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Philosophy of Probability > Probabilistic Reasoning > Probabilistic Principles > Updating Principles
Updating Principles
Edited by Ittay Nissan-Rozen (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
About this topic
| Summary | In Bayesian epistemology, an updating principle is a principle that specifies or puts restrictions on the changes in an agent’s belief state that follow (or should follow) some initial change in the agent’s belief state (usually – but maybe not always – as a result of the agent being exposed to new evidence). Although in other academic fields a great deal of the discussion regarding updating principles touches upon their empirical fit to the way people actually update their beliefs, much of the relevant philosophical literature is normative. The central questions are whether, why and in which contexts, obeying different updating principles is rationally required. In the simplest (but not uncommon) case, where the agent’s belief state can be represented by a single probability distribution over a set of propositions, and the initial change is that of learning a new proposition (represented as raising the probability of the learnt proposition to 1), the most popular updating rule is Bayesian Conditionalization. Richard Jeffrey offered a generalization of Bayesian Conditionalization, usually called “Jeffrey’s conditionalization”, to cases in which, although there is some initial change in the agent’s belief state, the probability of no proposition in the set is raised to 1. Others have introduced, discussed and explored the formal features of other updating principles. These principles are usually ones that either cover cases to which Jeffrey’s conditionalization does not apply (such as cases of “growing awareness” in which the initial change is represented as an addition of new propositions to the set or cases in which the agent’s initial belief set cannot be represented by a single probability distribution over a set of propositions) or constitute generalizations of or alternatives to Bayesian Conditionalization and Jeffrey’s Conditionalization in specific contexts (such as Adams’ conditionalization for the case of learning conditional probabilities, Imaging which – in some contexts – seem to fit better with other intuitive epistemic principles or different types of pooling methods for the case of learning other agents’ beliefs). |
| Key works | Jeffrey 1992 introduces the idea of probability kinematics and discusses its features. Some important discussions of Jeffrey’s rule include Field 1978, Fraassen 1980 and Skyrms 1987. Bradley 2005 introduces and discusses Adams’ Conditionalization. In Bradley 2017 Bradley also discusses growing awareness and the relation between belief updating and the updating of desires and preferences. “Imaging” was introduced and discussed in Lewis 1976 and Gärdenfors 1982. Leitgeb 2017 discusses the relation between Imaging and different belief aggregation methods. Some discussions of different problems associated with updating imprecise probabilities are White 2009, Bradley & Steele 2014 and Joyce 2010. |
| Introductions | Jeffrey 2002 |
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- On Being a Random Sample.David Manley - manuscriptIt is well known that de se (or ‘self-locating’) propositions complicate the standard picture of how we should respond to evidence. This has given rise to a substantial literature centered around puzzles like Sleeping Beauty, Dr. Evil, and Doomsday—and it has also sparked controversy over a style of argument that has recently been adopted by theoretical cosmologists. These discussions often dwell on intuitions about a single kind of case, but it’s worth seeking a rule that can unify our treatment of (...)
- Jeffrey Pooling.Richard Pettigrew & Jonathan Weisberg - manuscriptHow should your opinion change in response to the opinion of an epistemic peer? We show that the pooling rule known as "upco" is the unique answer satisfying some natural desiderata. If your revised opinion will influence your opinions on other matters by Jeffrey conditionalization, then upco is the only standard pooling rule that ensures the order in which peers are consulted makes no difference. Popular proposals like linear pooling, geometric pooling, and harmonic pooling cannot boast the same. In fact, (...)
- Geometric Pooling: A User's Guide.Richard Pettigrew & Jonathan Weisberg - manuscriptMuch of our information comes to us indirectly, in the form of conclusions others have drawn from evidence they gathered. When we hear these conclusions, how can we modify our own opinions so as to gain the benefit of their evidence? In this paper we study the method known as geometric pooling. We consider two arguments in its favour, raising several objections to one, and proposing an amendment to the other.
- Accurate Updating.Ginger Schultheis - manuscriptAccuracy-first epistemology says that the rational update rule is the rule that maximizes expected accuracy. Externalism says, roughly, that we do not always know what our total evidence is. It’s been argued in recent years that the externalist faces a dilemma: Either deny that Bayesian Conditionalization is the rational update rule, thereby rejecting traditional Bayesian epistemology, or else deny that the rational update rule is the rule that maximizes expected accuracy, thereby rejecting the accuracy-first program. Call this the Bayesian Dilemma. (...)
- Learning as Hypothesis Testing: Learning Conditional and Probabilistic Information.Jonathan Vandenburgh - manuscriptComplex constraints like conditionals ('If A, then B') and probabilistic constraints ('The probability that A is p') pose problems for Bayesian theories of learning. Since these propositions do not express constraints on outcomes, agents cannot simply conditionalize on the new information. Furthermore, a natural extension of conditionalization, relative information minimization, leads to many counterintuitive predictions, evidenced by the sundowners problem and the Judy Benjamin problem. Building on the notion of a `paradigm shift' and empirical research in psychology and economics, I (...)
- Laying Sleeping Beauty to Rest.Masahiro Yamada - manuscriptThere are three main points of the paper. 1. There are straightforward ways of manipulating expected gains and losses that result in a divergence between fair betting odds and credence. Such manipulations are familiar from tools of finance. One can easily see that the Sleeping Beauty case is structured in such a way as to result in a divergence between fair betting odds and credence. 2. The inspection of credences and betting odds in certain betting situations shows that the two (...)
- My way or her way: A conundrum in bayesian epistemology of disagreement.Tomoji Shogenji - manuscriptThe proportional weight view in epistemology of disagreement generalizes the equal weight view and proposes that we assign to judgments of different people weights that are proportional to their epistemic qualifications. It is shown that if the resulting degrees of confidence are to constitute a probability function, they must be the weighted arithmetic means of individual degrees of confidence, while if the resulting degrees of confidence are to obey the Bayesian rule of conditionalization, they must be the weighted geometric means (...)
- Time-Slice Epistemology for Bayesians.Lisa Cassell - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.Recently, some have challenged the idea that there are genuine norms of diachronic rationality. Part of this challenge has involved offering replacements for diachronic principles. Skeptics about diachronic rationality believe that we can provide an error theory for it by appealing to synchronic updating rules that, over time, mimic the behavior of diachronic norms. In this paper, I argue that the most promising attempts to develop this position within the Bayesian framework are unsuccessful. I sketch a new synchronic surrogate that (...)
- Credal Imprecision and the Value of Evidence.Nilanjan Das - forthcoming - Noûs.This paper is about a tension between two theses. The first is Value of Evidence: roughly, the thesis that it is always rational for an agent to gather and use cost-free evidence for making decisions. The second is Rationality of Imprecision: the thesis that an agent can be rationally required to adopt doxastic states that are imprecise, i.e., not representable by a single credence function. While others have noticed this tension, I offer a new diagnosis of it. I show that (...)
- Subjective Probability and its Dynamics.Alan Hajek & Julia Staffel - forthcoming - In Markus Knauff & Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), MIT Handbook of Rationality. MIT Press.This chapter is a philosophical survey of some leading approaches in formal epistemology in the so-called ‘Bayesian’ tradition. According to them, a rational agent’s degrees of belief—credences—at a time are representable with probability functions. We also canvas various further putative ‘synchronic’ rationality norms on credences. We then consider ‘diachronic’ norms that are thought to constrain how credences should respond to evidence. We discuss some of the main lines of recent debate, and conclude with some prospects for future research.(collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation
Bookmark 1 citation - Kyburg.'The rule of Adjunction and reasonable inference,'.E. Henry Jr - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Generalized Conditionalization and the Sleeping Beauty Problem, II.Terence Horgan - forthcoming - Erkenntnis.In “Generalized Conditionalization and the Sleeping Beauty Problem,” Anna Mahtani and I offer a new argument for thirdism that relies on what we call “generalized conditionalization.” Generalized conditionalization goes beyond conventional conditionalization in two respects: first, by sometimes deploying a space of synchronic, essentially temporal, candidate-possibilities that are not “prior” possibilities; and second, by allowing for the use of preliminary probabilities that arise by first bracketing, and then conditionalizing upon, “old evidence.” In “Beauty and Conditionalization: Reply to Horgan and Mahtani,” (...)
- Updating Without Evidence.Yoaav Isaacs & Jeffrey Sanford Russell - forthcoming - Noûs.Sometimes you are unreliable at fulfilling your doxastic plans: for example, if you plan to be fully confident in all truths, probably you will end up being fully confident in some falsehoods by mistake. In some cases, there is information that plays the classical role of *evidence*—your beliefs are perfectly discriminating with respect to some possible facts about the world—and there is a standard expected-accuracy-based justification for planning to *conditionalize* on this evidence. This planning-oriented justification extends to some cases where (...)
- The Art of Learning.Jason Konek - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Epistemology 7.Confirmational holism is at odds with Jeffrey conditioning --- the orthodox Bayesian policy for accommodating uncertain learning experiences. Two of the great insights of holist epistemology are that the effects of experience ought to be mediated by one's background beliefs, and the support provided by one's learning experience can and often is undercut by subsequent learning. Jeffrey conditioning fails to vindicate either of these insights. My aim is to describe and defend a new updating policy that does better. In addition (...)
- Not So Phenomenal!Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & John Hawthorne - forthcoming - The Philosophical Review.Our main aims in this paper is to discuss and criticise the core thesis of a position that has become known as phenomenal conservatism. According to this thesis, its seeming to one that p provides enough justification for a belief in p to be prima facie justified (a thesis we label Standard Phenomenal Conservatism). This thesis captures the special kind of epistemic import that seemings are claimed to have. To get clearer on this thesis, we embed it, first, in a (...)
- Kolmogorov Conditionalizers Can Be Dutch Booked.Alexander Meehan & Snow Zhang - forthcoming - Review of Symbolic Logic:1-36.A vexing question in Bayesian epistemology is how an agent should update on evidence which she assigned zero prior credence. Some theorists have suggested that, in such cases, the agent should update by Kolmogorov conditionalization, a norm based on Kolmogorov’s theory of regular conditional distributions. However, it turns out that in some situations, a Kolmogorov conditionalizer will plan to always assign a posterior credence of zero to the evidence she learns. Intuitively, such a plan is irrational and easily Dutch bookable. (...)
- A Bayesian Solution to Hallsson's Puzzle.Thomas Mulligan - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy:1-14.Politics is rife with motivated cognition. People do not dispassionately engage with the evidence when they form political beliefs; they interpret it selectively, generating justifications for their desired conclusions and reasons why contrary evidence should be ignored. Moreover, research shows that epistemic ability (e.g. intelligence and familiarity with evidence) is correlated with motivated cognition. Bjørn Hallsson has pointed out that this raises a puzzle for the epistemology of disagreement. On the one hand, we typically think that epistemic ability in an (...)
- Evidentialism, Inertia, and Imprecise Probability.William Peden - forthcoming - The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:1-23.Evidentialists say that a necessary condition of sound epistemic reasoning is that our beliefs reflect only our evidence. This thesis arguably conflicts with standard Bayesianism, due to the importance of prior probabilities in the latter. Some evidentialists have responded by modelling belief-states using imprecise probabilities (Joyce 2005). However, Roger White (2010) and Aron Vallinder (2018) argue that this Imprecise Bayesianism is incompatible with evidentialism due to “inertia”, where Imprecise Bayesian agents become stuck in a state of ambivalence towards hypotheses. Additionally, (...)
- Sleeping Beauty's Evidence.Jeffrey Sanford Russell - forthcoming - In Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton M. Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence. Routledge.What degrees of belief does Sleeping Beauty's evidence support? That depends.
- Best Laid Plans: Idealization and the Rationality–Accuracy Bridge.Brett Topey - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.Hilary Greaves and David Wallace argue that conditionalization maximizes expected accuracy and so is a rational requirement, but their argument presupposes a particular picture of the bridge between rationality and accuracy: the Best-Plan-to-Follow picture. And theorists such as Miriam Schoenfield and Robert Steel argue that it's possible to motivate an alternative picture—the Best-Plan-to-Make picture—that does not vindicate conditionalization. I show that these theorists are mistaken: it turns out that, if an update procedure maximizes expected accuracy on the Best-Plan-to-Follow picture, it's (...)
- Higher-Order Evidence and the Dynamics of Self-Location: An Accuracy-Based Argument for Calibrationism.Brett Topey - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-27.The thesis that agents should calibrate their beliefs in the face of higher-order evidence—i.e., should adjust their first-order beliefs in response to evidence suggesting that the reasoning underlying those beliefs is faulty—is sometimes thought to be in tension with Bayesian approaches to belief update: in order to obey Bayesian norms, it's claimed, agents must remain steadfast in the face of higher-order evidence. But I argue that this claim is incorrect. In particular, I motivate a minimal constraint on a reasonable treatment (...)
- Direct inference and probabilistic accounts of induction.Jon Williamson - forthcoming - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie:1-22.Schurz argues that probabilistic accounts of induction fail. In particular, he criticises probabilistic accounts of induction that appeal to direct inference principles, including subjective Bayesian approaches and objective Bayesian approaches. In this paper, I argue that Schurz’ preferred direct inference principle, namely Reichenbach’s Principle of the Narrowest Reference Class, faces formidable problems in a standard probabilistic setting. Furthermore, the main alternative direct inference principle, Lewis’ Principal Principle, is also hard to reconcile with standard probabilism. So, I argue, standard probabilistic approaches (...)
- Epistemic Probabilities are Degrees of Support, not Degrees of (Rational) Belief.Nevin Climenhaga - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.I argue that when we use ‘probability’ language in epistemic contexts—e.g., when we ask how probable some hypothesis is, given the evidence available to us—we are talking about degrees of support, rather than degrees of belief. The epistemic probability of A given B is the mind-independent degree to which B supports A, not the degree to which someone with B as their evidence believes A, or the degree to which someone would or should believe A if they had B as (...)
- An analytical framework-based pedagogical method for scholarly community coaching: A proof of concept.Ruining Jin, Giang Hoang, Thi-Phuong Nguyen, Phuong-Tri Nguyen, Tam-Tri Le, Viet-Phuong La, Minh-Hoang Nguyen & Quan-Hoang Vuong - 2023 - MethodsX 10:102082.Working in academia is challenging, even more so for those with limited resources and opportunities. Researchers around the world do not have equal working conditions. The paper presents the structure, operation method, and conceptual framework of the SM3D Portal's community coaching method, which is built to help Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and researchers in low-resource settings overcome the obstacle of inequality and start their career progress. The community coaching method is envisioned by three science philosophies (cost-effectiveness, transparency spirit, and proactive (...)
- Bayesian updating when what you learn might be false.Richard Pettigrew - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (1):309-324.Rescorla (Erkenntnis, 2020) has recently pointed out that the standard arguments for Bayesian Conditionalization assume that whenever I become certain of something, it is true. Most people would reject this assumption. In response, Rescorla offers an improved Dutch Book argument for Bayesian Conditionalization that does not make this assumption. My purpose in this paper is two-fold. First, I want to illuminate Rescorla’s new argument by giving a very general Dutch Book argument that applies to many cases of updating beyond those (...)
- Dilating and contracting arbitrarily.David Builes, Sophie Horowitz & Miriam Schoenfield - 2022 - Noûs 56 (1):3-20.Standard accuracy-based approaches to imprecise credences have the consequence that it is rational to move between precise and imprecise credences arbitrarily, without gaining any new evidence. Building on the Educated Guessing Framework of Horowitz (2019), we develop an alternative accuracy-based approach to imprecise credences that does not have this shortcoming. We argue that it is always irrational to move from a precise state to an imprecise state arbitrarily, however it can be rational to move from an imprecise state to a (...)
- Updating incoherent credences ‐ Extending the Dutch strategy argument for conditionalization.Glauber De Bona & Julia Staffel - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (2):435-460.In this paper, we ask: how should an agent who has incoherent credences update when they learn new evidence? The standard Bayesian answer for coherent agents is that they should conditionalize; however, this updating rule is not defined for incoherent starting credences. We show how one of the main arguments for conditionalization, the Dutch strategy argument, can be extended to devise a target property for updating plans that can apply to them regardless of whether the agent starts out with coherent (...)
- (Almost) all evidence is higher-order evidence.Brian Hedden & Kevin Dorst - 2022 - Analysis 82 (3):417-425.Higher-order evidence is evidence about what is rational to think in light of your evidence. Many have argued that it is special – falling into its own evidential category, or leading to deviations from standard rational norms. But it is not. Given standard assumptions, almost all evidence is higher-order evidence.
- The content of indexical belief.Tamar Lando - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (1):107-127.I argue that a recent variation on the Sleeping Beauty case due to Titelbaum [2012a] puts significant pressure on Lewis's theory of doxastic content—the theory of content that Titelbaum and others presuppose. In particular, that theory cannot make sense of the rational constraints on credences imposed by the Principal Principle, as ordinarily understood. I then argue more generally that any theory on which contents of credences are sets of centered worlds cannot adequately represent all of the rational constraints on credences.
- Coherence & Confirmation: The Epistemic Limitations of the Impossibility Theorems.Ted Poston - 2022 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 36 (1):83-111.It is a widespread intuition that the coherence of independent reports provides a powerful reason to believe that the reports are true. Formal results by Huemer, M. 1997. “Probability and Coherence Justification.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 35: 463–72, Olsson, E. 2002. “What is the Problem of Coherence and Truth?” Journal of Philosophy XCIX : 246–72, Olsson, E. 2005. Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification. Oxford University Press., Bovens, L., and S. Hartmann. 2003. Bayesian Epistemology. Oxford University Press, prove that, under (...)
- On the truth-convergence of open-minded bayesianism.Tom F. Sterkenburg & Rianne de Heide - 2022 - Review of Symbolic Logic 15 (1):64-100.Wenmackers and Romeijn (2016) formalize ideas going back to Shimony (1970) and Putnam (1963) into an open-minded Bayesian inductive logic, that can dynamically incorporate statistical hypotheses proposed in the course of the learning process. In this paper, we show that Wenmackers and Romeijn’s proposal does not preserve the classical Bayesian consistency guarantee of merger with the true hypothesis. We diagnose the problem, and offer a forward-looking open-minded Bayesians that does preserve a version of this guarantee.
- Temporally Continuous Probability Kinematics.Kevin Blackwell - 2021 - Dissertation, University of MichiganThe heart of my dissertation project is the proposal of a new updating rule for responding to learning experiences consisting of continuous streams of evidence. I suggest characterizing this kind of learning experience as a continuous stream of stipulated credal derivatives, and show that Continuous Probability Kinematics is the uniquely coherent response to such a stream which satisfies a continuous analogue of Rigidity – the core property of both Bayesian and Jeffrey conditionalization. In the first chapter, I define neighborhood norms (...)
- Updating for Externalists.J. Dmitri Gallow - 2021 - Noûs 55 (3):487-516.The externalist says that your evidence could fail to tell you what evidence you do or not do have. In that case, it could be rational for you to be uncertain about what your evidence is. This is a kind of uncertainty which orthodox Bayesian epistemology has difficulty modeling. For, if externalism is correct, then the orthodox Bayesian learning norms of conditionalization and reflection are inconsistent with each other. I recommend that an externalist Bayesian reject conditionalization. In its stead, I (...)
- Epistemic Modal Credence.Simon Goldstein - 2021 - Philosophers' Imprint 21 (26).Triviality results threaten plausible principles governing our credence in epistemic modal claims. This paper develops a new account of modal credence which avoids triviality. On the resulting theory, probabilities are assigned not to sets of worlds, but rather to sets of information state-world pairs. The theory avoids triviality by giving up the principle that rational credence is closed under conditionalization. A rational agent can become irrational by conditionalizing on new evidence. In place of conditionalization, the paper develops a new account (...)
- Probability for Epistemic Modalities.Simon Goldstein & Paolo Santorio - 2021 - Philosophers' Imprint 21 (33).This paper develops an information-sensitive theory of the semantics and probability of conditionals and statements involving epistemic modals. The theory validates a number of principles linking probability and modality, including the principle that the probability of a conditional If A, then C equals the probability of C, updated with A. The theory avoids so-called triviality results, which are standardly taken to show that principles of this sort cannot be validated. To achieve this, we deny that rational agents update their credences (...)
- "Objective Purport, Relational Confirmation, and the Presumption of Moral Objectivism: A Probabilistic Argument from Moral Experience".Tanner Hammond - 2021 - Southwest Philosophy Review 37 (1).All else being equal, can granting the objective purport of moral experience support a presumption in favor of some form of moral objectivism? Don Loeb (2007) has argued that even if we grant that moral experience appears to present us with a realm of objective moral fact—something he denies we have reason to do in the first place—the objective purport of moral experience cannot by itself provide even prima facie support for moral objectivism. In this paper, I contend against Loeb (...)
- Not So Phenomenal!John Hawthorne & Maria Lasonen-Aarnio - 2021 - Philosophical Review 130 (1):1-43.The main aims in this article are to discuss and criticize the core thesis of a position that has become known as phenomenal conservatism. According to this thesis, its seeming to one that p provides enough justification for a belief in p to be prima facie justified. This thesis captures the special kind of epistemic import that seemings are claimed to have. To get clearer on this thesis, the article embeds it, first, in a probabilistic framework in which updating on (...)
- Symmetry and partial belief geometry.Stefan Lukits - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-24.When beliefs are quantified as credences, they are related to each other in terms of closeness and accuracy. The “accuracy first” approach in formal epistemology wants to establish a normative account for credences based entirely on the alethic properties of the credence: how close it is to the truth. To pull off this project, there is a need for a scoring rule. There is widespread agreement about some constraints on this scoring rule, but not whether a unique scoring rule stands (...)
- Accuracy-dominance and conditionalization.Michael Nielsen - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (10):3217-3236.Epistemic decision theory produces arguments with both normative and mathematical premises. I begin by arguing that philosophers should care about whether the mathematical premises (1) are true, (2) are strong, and (3) admit simple proofs. I then discuss a theorem that Briggs and Pettigrew (2020) use as a premise in a novel accuracy-dominance argument for conditionalization. I argue that the theorem and its proof can be improved in a number of ways. First, I present a counterexample that shows that one (...)
- A New Argument for Kolomogorov Conditionalization.Michael Nielsen - 2021 - Review of Symbolic Logic 14 (4):1-16.This paper contributes to a recent research program that extends arguments supporting elementary conditionalization to arguments supporting conditionalization with general, measure-theoretic conditional probabilities. I begin by suggesting an amendment to the framework that Rescorla (2018) has used to characterize regular conditional probabilities in terms of avoiding Dutch book. If we wish to model learning scenarios in which an agent gains complete membership knowledge about some subcollection of the events of interest to her, then we should focus on updating policies that (...)
- A note on deterministic updating and van Fraassen’s symmetry argument for conditionalization.Richard Pettigrew - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (2):665-673.In a recent paper, Pettigrew argues that the pragmatic and epistemic arguments for Bayesian updating are based on an unwarranted assumption, which he calls deterministic updating, and which says that your updating plan should be deterministic. In that paper, Pettigrew did not consider whether the symmetry arguments due to Hughes and van Fraassen make the same assumption Scientific inquiry in philosophical perspective. University Press of America, Lanham, pp. 183–223, 1987). In this note, I show that they do.
- Dutch Book against Lewis.Anna Wójtowicz & Krzysztof Wójtowicz - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):9185-9217.According to the PCCP thesis, the probability of a conditional A → C is the conditional probability P. This claim is undermined by Lewis’ triviality results, which purport to show that apart from trivial cases, PCCP is not true. In the present article we show that the only rational, “Dutch Book-resistant” extension of the agent’s beliefs concerning non-conditional sentences A and C to the conditional A → C is by assuming that P = P. In other cases a diachronic Dutch (...)
- Self-Locating Belief and Updating on Learning.Darren Bradley - 2020 - Mind 129 (514):579-584.Self-locating beliefs cause a problem for conditionalization. Miriam Schoenfield offers a solution: that on learning E, agents should update on the fact that they learned E. However, Schoenfield is not explicit about whether the fact that they learned E is self-locating. I will argue that if the fact that they learned E is self-locating then the original problem has not been addressed, and if the fact that they learned E is not self-locating then the theory generates implausible verdicts which Schoenfield (...)
- An Accuracy‐Dominance Argument for Conditionalization.R. A. Briggs & Richard Pettigrew - 2020 - Noûs 54 (1):162-181.
- Time-Slice Rationality and Self-Locating Belief.David Builes - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (10):3033-3049.The epistemology of self-locating belief concerns itself with how rational agents ought to respond to certain kinds of indexical information. I argue that those who endorse the thesis of Time-Slice Rationality ought to endorse a particular view about the epistemology of self-locating belief, according to which ‘essentially indexical’ information is never evidentially relevant to non-indexical matters. I close by offering some independent motivations for endorsing Time-Slice Rationality in the context of the epistemology of self-locating belief.
- Accurate Updating for the Risk Sensitive.Catrin Campbell-Moore & Bernhard Salow - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (3):751-776.Philosophers have recently attempted to justify particular belief revision procedures by arguing that they are the optimal means towards the epistemic end of accurate credences. These attempts, however, presuppose that means should be evaluated according to classical expected utility theory; and there is a long tradition maintaining that expected utility theory is too restrictive as a theory of means–end rationality, ruling out too many natural ways of taking risk into account. In this paper, we investigate what belief-revision procedures are supported (...)
- Commutativity, Normativity, and Holism: Lange Revisited.Lisa Cassell - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (2):159-173.Lange (2000) famously argues that although Jeffrey Conditionalization is non-commutative over evidence, it’s not defective in virtue of this feature. Since reversing the order of the evidence in a sequence of updates that don’t commute does not reverse the order of the experiences that underwrite these revisions, the conditions required to generate commutativity failure at the level of experience will fail to hold in cases where we get commutativity failure at the level of evidence. If our interest in commutativity is, (...)
- Opaque Updates.Michael Cohen - 2020 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 50 (3):447-470.If updating with E has the same result across all epistemically possible worlds, then the agent has no uncertainty as to the behavior of the update, and we may call it a transparent update. If an agent is uncertain about the behavior of an update, we may call it opaque. In order to model the uncertainty an agent has about the result of an update, the same update must behave differently across different possible worlds. In this paper, I study opaque (...)
- Learning from Conditionals.Benjamin Eva, Stephan Hartmann & Soroush Rafiee Rad - 2020 - Mind 129 (514):461-508.In this article, we address a major outstanding question of probabilistic Bayesian epistemology: how should a rational Bayesian agent update their beliefs upon learning an indicative conditional? A number of authors have recently contended that this question is fundamentally underdetermined by Bayesian norms, and hence that there is no single update procedure that rational agents are obliged to follow upon learning an indicative conditional. Here we resist this trend and argue that a core set of widely accepted Bayesian norms is (...)
- Confirmation based on analogical inference: Bayes meets Jeffrey.Christian J. Feldbacher-Escamilla & Alexander Gebharter - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (2):174-194.Certain hypotheses cannot be directly confirmed for theoretical, practical, or moral reasons. For some of these hypotheses, however, there might be a workaround: confirmation based on analogical reasoning. In this paper we take up Dardashti, Hartmann, Thébault, and Winsberg’s (in press) idea of analyzing confirmation based on analogical inference Baysian style. We identify three types of confirmation by analogy and show that Dardashti et al.’s approach can cover two of them. We then highlight possible problems with their model as a (...)
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