Das, Nilanjan;
(2022)
Credal imprecision and the value of evidence.
Noûs
10.1111/nous.12417.
(In press).
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Abstract
This paper is about a tension between two theses. The first is Value of Evidence: roughly, the thesis that it is always rational for an agent to gather and use cost-free evidence for making decisions. The second is Rationality of Imprecision: the thesis that an agent can be rationally required to adopt doxastic states that are imprecise, i.e., not representable by a single credence function. While others have noticed this tension, I offer a new diagnosis of it. I show that it arises when an agent with an imprecise doxastic state engages in an unreflective inquiry, an inquiry where they revise their beliefs using an updating rule that doesn't satisfy a weak reflection principle. In such an unreflective inquiry, certain synchronic norms of instrumental rationality can make it instrumentally irrational for an agent to gather and use cost-free evidence. I then go on to propose a diachronic norm of instrumental rationality that preserves Value of Evidence in unreflective inquiries. This, I suggest, may help us reconcile this thesis with Rationality of Imprecision.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Credal imprecision and the value of evidence |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/nous.12417 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12417 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Authors. Noûs published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10150966 |
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