Bovens, Luc and Hartmann, Stephan (2005) An Impossibility Result for Coherence Rankings. [Preprint]

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Abstract

If we receive information from multiple independent and partially reliable information sources, then whether we are justified to believe these information items is affected by how reliable the sources are, by how well the information coheres with our background beliefs and by how internally coherent the information is. We consider the following question. Is coherence a separable determinant of our degree of belief, i.e. is it the case that the more coherent the new information is, the more justified we are in believing the new information, ceteris paribus? We show that if we consider sets of information items of any size (Holism), and if we assume that there exists a coherence Ordering over such sets and that coherence is a function of the probability distribution over the propositions in such sets (Probabilism), then Separability fails to hold.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Bovens, Luc Hartmann, Stephan s.hartmann@lmu.de 0000-0001-8676-2177
Additional Information:	A slightly revised version of this paper will appear in Philosophical Studies.
Keywords:	Bayesianism, coherence theory of justification, separability
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics General Issues > Confirmation/Induction
Depositing User:	Stephan Hartmann
Date Deposited:	22 Aug 2005
Last Modified:	12 Jul 2024 17:57
Item ID:	2409
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics General Issues > Confirmation/Induction
Date:	August 2005
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/2409

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