Abstract
AbstractThe thesis that agents should calibrate their beliefs in the face of higher-order evidence—i.e., should adjust their first-order beliefs in response to evidence suggesting that the reasoning underlying those beliefs is faulty—is sometimes thought to be in tension with Bayesian approaches to belief update: in order to obey Bayesian norms, it’s claimed, agents must remain steadfast in the face of higher-order evidence. But I argue that this claim is incorrect. In particular, I motivate a minimal constraint on a reasonable treatment of the evolution of self-locating beliefs over time and show that calibrationism is compatible with any generalized Bayesian approach that respects this constraint. I then use this result to argue that remaining steadfast isn’t the response to higher-order evidence that maximizes expected accuracy.
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Reference40 articles.
1. Arntzenius, F. (2003). Some problems for conditionalization and reflection. Journal of Philosophy, 100, 356–370.
2. Bradley, D. (2011). Self-location is no problem for conditionalization. Synthese, 182, 393–411.
3. Bradley, D. (2013). Dynamic beliefs and the passage of time. In N. Feit & A. Capone (Eds.), Attitudes de se: Linguistics, epistemology, metaphysics (pp. 291–306). CSLI Publications.
4. Bradley, D. (2020). Self-locating belief and updating on learning. Mind, 129, 579–584.
5. Briggs, R. (2010). Putting a value on Beauty. In T. S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (Eds.), Oxford studies in epistemology (Vol. 3, pp. 3–34). Oxford University Press.