CarlShulman comments on Metaphilosophical Mysteries - Less Wrong

35 Post author: Wei_Dai 27 July 2010 12:55AM

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Comment author: CarlShulman 27 July 2010 04:22:18AM 7 points [-]

I run into a fair number of epistemologists who are not keen on describing beliefs in terms of probabilities and want to use binary "believe" vs "not believe" terms, or binary "justification." Bayesian updating and utility-maximization decision theory are pretty dominant among philosophers of probability and decision theorists, but not universal among philosophers.

Comment author: utilitymonster 27 July 2010 12:35:12PM 7 points [-]

I'm a philosophy grad student. While I agree that many epistemologists still think it is important to talk in terms of believe/not-believe and justified/non-justfied, I find relatively few epistemologists who reject the notion of credence or think that credences shouldn't be probabilities. Of those who think credences shouldn't be probability functions, most would not object to using a weaker system of imprecise probabilities (Reference: James M. Joyce (2005). How Probabilities Reflect Evidence. Philosophical Perspectives 19 (1):153–178). These people are still pretty much on team Bayesianism.

So, in a way, the Bayesian domination is pretty strong. In another way, it isn't: few debates in traditional epistemology have been translated in Bayesian terms and solved (though this would probably solve very many of them). And many epistemologists doubt that Bayesianism will be genuinely helpful with respect to their concerns.

Comment author: CarlShulman 27 July 2010 12:58:47PM *  0 points [-]

I mostly agree with this.