Optimality justifications and the optimality principle: New tools for foundation‐theoretic epistemology

Abstract

The background of this paper (section 1) consists in a new account to foundation-theoretic epistemology characterized by two features: (i) All beliefs are to be justified by deductive, inductive or abductive inferences from a minimalistic class of unproblematic (introspective or analytic) basic beliefs. (ii) Higher-order justifications for these inferences are given by means of the novel method of optimality justifications. Optimality justifications are a new tool for epistemology (section 2). An optimality justification does not attempt to demonstrate that a cognitive method is reliable (which is impossible), but pursues the more modest goal of demonstrating that the method is optimal among all accessible alternative methods for the given epistemic goal. The reasoning from the established optimality of a method to the acceptability of a particular belief generated by the method is accomplished by so-called optimality principles. In sections 3-5, the method of optimality justifications is carried out in detail for three fundamental problems: justifying induction, logic, and theory-generating abduction.

On the Ecological and Internal Rationality of Bayesian Conditionalization and Other Belief Updating Strategies

“…This metaframework may in turn be regarded as a specific implementation of an "optimization" approach to epistemology, which holds that epistemic strategies should be evaluated by seeing whether they optimize some given epistemic target (cf. Schurz (2021), who argues for an "optimization" framework for epistemic justification and discusses several applications). There is therefore reason to think there is plenty of middle ground between an "ideal" monolithic conception of rationality and a radically context-sensitive one.…”