
Against Radical Credal Imprecision
Author(s) -
Rinard Susanna
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
thought: a journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.429
H-Index - 8
ISSN - 2161-2234
DOI - 10.1002/tht3.84
Subject(s) - credence , proposition , conjecture , epistemology , mathematical economics , inductive reasoning , mathematics , philosophy , positive economics , economics , discrete mathematics , statistics
A number of Bayesians claim that, if one has no evidence relevant to a proposition P, then one's credence in P should be spread over the interval [0, 1]. Against this, I argue: first, that it is inconsistent with plausible claims about comparative levels of confidence; second, that it precludes inductive learning in certain cases. Two motivations for the view are considered and rejected. A discussion of alternatives leads to the conjecture that there is an in‐principle limitation on formal representations of belief: they cannot be both fully accurate and maximally specific.