Imprecise evidence without imprecise credences.

Does rationality require imprecise credences? Many hold that it does: imprecise evidence requires correspondingly imprecise credences. I argue that this is false. The imprecise view faces the same arbitrariness worries that were meant to motivate it in the first place. It faces these worries because...

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Published in:Philosophical Studies Vol. 177; no. 9; pp. 2735 - 2759
Main Author: Carr, Jennifer Rose
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Sep2020
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Imprecise evidence without imprecise credences.
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        au: Carr, Jennifer Rose
        affil: University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr, #0119, 92093, La Jolla, CA, USA
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        Theory of knowledge
        Confidence
        Debate
        Jellyfishes
        Probability theory
        Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 1947-
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          Theory of knowledge
          Confidence
          Debate
          Jellyfishes
          Probability theory
          Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 1947-
      keyword:
        Bayesianism
        Epistemology
        Imprecise credences
        Imprecise probabilities
      ab: Does rationality require imprecise credences? Many hold that it does: imprecise evidence requires correspondingly imprecise credences. I argue that this is false. The imprecise view faces the same arbitrariness worries that were meant to motivate it in the first place. It faces these worries because it incorporates a certain idealization. But doing away with this idealization effectively collapses the imprecise view into a particular kind of precise view. On this alternative, our attitudes should reflect a kind of normative uncertainty: uncertainty about what to believe. This view refutes the claim that precise credences are inappropriately informative or committal. Some argue that indeterminate evidential support requires imprecise credences; but I argue that indeterminate evidential support instead places indeterminate requirements on credences, and is compatible with the claim that rational credences may always be precise.
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