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31Accuracy-First Epistemology and Scientific ProgressErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 11. 2024.The accuracy-first program attempts to ground epistemology in the norm that one’s beliefs should be as accurate as possible, where accuracy is measured using a scoring rule. We argue that considerations of scientific progress suggest that such a monism about epistemic value is untenable. In particular, we argue that counterexamples to the standard scoring rules are ubiquitous in the history of science, and hence that these scoring rules cannot be regarded as a precisification of our intuitive co…Read more
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29Remarks on Ángel Pinillos’s Why We DoubtInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 1-9. forthcoming.In these brief remarks, I describe the author’s Bayesian explication of the narrow function of the meta-cognitive, heuristic algorithm (pbs) that is at the heart of his psychological explanation of why we entertain skeptical doubts. I provide some critical remarks, and an alternative Bayesian approach that is (to my mind) somewhat more elegant than the author’s.
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Symmetries and asymmetries in evidential supportIn Antony Eagle (ed.), Philosophy of Probability: Contemporary Readings, Routledge. 2011.
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Closure, Counter-Closure, and Inferential KnowledgeIn Rodrigo Borges, Claudio de Almeida & Peter David Klein (eds.), Explaining Knowledge: New Essays on the Gettier Problem, Oxford University Press. pp. 312-324. 2017.The chapter begins with some general remarks about closure and counter-closure, and is followed with a discussion of the following: I (a) review some (alleged) counterexamples to counter-closure, I then continue by (b) discussing a popular strategy for responding to such counterexamples to counter-closure, and finally I (c) pose a dilemma for this popular strategy. Once I have discussed these three points I conclude the chapter by proposing that we reject counter-closure, but at the same time th…Read more
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837Deference Done BetterPhilosophical Perspectives 35 (1): 99-150. 2021.There are many things—call them ‘experts’—that you should defer to in forming your opinions. The trouble is, many experts are modest: they’re less than certain that they are worthy of deference. When this happens, the standard theories of deference break down: the most popular (“Reflection”-style) principles collapse to inconsistency, while their most popular (“New-Reflection”-style) variants allow you to defer to someone while regarding them as an anti-expert. We propose a middle way: deferring…Read more
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Part IV. Collective entities and formal epistemology. Individual coherence and group coherenceIn Jennifer Lackey (ed.), Essays in Collective Epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2014.
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66A Problem for Confirmation Measure ZPhilosophy of Science 88 (4): 726-730. 2021.In this article, I present a serious problem for confirmation measure Z.
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1157Four Approaches to SuppositionErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 8 (26): 58-98. 2022.Suppositions can be introduced in either the indicative or subjunctive mood. The introduction of either type of supposition initiates judgments that may be either qualitative, binary judgments about whether a given proposition is acceptable or quantitative, numerical ones about how acceptable it is. As such, accounts of qualitative/quantitative judgment under indicative/subjunctive supposition have been developed in the literature. We explore these four different types of theories by systematica…Read more
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192Two Approaches to Belief RevisionErkenntnis 84 (3): 487-518. 2019.In this paper, we compare and contrast two methods for the revision of qualitative beliefs. The first method is generated by a simplistic diachronic Lockean thesis requiring coherence with the agent’s posterior credences after conditionalization. The second method is the orthodox AGM approach to belief revision. Our primary aim is to determine when the two methods may disagree in their recommendations and when they must agree. We establish a number of novel results about their relative behavior.…Read more
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41Confirmation, causation, and Simpson's paradoxEpisteme 14 (3): 297-309. 2017.ABSTRACTIn this paper, I review some recent treatments of Simpson's Paradox, and I propose a new rationalizing explanation of its paradoxicality.
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IntroductionIn Cherie Braden, Rodrigo Borges & Branden Fitelson (eds.), Themes From Klein, Springer Verlag. 2019.
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314How Not to Detect DesignThe Design Inference. William A. DembskiPhilosophy of Science 66 (3): 472-488. 1999.As every philosopher knows, “the design argument” concludes that God exists from premisses that cite the adaptive complexity of organisms or the lawfulness and orderliness of the whole universe. Since 1859, it has formed the intellectual heart of creationist opposition to the Darwinian hypothesis that organisms evolved their adaptive features by the mindless process of natural selection. Although the design argument developed as a defense of theism, the logic of the argument in fact encompasses …Read more
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84Probability, confirmation, and the conjunction fallacyThinking and Reasoning 14 (2): 182-199. 2008.The conjunction fallacy has been a key topic in debates on the rationality of human reasoning and its limitations. Despite extensive inquiry, however, the attempt of providing a satisfactory account of the phenomenon has proven challenging. Here, we elaborate the suggestion (first discussed by Sides et al., 2001) that in standard conjunction problems the fallacious probability judgments experimentally observed are typically guided by sound assessments of confirmation relations, meant in terms of…Read more
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266Logical Foundations of Evidential SupportPhilosophy of Science 73 (5): 500-512. 2006.Carnap's inductive logic (or confirmation) project is revisited from an "increase in firmness" (or probabilistic relevance) point of view. It is argued that Carnap's main desiderata can be satisfied in this setting, without the need for a theory of "logical probability." The emphasis here will be on explaining how Carnap's epistemological desiderata for inductive logic will need to be modified in this new setting. The key move is to abandon Carnap's goal of bridging confirmation and credence, in…Read more
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29We’ll adopt a simple framework today. Our assumptions: A model (M) is a family of hypotheses. A hypothesis (H) is a curve plus an associated error term . For simplicity, we’ll assume a common N (0, 1) Gaussian
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39In this talk, I will explain why only one of Miller’s two types of language-dependence-of-verisimilitude problems is a (potential) threat to the sorts of accuracy-dominance approaches to coherence that I’ve been discussing
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188Symmetries and asymmetries in evidential supportPhilosophical Studies 107 (2). 2002.Several forms of symmetry in degrees of evidential support areconsidered. Some of these symmetries are shown not to hold in general. This has implications for the adequacy of many measures of degree ofevidential support that have been proposed and defended in the philosophical literature.
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150Discussion: Re‐solving irrelevant conjunction with probabilistic independencePhilosophy of Science 71 (4): 505-514. 2004.Naive deductivist accounts of confirmation have the undesirable consequence that if E confirms H, then E also confirms the conjunction H·X, for any X—even if X is completely irrelevant to E and H. Bayesian accounts of confirmation may appear to have the same problem. In a recent article in this journal Fitelson (2002) argued that existing Bayesian attempts to resolve of this problem are inadequate in several important respects. Fitelson then proposes a new‐and‐improved Bayesian account that over…Read more
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24Certain distributivity results for Lukasiewicz’s infinite-valued logic Lℵ0..
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22Remarks on "Random Sequences"Australasian Journal of Logic 12 (1). 2015.We show that standard statistical tests for randomness of finite sequences are language-dependent in an inductively pernicious way.
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213Too Odd (Not) to Be True? A Reply to OlssonBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (4): 539-563. 2002.Corroborating Testimony, Probability and Surprise’, Erik J. Olsson ascribes to L. Jonathan Cohen the claims that if two witnesses provide us with the same information, then the less probable the information is, the more confident we may be that the information is true (C), and the stronger the information is corroborated (C*). We question whether Cohen intends anything like claims (C) and (C*). Furthermore, he discusses the concurrence of witness reports within a context of independent witnesses…Read more
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441What is the “Equal Weight View'?Episteme 6 (3): 280-293. 2009.In this paper, we investigate various possible (Bayesian) precisifications of the (somewhat vague) statements of “the equal weight view” (EWV) that have appeared in the recent literature on disagreement. We will show that the renditions of (EWV) that immediately suggest themselves are untenable from a Bayesian point of view. In the end, we will propose some tenable (but not necessarily desirable) interpretations of (EWV). Our aim here will not be to defend any particular Bayesian precisification…Read more
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151Comparative Bayesian Confirmation and the Quine–Duhem Problem: A Rejoinder to StrevensBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (2): 333-338. 2007.By and large, we think is a useful reply to our original critique of his article on the Quine–Duhem problem. But, we remain unsatisfied with several aspects of his reply. Ultimately, we do not think he properly addresses our most important worries. In this brief rejoinder, we explain our remaining worries, and we issue a revised challenge for Strevens's approach to QD.
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221Probabilistic measures of causal strengthIn Phyllis McKay Illari Federica Russo (ed.), Causality in the Sciences, Oxford University Press. pp. 600--627. 2011.
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Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Formal Epistemology |