Understanding Conditionalization

Meacham, Christopher J. G.

doi:10.1080/00455091.2015.1119611

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Whether agents can know that they are following the rule depends on their access to the facts about which priors are rational. But I take this question to be of secondary importance; whether they are following the rule is more important than whether they know they are following the rule.30 The disanalogy is between forgetting and both self-doubt about memory and self-doubt about reasoning.31 For the related claim that we should think of Conditionalization as an ideal to aim at, seeMeacham (2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

Bayesianism and self-doubt

Bradley

2020

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How should we respond to evidence when our evidence indicates that we are rationally impaired? I will defend a novel answer based on the analogy between self-doubt and memory loss. To believe that one is now impaired and previously was not is to believe that one’s epistemic position has deteriorated. Memory loss is also a form of epistemic deterioration. I argue that agents who suffer from epistemic deterioration should return to the priors they had at an earlier time. I develop this argument regarding memory loss then extend it to cases of self-doubt.

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confidence: 99%

Bayesianism and self-doubt

Bradley

2020

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“…exactly the norm should be understood (see Schoenfield (2016) and Meacham (2016) for discussions of some of these issues). For example, should we understand cr as the subject's credences after she's received all of her evidence except E, the most recent piece of evidence she's received, or should we understand cr as a credence function at some arbitrary time, and E as the cumulative evidence the subject's received since then?…”

Section: Dominance Norms and Bayesian Normsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can All-Accuracy Accounts Justify Evidential Norms?

Meacham¹

2018

Oxford Scholarship Online

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Meacham takes aim at the epistemic utility theory picture of epistemic norms where epistemic utility functions measure the value of degrees of belief and where the norms encode ways of adopting non-dominated degrees of belief. He focuses on a particularly popular subclass of such views where epistemic utility is determined solely by the accuracy of degrees of belief. Meacham argues that these types of epistemic utility arguments for norms are (i) not compatible with each other (so not all can be correct), (ii) do not solely rely on accuracy considerations, and (iii) are not able to capture intuitive norms about how we ought to respond to evidence.

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“…See Schoenfield (in press) and Meacham (2016) for discussions of issues regarding how to understand the rule. The two distinctions discussed here are explored in greater detail in Meacham (2016).…”

Section: On the Narrow Scope Understanding Conditionalization Takes mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…See Meacham (2016) for a defense of this way of understanding Conditionalization. For a discussion of the dangers of applying idealized norms to non-ideal subjects, see Staffel (2016).…”

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Ur-Priors, Conditionalization, and Ur-Prior Conditionalization

Meacham¹

2016

Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

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Conditionalization is a widely endorsed rule for updating one's beliefs. But a sea of complaints have been raised about it, including worries regarding how the rule handles error correction, changing desiderata of theory choice, evidence loss, self-locating beliefs, learning about new theories, and confirmation. In light of such worries, a number of authors have suggested replacing Conditionalization with a different ruleone that appeals to what I'll call ur-priors. But different authors have understood the rule in different ways, and these different understandings solve different problems. In this paper, I aim to map out the terrain regarding these issues. I survey the different problems that might motivate the adoption of such a rule, flesh out the different understandings of the rule that have been proposed, and assess their pros and cons. I conclude by suggesting that one particular batch of proposals, proposals that appeal to what I'll call loaded evidential standards, are especially promising.

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Understanding Conditionalization

Cited by 14 publications

References 25 publications

Bayesianism and self-doubt

Bayesianism and self-doubt

Can All-Accuracy Accounts Justify Evidential Norms?

Ur-Priors, Conditionalization, and Ur-Prior Conditionalization

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