Atkinson, David and Peijnenburg, Jeanne (2007) Reichenbach's Posits Reposited. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Reichenbach's use of `posits' to defend his frequentistic theory of probability has been criticized on the grounds that it makes unfalsifiable predictions. The justice of this criticism has blinded many to Reichenbach's second use of a posit, one that can fruitfully be applied to current debates within epistemology. We show first that Reichenbach's alternative type of posit creates a difficulty for epistemic foundationalists, and then that its use is equivalent to a particular kind of Jeffrey conditionalization. We conclude that, under particular circumstances, Reichenbach's approach and that of the Bayesians amount to the same thing, thereby presenting us with a new instance in which chance and credence coincide.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Atkinson, David Peijnenburg, Jeanne
Additional Information:	Forthcoming in Erkenntnis
Keywords:	Probability, posits, Reichenbach, Jeffrey.
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics General Issues > Confirmation/Induction General Issues > Logical Positivism/Logical Empiricism
Depositing User:	David Atkinson
Date Deposited:	23 Dec 2007
Last Modified:	07 Oct 2010 15:15
Item ID:	3722
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics General Issues > Confirmation/Induction General Issues > Logical Positivism/Logical Empiricism
Date:	December 2007
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/3722

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