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p, and I have Absolutely No Justification for Believing that p: The Incoherence of Bayesianism
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
  • John N. WILLIAMS, Singapore Management University
  • Alan HAJEK
Publication Type
Working Paper
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
10-2005
Abstract

Bayesianism tells a story about the epistemic trajectory of an ideally rational agent. The agent begins with a ‘prior’ probability function; thereafter, it conditionalizes on its evidence as it comes in. Consider, then, such an agent at the very beginning of its trajectory. It is ideally rational, but completely ignorant of which world is actual. Let us call this agent ‘superbaby’.1 We show that superbaby is committed to sincerely asserting propositions of the form [p and I am not justified in believing that p].

Discipline
Publisher
Singapore Management University, SMU Social Sciences and Humanities Working Paper Series, Paper No. 07-2005
City or Country
Singapore
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International
Citation Information
John N. WILLIAMS and Alan HAJEK. "p, and I have Absolutely No Justification for Believing that p: The Incoherence of Bayesianism" (2005) p. 1 - 30
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/john_williams/36/