On the Accuracy of Group Credences

Oxford Studies in Epistemology 6 (2019)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

We often ask for the opinion of a group of individuals. How strongly does the scientific community believe that the rate at which sea levels are rising has increased over the last 200 years? How likely does the UK Treasury think it is that there will be a recession if the country leaves the European Union? What are these group credences that such questions request? And how do they relate to the individual credences assigned by the members of the particular group in question? According to the credal judgement aggregation principle, linear pooling, the credence function of a group should be a weighted average or linear pool of the credence functions of the individuals in the group. In this chapter, I give an argument for linear pooling based on considerations of accuracy. And I respond to two standard objections to the aggregation principle.

Other Versions

original Pettigrew, Richard (2016) "On the accuracy of group credences". In Pettigrew, Richard, Oxford Studies in Epistemology Vol.6, pp. : Oxford University Press (2016)

Similar books and articles

Fully Bayesian Aggregation.Franz Dietrich - 2021 - Journal of Economic Theory 194:105255.
Groupthink.Jeffrey Sanford Russell, John Hawthorne & Lara Buchak - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (5):1287-1309.
A Theory of Bayesian Groups.Franz Dietrich - 2017 - Noûs 53 (3):708-736.
Regret Averse Opinion Aggregation.Lee Elkin - 2021 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 8 (16):473-495.
Probabilistic Opinion Pooling.Franz Dietrich & Christian List - 2016 - In Alan Hájek & Christopher Hitchcock, The Oxford Handbook of Probability and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Accuracy and the Laws of Credence.Richard Pettigrew - 2016 - New York, NY.: Oxford University Press UK.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-11-28

Downloads
1,311 (#14,938)

6 months
142 (#39,789)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Richard Pettigrew
University of Bristol

Citations of this work

What is justified credence?Richard Pettigrew - 2021 - Episteme 18 (1):16-30.
Accuracy-First Epistemology Without Additivity.Richard Pettigrew - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (1):128-151.
Social epistemology.Alvin I. Goldman - 2001 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Reasons, Coherence, and Group Rationality.Brian Hedden - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (3):581-604.

View all 17 citations / Add more citations