Learning from Simple Indicative Conditionals.

An agent who receives information in the form of an indicative conditional statement and who trusts her source will modify her credences to bring them in line with the conditional. I will argue that the agent, upon the acquisition of such information, should, in general, expand her prior credence fu...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Erkenntnis Vol. 82; no. 3; pp. 583 - 602
Autor principal: Huisman, Leendert
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Jun2017
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:An agent who receives information in the form of an indicative conditional statement and who trusts her source will modify her credences to bring them in line with the conditional. I will argue that the agent, upon the acquisition of such information, should, in general, expand her prior credence function to an indeterminate posterior one; that is, to a set of credence functions. Two different ways the agent might interpret the conditional will be presented, and the properties of the resulting indeterminate posteriors compared. The cause of the expansion from a single prior credence function to a set of credence functions forming the indeterminate posterior one will be explained. The expansion undermines the Bayesian dogma that the result of assimilating new information into a determinate prior credence functions is always a determinate posterior one.