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Why There Cannot Be a Single Probabilistic Measure of Coherence

Bovens, Luc and Hartmann, Stephan (2005) Why There Cannot Be a Single Probabilistic Measure of Coherence. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Bayesian Coherence Theory of Justification or, for short, Bayesian Coherentism, is characterized by two theses, viz. (i) that our degree of confidence in the content of a set of propositions is positively affected by the coherence of the set, and (ii) that coherence can be characterized in probabilistic terms. There has been a longstanding question of how to construct a measure of coherence. We will show that Bayesian Coherentism cannot rest on a single measure of coherence, but requires a vector whose components exhaustively characterize the coherence properties of the set. Our degree of confidence in the content of the information set is a function of the reliability of the sources and the components of the coherence vector. The components of this coherence vector are weakly but not strongly separable, which blocks the construction of a single coherence measure.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Bovens, Luc
Hartmann, Stephans.hartmann@lmu.de0000-0001-8676-2177
Additional Information: The paper is forthcoming in Erkenntnis.
Keywords: Bayesianism, Coherentism, coherence measures, coherence ordering
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
General Issues > Confirmation/Induction
Depositing User: Stephan Hartmann
Date Deposited: 08 Jun 2005
Last Modified: 12 Jul 2024 17:58
Item ID: 2321
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
General Issues > Confirmation/Induction
Date: June 2005
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/2321

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