Probabilistic Knowledge and Cognitive Ability

Moss (2013) argues that partial beliefs, or credences can amount to knowledge in much the way that full beliefs can. This paper explores a new kind of objective Bayesianism designed to take us some way toward securing such ‘probabilistic knowledge’. Whatever else it takes for an agent’s credences to amount to knowledge, their success, or accuracy must be the product of cognitive ability or skill. The brand of Bayesianism developed here helps ensure this ability condition is satisfied. Cognitive ability, in turn, helps make credences valuable in other ways: it helps mitigate their dependence on epistemic luck, for example. As a result, this new set of Bayesian tools delivers credences that are particularly good candidates for probabilistic knowledge. In addition, examining the character of these credences teaches us an important lesson about what, at bottom, cognitive ability and probabilistic knowledge demand from us: they demand that we give theoretical hypotheses equal consideration, in a certain sense, rather than equal treatment.