Belief gambles in epistemic decision theory

Philosophical Studies 178 (2):407-426 (2021)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Don’t form beliefs on the basis of coin flips or random guesses. More generally, don’t take belief gambles: if a proposition is no more likely to be true than false given your total body of evidence, don’t go ahead and believe that proposition. Few would deny this seemingly innocuous piece of epistemic advice. But what, exactly, is wrong with taking belief gambles? Philosophers have debated versions of this question at least since the classic dispute between William Clifford and William James near the end of the nineteenth century. Here I reassess the normative standing of belief gambles from the perspective of epistemic decision theory. The main lesson of the paper is a negative one: it turns out that we need to make some surprisingly strong and hard-to-motivate assumptions to establish a general norm against belief gambles within a decision-theoretic framework. I take this to pose a dilemma for epistemic decision theory: it forces us to either make seemingly unmotivated assumptions to secure a norm against belief gambles, or concede that belief gambles can be rational after all.

Similar books and articles

Epistemic Consequentialism: Philip Percival.Philip Percival - 2002 - Supplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 76 (1):121-151.
Epistemic Value and the Jamesian Goals.Sophie Horowitz - 2017 - In Jeffrey Dunn Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij (ed.), Epistemic Consequentialism. Oxford University Press.
Can the aim of belief ground epistemic normativity?Charles Côté-Bouchard - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (12):3181-3198.
Epistemic Consequentialism.Philip Percival - 2002 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 76 (1):121–151.
Epistemic consequentialism.Robert Stalnaker - 2002 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 76 (1):153–168.
How to be an Epistemic Consequentialist.Daniel J. Singer - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (272):580-602.
When propriety is improper.Kevin Blackwell & Daniel Drucker - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (2):367-386.
The Right in the Good: A Defense of Teleological Non-Consequentialism in Epistemology.Clayton Littlejohn - forthcoming - In Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij Jeff Dunn (ed.), Epistemic Consequentialism. Oxford University Press.
Epistemic freedom revisited.Gregory Antill - 2020 - Synthese 197 (2):793-815.
An Epistemic Non-Consequentialism.Kurt L. Sylvan - 2020 - The Philosophical Review 129 (1):1-51.
Epistemic Decision Theory.Hilary Greaves - 2013 - Mind 122 (488):915-952.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-02-17

Downloads
577 (#21,181)

6 months
71 (#24,755)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Mattias Skipper
Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences

Citations of this work

The how and why of approximating Bayesian ideals.Nicholas Makins - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology:1-4.
Against Methodological Gambling.Borut Trpin - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (3):907-927.
Proper scoring rules in epistemic decision theory.Maomei Wang - 2020 - Dissertation, Lingnan University

Add more citations

References found in this work

Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Knowledge in a social world.Alvin I. Goldman - 1999 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Accuracy and the Laws of Credence.Richard Pettigrew - 2016 - New York, NY.: Oxford University Press UK.
Risk and Rationality.Lara Buchak - 2013 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.

View all 25 references / Add more references