prase comments on two puzzles on rationality of defeat - Less Wrong
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Comments (55)
That's how degree 1 is defined: such strong a belief that no evidence can persuade one to abandon it. (You shoudn't have such beliefs, needless to say.)
I don't see the difference. Bayesian epistemology is a set of prescriptive norms of reasoning.
Bayesianism explains the problem away - the problem is there only if you use notions like defeat or knowledge and insist that to build your epistemology on them. Your puzzle shows that it is impossible. The fact that Bayesianism is free of Gettier problems is an argument for Bayesianism and against "traditional epistemology".
To make an imprecise analogy, ancient mathematicians have long wondered what the infinite sum 1-1+1-1+1-1... is equal to. When calculus was invented, people saw that this was just a confused question. Some puzzles are best answered by rejecting the puzzle altogether.