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468Why Countable Additivity?Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 2 (1): 53-61. 2013.It is sometimes alleged that arguments that probability functions should be countably additive show too much, and that they motivate uncountable additivity as well. I show this is false by giving two naturally motivated arguments for countable additivity that do not motivate uncountable additivity
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232Logic and ProbabilityJournal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 27 (2): 229-253. 2010.As is clear from the other articles in this volume, logic has applications in a broad range of areas of philosophy. If logic is taken to include the mathematical disciplines of set theory, model theory, proof theory, and recursion theory (as well as first-order logic, second-order logic, and modal logic), then the only other area of mathematics with such wide-ranging applications in philosophy is probability theory
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101Bullshit activitiesAnalytic Philosophy. forthcoming.Frankfurt gave an account of “bullshit” as a statement made without regard to truth or falsity. Austin argued that a large amount of language consists of speech acts aimed at goals other than truth or falsity. We don't want our account of bullshit to include all performatives. I develop a modification of Frankfurt's account that makes interesting and useful categorizations of various speech acts as bullshit or not and show that this account generalizes to many other kinds of act as well. I show …Read more
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215Expected Accuracy Supports Conditionalization—and Conglomerability and ReflectionPhilosophy of Science 80 (1): 119-142. 2013.Expected accuracy arguments have been used by several authors (Leitgeb and Pettigrew, and Greaves and Wallace) to support the diachronic principle of conditionalization, in updates where there are only finitely many possible propositions to learn. I show that these arguments can be extended to infinite cases, giving an argument not just for conditionalization but also for principles known as ‘conglomerability’ and ‘reflection’. This shows that the expected accuracy approach is stronger than has …Read more
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583Bayesianism I: Introduction and Arguments in FavorPhilosophy Compass 6 (5): 312-320. 2011.Bayesianism is a collection of positions in several related fields, centered on the interpretation of probability as something like degree of belief, as contrasted with relative frequency, or objective chance. However, Bayesianism is far from a unified movement. Bayesians are divided about the nature of the probability functions they discuss; about the normative force of this probability function for ordinary and scientific reasoning and decision making; and about what relation (if any) holds be…Read more
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200Arguments for probabilism aim to undergird/motivate a synchronic probabilistic coherence norm for partial beliefs. Standard arguments for probabilism are all of the form: An agent S has a non-probabilistic partial belief function b iff (⇐⇒) S has some “bad” property B (in virtue of the fact that their p.b.f. b has a certain kind of formal property F). These arguments rest on Theorems (⇒) and Converse Theorems (⇐): b is non-Pr ⇐⇒ b has formal property F.
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69Probability and LogicPhilosophy Compass 9 (12): 876-883. 2014.Probability and logic are two branches of mathematics that have important philosophical applications. This article discusses several areas of intersection between them. Several involve the role for probability in giving semantics for logic or the role of logic in governing assignments of probability. Some involve probability over non-classical logic or self-referential sentences
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126A classification of Newcomb problems and decision theoriesSynthese 198 (Suppl 27): 6415-6434. 2019.Newcomb-like problems are classified by the payoff table of their act-state pairs, and the causal structure that gives rise to the act-state correlation. Decision theories are classified by the one or more points of intervention whose causal role is taken to be relevant to rationality in various problems. Some decision theories suggest an inherent conflict between different notions of rationality that are all relevant. Some issues with causal modeling raise problems for decision theories in the …Read more
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91The Concept of Rationality for a CityTopoi 40 (2): 409-421. 2019.The central aim of this paper is to argue that there is a meaningful sense in which a concept of rationality can apply to a city. The idea will be that a city is rational to the extent that the collective practices of its people enable diverse inhabitants to simultaneously live the kinds of life they are each trying to live. This has significant implications for the varieties of social practices that constitute being more or less rational. Some of these implications may be welcome to a theorist …Read more
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102Infinity, Causation, and Paradox, by Alexander PrussMind 129 (516): 1287-1291. 2019._ Infinity, Causation, and Paradox _, by PrussAlexander. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xiii + 207.
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University of California, IrvineThe Department of Logic and Philosophy of ScienceAssociate Professor
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Irvine, California, United States of America