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A defense of objectivism about evidential support

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Brian Hedden
Brian Hedden*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
*
Email: brian.hedden@sydney.edu.au
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Abstract

Objectivism about evidential support is the thesis that facts about the degree to which a body of evidence supports a hypothesis are objective rather than depending on subjective factors like one’s own language or epistemic values. Objectivism about evidential support is key to defending a synchronic, time-slice-centric conception of epistemic rationality, on which what you ought to believe at a time depends only on what evidence you have at that time, and not on how you were at previous times. Here, I defend a version of objectivism about evidential support on which facts about evidential support are grounded in facts about explanatoriness.

Keywords

Diachronic normsepistemologyrationalityevidenceexplanation
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 45 , Issue 5-6: Special Issue: Belief, Action, and Rationality over Time , December 2015 , pp. 716 - 743
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2015

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