Robbers, pickpockets and average mutual firmness

Abstract

Mark Siebel (2004) has presented a compelling argument against Branden Fitelson’s (2003) probabilistic measure of coherence. The present paper shows how Siebel’s argument can be strengthened and thereby extended to an argument against a huge class of coherence measures from the literature including William Roche’s (2013) average mutual firmness account, which has not been challenged up to now.

Against Methodological Gambling

“…As we saw in the above example, it seems clear that we would prefer a disjunction of very low and low economic status to another of a very low and high status. We leave this question open for further research, not the least because the problems arise already when we need to decide how to measure coherence of propositions (the literature is rife with issues; see, e.g., Koscholke, 2019 for just one of the more recent examples).…”