Comparative probability as a foundation for rational credences : a new hope
Probabilistic comparativism consists of two central claims. First, comparative beliefs are more fundamental than numerical credences. Second, a rational agent’s comparative beliefs are representable by a probabilistic credence distribution (precise comparativism) or a set of such functions (imprecis...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2020 |
| País: | Brasil |
| Institución: | Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) |
| Repositorio: | Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da PUC_RS |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:tede2.pucrs.br:tede/9448 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/9448 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Bayesianism Comparativism Probability Theory Rationality Bayesianismo Comparativismo Probabilidade Racionalidade CIENCIAS HUMANAS::FILOSOFIA |
| Sumario: | Probabilistic comparativism consists of two central claims. First, comparative beliefs are more fundamental than numerical credences. Second, a rational agent’s comparative beliefs are representable by a probabilistic credence distribution (precise comparativism) or a set of such functions (imprecise comparativism). Although this is not an entirely new approach to rational graded beliefs, comparativism has been considered a minority view among formal epistemologists and decision theorists. This dissertation is my attempt to develop and defend probabilistic comparativism. After introducing some technical background, I distinguish between two different kinds of priority or fundamentality claims: metaphysical and conceptual (or representational). Also, I examine and reject two comparativist approaches to belief-like attitudes, namely the preference-based and measurement-theoretic comparativist accounts of graded beliefs. Later in this essay, I propose a new form of probabilistic comparativism, known as epistemic interpretivism, which has important advantages over the other two comparativist alternatives. I develop this view in light of recent contributions in the area of epistemic utility theory. As appealing as it is, probabilistic comparativism faces a range of unanswered questions about the rationality of graded beliefs |
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