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Epistemic probabilities are degrees of support, not degrees of (rational) belief
Climenhaga, Nevin
Climenhaga, Nevin
Author
Abstract
I argue that when we use ‘probability’ language in epistemic contexts—e.g., when we ask how probable some hypothesis is, given the evidence available to us—we are talking about degrees of support, rather than degrees of belief. The epistemic probability of A given B is the mind-independent degree to which B supports A, not the degree to which someone with B as their evidence believes A, or the degree to which someone would or should believe A if they had B as their evidence. My central argument is that the degree-of-support interpretation lets us better model good reasoning in certain cases involving old evidence. Degree-of-belief interpretations make the wrong predictions not only about whether old evidence confirms new hypotheses, but about the values of the probabilities that enter into Bayes' Theorem when we calculate the probability of hypotheses conditional on old evidence and new background information.
Keywords
probability, degrees of support
Date
2023
Type
Journal article
Journal
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Book
Volume
108
Issue
1
Page Range
1-24
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
Collections
Relation URI
Event URL
Open Access Status
Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
License
CC BY-NC 4.0
File Access
Open
Notes
© 2023 The Authors. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Philosophy and Phenonmenological Research Inc.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/