The Accuracy and Rationality of Imprecise Credences

Noûs 51 (4):667-685 (2017)
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Abstract

It has been claimed that, in response to certain kinds of evidence, agents ought to adopt imprecise credences: doxastic states that are represented by sets of credence functions rather than single ones. In this paper I argue that, given some plausible constraints on accuracy measures, accuracy-centered epistemologists must reject the requirement to adopt imprecise credences. I then show that even the claim that imprecise credences are permitted is problematic for accuracy-centered epistemology. It follows that if imprecise credal states are permitted or required in the cases that their defenders appeal to, then the requirements of rationality can outstrip what would be warranted by an interest in accuracy.

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Miriam Schoenfield
University of Texas at Austin

Citations of this work

Belief and Credence: Why the Attitude-Type Matters.Elizabeth Grace Jackson - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (9):2477-2496.
Updating for Externalists.J. Dmitri Gallow - 2021 - Noûs 55 (3):487-516.
Permissivism and the Value of Rationality: A Challenge to the Uniqueness Thesis.Miriam Schoenfield - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (2):286-297.
Imprecise Probabilities.Seamus Bradley - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

A subjectivist’s guide to objective chance.David K. Lewis - 1980 - In Richard C. Jeffrey (ed.), Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, Volume II. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 263-293.
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Decision theory as philosophy.Mark Kaplan - 1983 - Philosophy of Science 50 (4):549-577.
Accuracy and Coherence: Prospects for an Alethic Epistemology of Partial Belief.James Joyce - 2009 - In Franz Huber & Christoph Schmidt-Petri (eds.), Degrees of Belief. Synthese. pp. 263-297.

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