Conditionalization Does Not (in General) Maximize Expected Accuracy

Schoenfield, Miriam

doi:10.1093/mind/fzw027

Cited by 41 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…In the paper, Kelly is motivated by considerations that, I think, favor steadfastness concerning higher order evidence more broadly.) See also White (2009) and Schoenfield (2015a) for arguments that challenge calibrationism. makes it nearly certain that it contains enough fuel to make it to Hawaii.…”

Section: Why Higher Order Evidence Is Puzzlingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…See Schafer (2014) (who is largely responsible for introducing the connection between epistemic rationality and doxastic planning into recent literature) for discussion of this issue. For further discussion of doxastic planning and its implications see Greco and Hedden (forthcoming), Schoenfield (2015b) and Schoenfield (forthcomingb). (See also Greco (2015) and Steele (forthcoming) who don't explicitly use the language of doxastic planning, but are naturally interpreted as appealing to similar considerations.)…”

Section: The Planning Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An Accuracy Based Approach to Higher Order Evidence

Schoenfield

2016

Philos Phenomenol Research

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The aim of this paper is to apply the accuracy based approach to epistemology to the case of higher order evidence: evidence that bears on the rationality of one's beliefs. I proceed in two stages. First, I show that the accuracy based framework that is standardly used to motivate rational requirements supports steadfastness—a position according to which higher order evidence should have no impact on one's doxastic attitudes towards first order propositions. The argument for this will require a generalization of an important result by Greaves and Wallace for the claim that conditionalization maximizes expected accuracy. The generalization I provide will, among other things, allow us to apply the result to cases of self‐locating evidence. In the second stage, I develop an alternative framework. Very roughly, what distinguishes the traditional approach from the alternative one is that, on the traditional picture, we're interested in evaluating the expected accuracy of conforming to an update procedure. On the alternative picture that I develop, instead of considering how good an update procedure is as a plan to conform to, we consider how good it is as a plan to make. I show how, given the use of strictly proper scoring rules, the alternative picture vindicates calibrationism: a view according to which higher order evidence should have a significant impact on our beliefs. I conclude with some thoughts about why higher order evidence poses a serious challenge for standard ways of thinking about rationality.

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Section: Why Higher Order Evidence Is Puzzlingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Planning Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Accuracy Based Approach to Higher Order Evidence

Schoenfield

2016

Philos Phenomenol Research

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“…Similar notions have been discussed by Gibbard[24], Schafer[62], and Schoenfield[64]. What we are calling 'doxastic plans' are what Greaves and Wallace call epistemic acts.…”

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confidence: 57%

Accuracy and Ur-Prior Conditionalization

Das¹

2018

The Review of Symbolic Logic

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Recently, several epistemologists have defended an attractive principle of epistemic rationality, which we shall callUr-Prior Conditionalization. In this essay, I ask whether we can justify this principle by appealing to the epistemic goal of accuracy. I argue that any such accuracy-based argument will be in tension withEvidence Externalism, i.e., the view that agent’s evidence may entail nontrivial propositions about the external world. This is because any such argument will crucially require the assumption that, independently of all empirical evidence, it is rational for an agent to be certain that her evidence will always include truths, and that she will always have perfect introspective access to her own evidence. This assumption is incompatible withEvidence Externalism. I go on to suggest that even if we don’t acceptEvidence Externalism, the prospects for any accuracy-based justification forUr-Prior Conditionalizationare bleak.

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“…Others deny one or more. For instance, Jeffrey (1992) denies Certain Evidence and Evidential Availability; Konek (2019) denies Evidential Availability but not Certain Evidence; van Fraassen (1999), Schoenfield (2017), and Weisberg (2007) deny Evidential Partition. But all agree, I think, that there are certain important situations when all three assumptions are true; there are certain situations where there is a set of propositions that forms a partition and about each member of which you have a prior opinion, and the possible evidence you might receive at the later time comes in the form of one of these propositions learned with certainty.…”

Section: The Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is conditionalization, and why should we do it?

Pettigrew

2019

Philos Stud

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Conditionalization is one of the central norms of Bayesian epistemology. But there are a number of competing formulations, and a number of arguments that purport to establish it. In this paper, I explore which formulations of the norm are supported by which arguments. In their standard formulations, each of the arguments I consider here depends on the same assumption, which I call Deterministic Updating. I will investigate whether it is possible to amend these arguments so that they no longer depend on it. As I show, whether this is possible depends on the formulation of the norm under consideration.

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Conditionalization Does Not (in General) Maximize Expected Accuracy

Cited by 41 publications

References 13 publications

An Accuracy Based Approach to Higher Order Evidence

An Accuracy Based Approach to Higher Order Evidence

Accuracy and Ur-Prior Conditionalization

What is conditionalization, and why should we do it?

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