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7Caution and Nonmonotonic InferencePoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 51 101-116. 1997.
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3Escape from Boredom: Edification According to RortyCanadian Journal of Philosophy 11 (4). 1981.Richard Rorty sings in the antifoundationalist chorus. His song equates the rise of foundationalist epistemology with the professionalization of philosophy. The discordant notes he finds in the foundationalist score become, as a consequence, subversive of philosophy as an autonomous discipline.Nonetheless, the most salient feature of Rorty's recent book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, is that it is by a professional philosopher, for professional philosophers and about the future of philoso…Read more
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18Perception as Input and as Reason for ActionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (sup1): 135-154. 1995.
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8The Demons of DecisionThe Monist 70 (2): 193-211. 1987.For three centuries, philosophers have mounted defenses against the melan genie with an obsessive intensity comparable to the Reaganite determination to squander American wealth on defenses against a Communist threat. And for three centuries, skeptics have argued for the futility of the expenditure of conceptual effort with no more success than critics of the Pentagon have had in stemming the flow of funds to the military and its industrial minions. My own sympathies are with the skeptics. Howev…Read more
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1Illusions about uncertainty (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 36 (3): 331-340. 1985.
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13The Paradoxes of Allais and EllsbergEconomics and Philosophy 2 (1): 23. 1986.In The Enterprise of Knowledge, I proposed a general theory of rational choice which I intended as a characterization of a prescriptive theory of ideal rationality. A cardinal tenet of this theory is that assessments of expected value or expected utility in the Bayesian sense may not be representable by a numerical indicator or indeed induce an ordering of feasible options in a context of deliberation. My reasons for taking this position are related to my commitment to the inquiry-oriented appro…Read more
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24Identity and conflictSocial Research: An International Quarterly 74 (1): 25-50. 2007.A sketch of a way of characterizing multidimensional value commitments and the way they can come into conflict derived from my book Hard Choices is presented and applied to the question of how to characterize the relevance of identity to value commitments and conflict. The views of A.K. Sen and A. Bilgrami are examined in the light of these ideas
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1Gambling with Truth: An Essay on Induction and the Aims of ScienceSynthese 17 (1): 444-448. 1967.
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10Money pumps and diachronic booksProceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2002 (3). 2002.The idea that rational agents should have acyclic preferences and should obey conditionalization has been defended on the grounds that otherwise an agent is threatened with becoming a “money pump.” This essay argues that such arguments fail to prove their claims
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13Fallacy and controversy about base ratesBehavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (1): 31-32. 1996.Koehler's target article attempts a balanced view of the relevance of knowledge of base rates to judgments of subjective or credal probability, but he is not sensitive enough to the difference between requiring and permitting the equation of probability judgments with base rates, the interaction between precision of base rate and reference class information, and the possibility of indeterminate probability judgment.
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Wayward naturalism : saving Dewey from himselfIn John R. Shook & Paul Kurtz (eds.), The future of naturalism, Humanity Books. 2009.
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204Kyburg on random designatorsPhilosophy of Science 50 (4): 635-642. 1983.To ground judgments of credal probability on knowledge of chance via direct inference, one should appeal to the information about chances available relative to the most specific description known to be true of the trial event.Thus, to obtain a judgment of credal probability concerning the hypothesis that coin a landed heads at t given that it is known that at t it is known that a was tossed by Levi in 728 Philosophy Hall, the pertinent knowledge of chances concerns the chances of coin a landing …Read more
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4Commitment and change of viewIn José Luis Bermúdez & Alan Millar (eds.), Reason and Nature: Essays in the Theory of Rationality, Clarendon Press. pp. 209--232. 2002.
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151Probability logic, logical probability, and inductive supportSynthese 172 (1): 97-118. 2010.This paper seeks to defend the following conclusions: The program advanced by Carnap and other necessarians for probability logic has little to recommend it except for one important point. Credal probability judgments ought to be adapted to changes in evidence or states of full belief in a principled manner in conformity with the inquirer’s confirmational commitments—except when the inquirer has good reason to modify his or her confirmational commitment. Probability logic ought to spell out the …Read more
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12The logic of consistency and the logic of truthDialectica 58 (4). 2004.In “Truth and Probability” Ramsey claimed that the logic of consistency for probability is not a logic of truth. After supporting this claim, he proceeded to explore the possibilities for a logic of truth for probability. An examination of Ramsey's intent reveals that Ramsey was far from being an orthodox Bayesian when it comes to statistical reasoning. The relations between Ramsey's thought and the ideas of Keynes and Peirce are discussed
Isaac Levi
(1930 - 2018)
New York City, New York, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Probability |
General Philosophy of Science |