Is Bayesian decision theory a panacea for many of the problems in epistemology and the philosophy of science, or is it philosophical snake-oil? For years a debate had been waged amongst specialists regarding the import and legitimacy of this body of theory. Mark Kaplan had written the first accessible and non-technical book to address this controversy. Introducing a new variant on Bayesian decision theory the author offers a compelling case that, while no panacea, decision theory does in fact have the (...) most profound consequences for the way in which philosophers think about inquiry, criticism and rational belief. The new variant on Bayesian theory is presented in such a way that a non-specialist will be able to understand it. The book also offers new solutions to some classic paradoxes. It focuses on the intuitive motivations of the Bayesian approach to epistemology and addresses the philosophical worries to which it has given rise. (shrink)
J. L. Austin famously thought that facts about the circumstances in which it is ordinarily appropriate and reasonable to make claims to knowledge have a great bearing on the propriety of a philosophical account of knowledge. His major criticism of the epistemological doctrines about which he wrote was precisely that they lacked fidelity to our ordinary linguistic practices. In The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Barry Stroud argues that Austin was misguided: it is one thing for it to be inappropriate under (...) ordinary circumstances to deny that someone knows that P, another thing for it to be true that she knows that P. Thus, to the philosophical enterprise of determining which knowledge attributions are true, Austin’s form of criticism is beside the point. I argue that, attractive though it may be, this response to Austin badly underestimates the force of his sort of criticism. (shrink)
Orthodox Probabilists hold that an inquirer ought to harbor a precise degree of confidence in each hypothesis about which she is concerned. Modest Probabilism is one of a family doctrines inspired by the thought that Orthodox Probabilists are thereby demanding that an inquirer effect a precision that is often unwarranted by her evidence. The purpose of this essay is (i) to explain the particular way in which Modest Probabilism answers to this thought, and (ii) to address an alleged counterexample to (...) Modest Probabilism meant to offer proof that Modest Probabilism is no better than its orthodox predecessor at avoiding unwarranted precision. (shrink)
J. L. Austin famously thought that facts about the circumstances in which it is ordinarily appropriate and reasonable to make claims to knowledge have a great bearing on the propriety of a philosophical account of knowledge. His major criticism of the epistemological doctrines about which he wrote was precisely that they lacked fidelity to our ordinary linguistic practices. In The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Barry Stroud argues that Austin was misguided: it is one thing for it to be inappropriate under (...) ordinary circumstances to deny that someone knows that P, another thing for it to be true that she knows that P. Thus, to the philosophical enterprise of determining which knowledge attributions are true, Austin's form of criticism is beside the point. I argue that, attractive though it may be, this response to Austin badly under-estimates the force of his sort of criticism. (shrink)
Is Bayesian decision theory a panacea for many of the problems in epistemology and the philosophy of science, or is it philosophical snake-oil? For years a debate had been waged amongst specialists regarding the import and legitimacy of this body of theory. Mark Kaplan had written the first accessible and non-technical book to address this controversy. Introducing a new variant on Bayesian decision theory the author offers a compelling case that, while no panacea, decision theory does in fact have the (...) most profound consequences for the way in which philosophers think about inquiry, criticism and rational belief. The new variant on Bayesian theory is presented in such a way that a non-specialist will be able to understand it. The book also offers new solutions to some classic paradoxes. It focuses on the intuitive motivations of the Bayesian approach to epistemology and addresses the philosophical worries to which it has given rise. (shrink)
Crucial to bayesian contributions to the philosophy of science has been a characteristic psychology, according to which investigators harbor degree of confidence assignments that (insofar as the agents are rational) obey the axioms of the probability calculus. The rub is that, if the evidence of introspection is to be trusted, this fruitful psychology is false: actual investigators harbor no such assignments. The orthodox bayesian response has been to argue that the evidence of introspection is not to be trusted here; it (...) is to investigators' dispositions--not to their felt convictions--that the psychology is meant to be (and succeeds in being) faithful. I argue that this response, in both its orthodox and convex-set bayesian forms, should be rejected--as should the regulative ideals that make the response seem so attractive. I offer a different variant of bayesianism, designed to give the evidence of introspection its due and thus realize (as I claim the other forms of bayesianism cannot) the prescriptive mission of the bayesian project. (shrink)
In Practical and Scientific Rationality: A Difficulty for Levi's Epistemology, Wayne Backman points to genuine difficulties in Isaac Levi's epistemology, difficulties that Backman attributes to Levi's having required, and for no good reason, that a rational person adopt but one standard of possibility for all her endeavors practical and scientific. I argue that Levi's requirement has, in fact, a deep and compelling motivation that tips the scales in favor of a different diagnosis of Levi's ills — i.e., that Levi's error (...) lies simply in his having set insufficiently high qualifications for admission into the corpus that determines a person's standard of possibility. (shrink)
AIDS provides society an opportunity to expand and rationliza control over a broad range of psychological phenomena. Social control today is panoptical, involving dispersed centers and agents of surveillance and discipline throughout the whole community . The control of persons perceived as "dangerous" is effected partly through public psycho-social discourse on AIDS. This reproduces earlier encounters with frightening diseases, most notably the nineteenth-century cholera epidemic, and reveals a morally-laden ideology behind modern efforts at public hygiene.
J. L. Austin famously thought that facts about the circumstances in which it is ordinarily appropriate and reasonable to make claims to knowledge have a great bearing on the propriety of a philosophical account of knowledge. His major criticism of the epistemological doctrines about which he wrote was precisely that they lacked fidelity to our ordinary linguistic practices. In The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Barry Stroud argues that Austin was misguided: it is one thing for it to be inappropriate under (...) ordinary circumstances to deny that someone knows that P, another thing for it to be true that she knows that P. Thus, to the philosophical enterprise of determining which knowledge attributions are true, Austin’s form of criticism is beside the point. I argue that, attractive though it may be, this response to Austin badly underestimates the force of his sort of criticism. (shrink)
