in some circumstances. He also gives an example purporting to show that this new method sometimes corresponds to rational action. We challenge the intuitions and expose a mathematical error in the example. We also offer (...) a model for the local interpretivist semantics. This model puts theoretical local interpretivists on ground as solid as that of Thesis abiders for whom conditionals have truth conditions. (shrink)

Michael Huemer argues, on statistical grounds, that ``existence is evidence for immortality". On reasoning derived from the anthropic principle, however, mere existence cannot be evidence against any non-indexical, ``eternal'' hypothesis that predicts observers. This note attempts to advertise the much-flouted anthropic principle's virtues and workings in a new way, namely by calling attention to the fact that it is the primary intension of one's indexically-described evidence that best characterizes one's epistemic position.

Van Fraassen's Judy Benjamin problem asks how one ought to update one's credence in A upon receiving evidence of the sort ``A may or may not obtain, but B is k times likelier than C'', where {A,B,C} is a partition. Van Fraassen's solution, in the limiting case of increasing k, recommends a posterior converging to the probability of A conditional on A union B, where P is one's prior probability function. Grove and Halpern, and more recently Douven and Romeijn, have (...) argued that one ought to leave credence in A unchanged, i.e. fixed at P(A). We argue that while the former approach is superior, it brings about a Reflection violation due in part to neglect of a ``regression to the mean'' phenomenon, whereby when C is eliminated by random evidence that leaves A and B alive, the ratio P(A):P(B) ought to drift in the direction of 1:1. (shrink)

Brief, unfinished draft of a proposal for a novel and demanding, yet arguably well motivated, necessary condition for justified credence.

A critical reading of Sarah Moss's "Probabilistic Knowledge".

We offer a critical evaluation of a recent proposal of E. Tal and J. Comesa\~na on the topic of when evidence of evidence constitutes evidence. After establishing that attempts of L. Moretti and W. Roche to discredit the proposal miss their mark, we fashion another, which does not.

A puzzle of an unmarked clock, used by Timothy Williamson to question the KK principle, was separately adapted by David Christensen and Adam Elga to critique a principle of Rational Reflection. Both authors, we argue, flout the received relationship between ideal agency and the classical distinction between systematic and random error, namely that ideal agents are subject only to the latter. As a result, these criticisms miss their mark.

Remco Heesen has recently argued in favor of the editorial practice of triple-anonymous review on the grounds that ``an injustice is committed against certain authors'' under non-anonymous review. On the other hand, he concedes that the information waste of triple-anonymous review does handicap editors, in particular sacrificing a boost in the average quality of accepted papers that would otherwise be conferred by non-anonymous review. In this paper it is observed that by devoting comparatively greater reviewing resources to the papers of (...) unfamiliar authors, editors practicing non-anonymous review can, without loss of information, avoid subjecting authors to the sorts of injustices observed by Heesen. Thus they can reap the efficiency gains of non-anonymous review without sacrificing fairness. (shrink)

Paying strict attention to Brandon Carter's several published renditions of anthropic reasoning, we present a ``nutshell'' version of the Doomsday argument that is truer to Carter's principles than the standard balls-and-urns or otherwise ``naive Bayesian'' versions that proliferate in the literature. At modest cost in terms of complication, the argument avoids commitment to many of the half-truths that have inspired so many to rise up against other toy versions, never adopting posterior outside of the convex hull of one's prior distribution (...) over the ``true chance'' of Doom. The hyper-pessimistic position of the standard balls-and-urn presentation and the hyper-optimistic position of naive self-indicators are seen to arise from dubiously extreme prior distributions, leaving room for a more satisfying and plausible intermediate solution. (shrink)

Dawid, DeGroot and Mortera showed, a quarter century ago, that any agent who regards a fellow agent as a peer--in particular, defers to the fellow agent's prior credences in the same way that she defers to her own--and updates by split-the-difference is prone to diachronic incoherence. On the other hand one may show that there are special scenarios in which Bayesian updating approximates difference splitting, so it remains an important question whether it remains a viable response to ``generic" peer update. (...) We look at arguments by two teams of philosophers against difference splitting. (shrink)

Dozens of articles have addressed the challenge that gambles having undefined expectation pose for decision theory. This paper makes two contributions. The first is incremental: we evolve Colyvan's ``Relative Expected Utility Theory'' into a more viable ``conservative extension of expected utility theory" by formulating and defending emendations to a version of this theory proposed by Colyvan and H\'ajek. The second is comparatively more surprising. We show that, so long as one assigns positive probability to the theory that there is a (...) uniform bound on the utility of possible gambles (and assuming a uniform bound on the amount of utility that can accrue in a fixed amount of time), standard principles of anthropic reasoning (as formulated by Brandon Carter) place lower and upper bounds on the expected values of gambles advertised as having no expectation--even assuming that with positive probability, all gambles advertised as having infinite expected utility are administered faithfully. Should one accept the uniform bound premises, this reasoning thus dissolves (or nearly dissolves, in some cases) several puzzles in infinite decision theory. (shrink)

Cian Dorr considered the case of a fair coin that is tossed every day throughout an infinite past and an infinite future (an ``Eternal Coin''). Against intuition, he argued that, conditional on the Coin having landed {\it heads} throughout the past, one should believe, with full probability, that it will also land {\it heads} today. In this paper, we critique Dorr's arguments, as well as part of a reply by Myrvold.

Parodic earlier draft of "Sleeping Beauty: why violations of probability laws are `Deal' breakers".

Technical criticism of Jacob Ross's "Sleeping Beauty, Countable Additivity and Rational Dilemmas" and Double Halfing.

"Beauty died today. Or maybe yesterday. I can't be sure." --Later draft of "Sleeping Beauty: A Critical Survey".

We address problems (that have since been addressed) in a proofs-version of a paper by Eva, Hartmann and Rad, who where attempting to justify the Kullback-Leibler divergence minimization solution to van Fraassen’s Judy Benjamin problem.

We introduce a ``rarity of defeat'' principle, valid in cases of deference to an expert, to address intuitions involved in a puzzle of Nissan-Rozen concerning epistemic deference and evidential screening-off.

Anti-expertise, or self-defeating belief, leads to incoherent personal credences. Some philosophers think that anti-expertise is irrational but avoidable, others think that some cases of anti-expertise are rational, and still others think that anti-expertise is irrational and unavoidable. Taking as premises some standard assumptions about the Sleeping Beauty Problem, I prove that if Beauty maintains public credences then she is prone to anti-expertise unless she embraces optimism, i.e. denies that she will experience multiple awakenings if tails.

Rambling, largely unreadable survey of the Sleeping Beauty literature.

Adam Elga has argued that holders of imprecise credences fall prey to missed arbitrages, so that rational credences should be sharp. A decision rule proposed by Rohan Sud, Forward Looking, enables imprecise Bayesians to sidestep missed arbitrages and other ``bad books'' in isolated fixed-evidence binary betting sequences such as those of Elga. We show that Forward Looking imprecise Bayesians are committed to a bad book of bets when faced with a particular 3-bet variable-evidence binary betting sequence.

Unremarkable earlier draft of "Sleeping Beauty: A Critical Survey".

Anubav Vasudevan characterized van Fraassen’s “Infomin” solution to the Judy Benjamin Problem (i.e. the solution by way of minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the posterior and prior) as an implementation of a “brand of epistemic charity” taking “the form of an assumption on the part of Judy Benjamin that her informant’s evidential report leaves out no relevant information”. After an analysis of the example that led Vasudevan to this way of thinking about Infomin, as well as of a new one (...) that supports the rival position of Douven and Romeijn in favor of minimizing the inverse Kullback-Leibler divergence between the posterior and the prior, we come to a different and more enlightening characterization of Infomin’s implicit assumptions. (shrink)

This article contributes to conversations about the “Hitler problem” in leadership ethics and the use of literary narratives in leadership studies by proposing Tolkien’s fiction as a model of leadership. Resonating with Aristotelian and Thomistic themes, these narratives present leadership as more a matter of practical wisdom than of morally neutral craft, or, more precisely, they model leadership as a matter of using craft for the sake of wisdom’s ends. Those ends become intelligible in terms of a triadic account of (...) human action that depicts it as a response to a gift or call. I argue that this model of leadership suggests that Hitler-type leaders are corrupted leaders, rather than partially excellent leaders or no leaders at all. I also maintain that these insights demonstrate the fruitfulness for leadership studies of approaching literary narratives in something like the way scientists treat their models. (shrink)

In works of impressive erudition based in ancient philosophy, Pierre Hadot and John Cooper have recently reasserted a familiar complaint about the Scholastic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and his neo-Thomist heirs. Scholasticism, they complain, diminished philosophy by rejecting its claim to be a holistic way of life, requiring the transformation of the whole person, and reconceiving it as an exercise in merely conceptual and logical maneuvering, requiring nothing more from the philosopher but the ability to compute logical relations. I (...) argue in this paper that, from a Thomistic perspective, philosophy is a praxis, though with a theoretical end, uniting affection and intellect in the conduct of practices and activities that aim at a contemplative wisdom including discourse within it. Philosophy conceived in this way avoids the fragmentation and dualisms Hadot and Cooper see in Scholastic thought, bringing it closer to their ideals of philosophy as a way of life. (shrink)

Applying Thomas Aquinas’s account of the intellectual virtue of art to teaching yields valuable results both for those who wish to understand teaching better and those looking for models of the approach to virtue epistemology Roberts and Wood call “regulative.” To vindicate that claim, this article proceeds in four steps: First, I introduce Thomas’s taxonomy of the intellectual virtues in light of a pair of distinctions between practical and speculative knowledge and between immanent and transient operations. In the second section, (...) I consider teaching’s relation to each of Thomas’s intellectual virtues and argue that it belongs most properly to art. Next, I describe Thomas’s taxonomy of art by distinguishing among four cross-cutting categories that characterize species of that virtue. Finally, I outline an account of the art of teaching that treats it, with respect to those categories, as performative, deliberative, cooperative, and intersubjective. (shrink)

Applying Thomas Aquinas’s account of the intellectual virtue of art to teaching yields valuable results both for those who wish to understand teaching better and those looking for models of the approach to virtue epistemology Roberts and Wood call “regulative.” To vindicate that claim, this article proceeds in four steps: First, I introduce Thomas’s taxonomy of the intellectual virtues in light of a pair of distinctions between practical and speculative knowledge and between immanent and transient operations. In the second section, (...) I consider teaching’s relation to each of Thomas’s intellectual virtues and argue that it belongs most properly to art. Next, I describe Thomas’s taxonomy of art by distinguishing among four cross-cutting categories that characterize species of that virtue. Finally, I outline an account of the art of teaching that treats it, with respect to those categories, as performative, deliberative, cooperative, and intersubjective. (shrink)

Entry into the practice of medicine is heavily regulated through scope of practice and licensing laws that make it illegal for nonlicensed individuals to perform many medical services. As institutions are structured at the beginning of the twenty-first century, most regulation takes place at the state level, through state departments of health that establish criteria for performing different types of medical activities, and that restrict allowable activities for various types of health care professionals. The regulations over the activities of physicians (...) are more uniform across states than for other health care professionals because, although the regulation is done by individual state governments, the standards for physicians are set by the National Board of Medical Examiners, a group controlled by physicians themselves. The justification for this regulation is that it produces higher quality health care. Some would make an even stronger argument that regulation is necessary because patients do not have sufficient knowledge to distinguish effective practitioners from ineffective ones. (shrink)

Entry into the practice of medicine is heavily regulated through scope of practice and licensing laws that make it illegal for nonlicensed individuals to perform many medical services. As institutions are structured at the beginning of the twenty-first century, most regulation takes place at the state level, through state departments of health that establish criteria for performing different types of medical activities, and that restrict allowable activities for various types of health care professionals. The regulations over the activities of physicians (...) are more uniform across states than for other health care professionals because, although the regulation is done by individual state governments, the standards for physicians are set by the National Board of Medical Examiners, a group controlled by physicians themselves. The justification for this regulation is that it produces higher quality health care. Some would make an even stronger argument that regulation is necessary because patients do not have sufficient knowledge to distinguish effective practitioners from ineffective ones. (shrink)

Originally published thirty years ago, Critique of the Legal Order remains highly relevant for the twenty-first century. Here Richard Quinney provides a critical look at the legal order in capitalist society. Using a traditional Marxist perspective, he argues that the legal order is not intended to reduce crime and suffering, but to maintain class differences and a social order that mainly benefits the ruling class. Quinney challenges modern criminologists to examine their own positions. As "ancillary agents of power," criminologists provide (...) information that governing elites use to manipulate and control those who threaten the system. Quinney's original and thorough analysis of "crime control bureaucracies" and the class basis of such bureaucracies anticipates subsequent research and theorizing about the "crime control industry," a system that aims at social control of marginalized populations, rather than elimination of the social conditions that give rise to crime. He forcefully argues that technology applied to a "war against crime," together with academic scholarship, is used to help maintain social order to benefit a ruling class. Quinney also suggests alternatives. Anticipating the work of Noam Chomsky, he suggests we must first overcome a powerful media that provides a "general framework" that serves as the "boundary of expression." Chomsky calls this the manufacture of consent by providing necessary illusions. Quinney calls for a critical philosophy that enables us to transcend the current order and seek an egalitarian socialist order based upon true democratic principles. This core study for criminologists should interest those with a critical perspective on contemporary society. (shrink)

General criticism of Frank Arntzenius's paper ``Some problems for conditionalization and reflection''.

Several treatments of the Shooting Room Paradox have failed to recognize the crucial role played by its involving a number of players unbounded in expectation. We indicate Reflection violations and/or Dutch Book vulnerabilities in extant ``solutions''and show that the paradox does not arise when the expected number of participants is finite; the Shooting Room thus takes its place in the growing list of puzzles that have been shown to require infinite expectation. Recognizing this fact, we conclude that prospects for a (...) ``straight solution" are dim. (shrink)

The philosophy of patient-centred care has become widely embraced but its implementation is dependent on interrelated factors. A factor that has received limited attention is the role of policy tools. In Ontario, one method government can use to promote healthcare priorities is through health regulatory colleges, which set the standard of practice for health professionals. The degree to which government policy in support of patient-centered care has influenced the direction provided by health regulatory colleges to their members, and ultimately impacted (...) actual patient care, remains unclear. This study investigates the extent to which Ontario’s health regulatory colleges have provided explicit written guidance to members related to the importance of patient-centred care. It also explores applied and theoretical explanations that may further our understanding of why patient-centred care has not been more fully embraced. Findings reveal that guidance provided by Ontario’s health regulatory colleges varies widely. Institutional barriers and the choice of policy tools for disseminating government preferences may hinder full implementation of the principles of patient-centred care. More fully understanding the role health regulatory colleges’ play in facilitating the implementation of health policy will contribute positively to dialogue and to efforts to achieve positive health system reforms. (shrink)

The philosophy of patient-centred care has become widely embraced but its implementation is dependent on interrelated factors. A factor that has received limited attention is the role of policy tools. In Ontario, one method government can use to promote healthcare priorities is through health regulatory colleges, which set the standard of practice for health professionals. The degree to which government policy in support of patient-centered care has influenced the direction provided by health regulatory colleges to their members, and ultimately impacted (...) actual patient care, remains unclear. This study investigates the extent to which Ontario’s health regulatory colleges have provided explicit written guidance to members related to the importance of patient-centred care. It also explores applied and theoretical explanations that may further our understanding of why patient-centred care has not been more fully embraced. Findings reveal that guidance provided by Ontario’s health regulatory colleges varies widely. Institutional barriers and the choice of policy tools for disseminating government preferences may hinder full implementation of the principles of patient-centred care. More fully understanding the role health regulatory colleges’ play in facilitating the implementation of health policy will contribute positively to dialogue and to efforts to achieve positive health system reforms. (shrink)