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CarlShulman comments on Metaphilosophical Mysteries - Less Wrong
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Really? As far as I can tell, the consensus for Bayesian updating and expected utility maximization among professional philosophers is near total. Most of them haven't heard of UDT yet, but on Less Wrong and at SIAI there also seems to be a consensus that UDT is, if not quite right, at least on the right track.
But how do you mathematicize an area, except by doing philosophy? I mean real world problems do not come to you in the form of equations to be solved, or algorithms to be run.
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.
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.
I mostly agree with this.