DEGREES OF BELIEF | ScienceGate

What is representation? How do the more primitive aspects of our world come together to generate it? How do different kinds of representation relate to one another? This book identifies the metaphysical foundations for representational facts. The story told is in three parts. The most primitive layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of sensation/perception and intention/action, which are the two most basic modes in which an individual and the world interact. It is argued that we can understand how this kind of representation can exist in a fundamentally physical world so long as we have an independent, illuminating grip on functions and causation. The second layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of (degrees of) belief and desire, whose representational content goes far beyond the immediate perceptable and manipulable environment. It is argued that the correct belief/desire interpretation of an agent is the one which makes their action-guiding states, given their perceptual evidence, most rational. The final layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of words and sentences, human artefacts with representational content. It is argued that one can give an illuminating account of the conditions under which a compositional interpretation of a public language like English is correct by appeal to patterns emerging from the attitudes conventionally expressed by sentences. The three-layer metaphysics of representation resolves long-standing underdetermination puzzles, predicts and explains patterns in the way that concepts denote, and articulates a delicate interactive relationship between the foundations of language and thought.

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Conditional Belief and the Ramsey Test

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement ◽

10.1017/s1358246100008146 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 51 ◽

pp. 215-232

Author(s):

Scott Sturgeon

Keyword(s):

Everyday Life ◽

Common Sense ◽

The Other ◽

Coarse Grained ◽

Degrees Of Belief ◽

Conditional Belief ◽

Ramsey Test ◽

Fine Grained

Consider the frameS believes that—.Fill it with a conditional, sayIf you eat an Apple, you'll drink a Coke.what makes the result true? More generally, what facts are marked by instances ofS believes (A→C)?In a sense the answer is obious: beliefs are so marked. Yet that bromide leads directly to competing schools of thought. And the reason is simple.Common-sense thinks of belief two ways. Sometimes it sees it as a three-part affair. When so viewed either you believe, disbelieve, or suspend judgment. This take on belief is coarse-grained. It says belief has three flavours: acceptance, rejection, neither. But it's not the only way common-sense thinks of belief. Sometimes it's more subtle: ‘How strong is your faith?’ can be apposite between believers. That signals an important fact. Ordinary practice also treats belief as a fine-grained affair. It speaks of levels of confidence. It admits degrees of belief. It contains a fine-grained take as well. There are two ways belief is seen in everyday life. One is coarse-grained. The other is fine-grained.

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Vagueness, Uncertainty and Degrees of Belief: Two Kinds of Indeterminacy—One Kind of Credence

Erkenntnis ◽

10.1007/s10670-013-9588-3 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 79 (5) ◽

pp. 1027-1044 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Nicholas J. J. Smith

Keyword(s):

Degrees Of Belief

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A scoping inquiry into the potential contribution of Subjective Probability Theory, Dempster–Shafer Theory and Possibility Theory in accommodating degrees of belief in traveller behaviour research

Travel Behaviour and Society ◽

10.1016/j.tbs.2013.10.007 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 45-56 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

David A. Hensher ◽

Zheng Li

Keyword(s):

Probability Theory ◽

Subjective Probability ◽

Possibility Theory ◽

Potential Contribution ◽

Degrees Of Belief ◽

Dempster Shafer Theory ◽

Shafer Theory

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Can All-Accuracy Accounts Justify Evidential Norms?

10.1093/oso/9780198779681.003.0008 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Christopher J. G. Meacham

Keyword(s):

Utility Theory ◽

Utility Functions ◽

Epistemic Norms ◽

Degrees Of Belief ◽

Epistemic Utility

Meacham takes aim at the epistemic utility theory picture of epistemic norms where epistemic utility functions measure the value of degrees of belief and where the norms encode ways of adopting non-dominated degrees of belief. He focuses on a particularly popular subclass of such views where epistemic utility is determined solely by the accuracy of degrees of belief. Meacham argues that these types of epistemic utility arguments for norms are (i) not compatible with each other (so not all can be correct), (ii) do not solely rely on accuracy considerations, and (iii) are not able to capture intuitive norms about how we ought to respond to evidence.

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Beyond Chance and Credence

10.1093/oso/9780198865094.001.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Wayne C. Myrvold

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Statistical Mechanics ◽

Physical World ◽

Degrees Of Belief ◽

History Of ◽

Thermodynamics And Statistical Mechanics

Probability concepts permeate physics. This is obvious in statistical mechanics, in which probabilities appear explicitly. But even in cases when predictions are made with near-certainty, there is are implicit probabilistic assumptions in play, as it is assumed that molecular fluctuations can be neglected. How are we to understand these probabilistic concepts? This book offers a fresh look at these familiar topics, urging readers to see them in a new light. It argues that the traditional choices between probabilities as objective chances or degrees of belief is too limiting, and introduces a new concept, called epistemic chances, that combines physical and epistemic considerations. Thinking of probabilities in this way solves some of the puzzles associated with the use of probability and statistical mechanics. The book includes some history of discussions of probability, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and introductions to conceptual issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. It should be of interest to philosophers interested in probability, and to physicists and philosophers of physics interested in understanding how probabilistic concepts apply to the physical world.

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