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A Theory of Epistemic Risk

Babic, Boris (2018) A Theory of Epistemic Risk. [Preprint]

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Abstract

I propose a general alethic theory of epistemic risk according to which the riskiness of an agent's credence function encodes their relative sensitivity to different types of graded error. After motivating and mathematically developing this approach, I show that the epistemic risk function is a scaled reflection of expected inaccuracy (a quantity also known as generalized information entropy). This duality between risk and information enables us to explore the relationship between attitudes to epistemic risk, the choice of scoring rule in epistemic utility theory, and the selection of priors in Bayesian epistemology more generally (including the Laplacean principle of indifference)


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Babic, Borisbabic917@gmail.com
Keywords: risk, accuracy, information, scoring rules
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Mathematics > Epistemology
General Issues > Decision Theory
Specific Sciences > Economics
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Depositing User: Boris Babic
Date Deposited: 03 Oct 2018 19:38
Last Modified: 03 Oct 2018 19:38
Item ID: 15090
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Mathematics > Epistemology
General Issues > Decision Theory
Specific Sciences > Economics
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Date: 2018
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/15090

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