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Bayesian humility

Elga, Adam (2015) Bayesian humility. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Say that an agent is "epistemically humble" if she is less than certain that her opinions will converge to the truth, given an appropriate stream of evidence. Is such humility rationally permissible? According to the orgulity argument (Belot 2013): the answer is "yes" but long-run convergence-to-the-truth theorems force Bayesians to answer "no." That argument has no force against Bayesians who reject countable additivity as a requirement of rationality. Such Bayesians are free to count even extreme humility as rationally permissible.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Elga, Adamadame@princeton.edu
Additional Information: Please cite published version: Philosophy of Science 83 (July 2016) pp. 305–323.
Keywords: Bayesianism, orgulity, convergence to the truth, convergence theorem, washing out, finite additivity, finitely additive probability, countable additivity, problem of priors
Subjects: General Issues > Confirmation/Induction
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Depositing User: Adam Elga
Date Deposited: 29 Jun 2016 00:41
Last Modified: 29 Jun 2016 00:41
Item ID: 12236
Subjects: General Issues > Confirmation/Induction
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Date: 9 September 2015
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/12236

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