Consistency and Epistemic Probability

1998 ◽  
pp. 211-216
Author(s):  
Doris Olin
Keyword(s):  
Rational Belief ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Epistemic Probability ◽  
Minimum Requirement ◽  
Probability Calculus ◽  
Alternate Model ◽  
Analogous Reasoning

Is consistency always epistemically virtuous? In this paper, I examine one threat to the traditional view that consistency is a minimum requirement for rational belief. Central to the argument is the notion of epistemic probability, understood as the degree of support or confirmation provided by the total available evidence. My strategy in examining this argument is to apply analogous reasoning to carefully tailored examples. The conclusions which emerge are substantive, informative and utterly implausible. I conclude, first, that the argument for inconsistency fails and, second, that it fails because epistemic probability does not conform to the axioms of the probability calculus. A plausible alternate model for determining degree of support is briefly considered.

In Defence of the Dutch Book Argument

1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Davidson ◽  
Robert Pargetter
Keyword(s):  
Rational Belief ◽  
Dutch Book ◽  
Epistemic Probability ◽  
True Probability ◽  
Dutch Book Argument ◽  
Probability Calculus ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Probability Concept

A starting point for this paper is that there is at least one concept of probability, call it epistemic probability, which can be identified with belief or some sort of idealised belief (e.g., rational belief). If this identification is to be of any significance, then it needs to be shown that epistemic probability is a ‘true’ probability concept and is subject to those restrictions and requirements which relate and govern probabilities, which we call the probability calculus.The most rehearsed argument to establish the probability calculus for epistemic probabilities is the Dutch Book Argument (DBA). There are two intuitions behind the DBA. The first is that if we can find some fine-grained behavioural measure of epistemic probability, then we may be able to show that epistemic probabilities obey the probability calculus by showing that the behaviour is of a kind which is, as a matter of necessity, subject to certain limitations and restrictions.

Rational belief

1983 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry E. Kyburg
Keyword(s):  
Inductive Logic ◽  
Bayes Theorem ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Degrees Of Belief ◽  
Probability Calculus ◽  
Probabilistic Rule ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Normative Content ◽  
Interval Valued ◽  
Made In

AbstractThere is a tension between normative and descriptive elements in the theory of rational belief. This tension has been reflected in work in psychology and decision theory as well as in philosophy. Canons of rationality should be tailored to what is humanly feasible. But rationality has normative content as well as descriptive content.A number of issues related to both deductive and inductive logic can be raised. Are there full beliefs – statements that are categorically accepted? Should statements be accepted when they become overwhelmingly probable? What is the structure imposed on these beliefs by rationality? Are they consistent? Are they deductively closed? What parameters, if any, does rational acceptance depend on? How can accepted statements come to be rejected on new evidenceShould degrees of belief satisfy the probability calculus? Does conformity to the probability calculus exhaust the rational constraints that can be imposed on partial beliefs? With the acquisition of new evidence, should beliefs change in accord with Bayes' theorem? Are decisions made in accord with the principle of maximizing expected utility? Should they be?A systematic set of answers to these questions is developed on the basis of a probabilistic rule of acceptance and a conception of interval-valued logical probability according to which probabilities are based on known frequencies. This leads to limited deductive closure, a demand for only limited consistency, and the rejection of Bayes' theorem as universally applicable to changes of belief. It also becomes possible, given new evidence, to reject previously accepted statements.

Marshall Swain. Editor's introduction. Induction, acceptance, and rational belief, edited by Marshall Swain, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland, and Humanities Press, New York, 1970, pp. 1–5. - Frederic Schick. Three logics of belief. Induction, acceptance, and rational belief, edited by Marshall Swain, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland, and Humanities Press, New York, 1970, pp. 6–26. - Marshall Swain. The consistency of rational belief. Induction, acceptance, and rational belief, edited by Marshall Swain, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland, and Humanities Press, New York, 1970, pp. 27–54. - Henry E. KyburgJr., Conjunctivitis. Induction, acceptance, and rational belief, edited by Marshall Swain, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland, and Humanities Press, New York, 1970, pp. 55–82. - Gilbert H. Harman. Induction. A discussion of the relevance of the theory of knowledge to the theory of induction (with a digression to the effect that neither deductive logic nor the probability calculus has anything to do with inference). Induction, acceptance, and rational belief, edited by Marshall Swain, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland, and Humanities Press, New York, 1970, pp. 83–99. - Keith Lehrer. Justification, explanation, and induction. Induction, acceptance, and rational belief, edited by Marshall Swain, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland, and Humanities Press, New York, 1970, pp. 100–133. - Isaac Levi. Probability and evidence. Induction, acceptance, and rational belief, edited by Marshall Swain, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland, and Humanities Press, New York, 1970, pp. 134–156. - Richard C. Jeffrey. Dracula meets Wolfman: acceptance vs. partial belief. Induction, acceptance, and rational belief, edited by Marshall Swain, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland, and Humanities Press, New York, 1970, pp. 157–185. - Ralph L. Slaght. Induction, acceptance, and rational belief: a selected bibliography. Induction, acceptance, and rational belief, edited by Marshall Swain, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland, and Humanities Press, New York, 1970, pp. 186–227.

1974 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-168
Author(s):  
Ian Hacking
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Publishing Company ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Reidel Publishing Company ◽  
Probability Calculus ◽  
Partial Belief ◽  
Deductive Logic

Intra-industry and inter-industry trade through the lens of comparative and absolute advantage

2016 ◽  
pp. 112-128
Author(s):  
A. Gnidchenko
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Product Quality ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Increasing Returns ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Export Diversification ◽  
Industry Trade ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Absolute Advantage

The article surveys the literature that emphasizes the importance of comparative and absolute advantages for intra- and inter-industry trade. Two conclusions follow form the survey. First, unlike the traditional view, intra-industry trade is determined rather by technology than by increasing returns. Second, absolute advantages that have been ignored in international trade models for a long time play a vital role through their linkages with product quality and export diversification. We also discuss a new strand of literature that models international trade with the assumption of non-homothetic preferences.

Pittenweem Priory and the conventuality question

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Lodge
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Significant Development ◽  
New Mother ◽  
Set Up ◽  
And Control

Pittenweem Priory began life as the caput manor of a daughter-house established on May Island by Cluniac monks from Reading (c. 1140). After its sale to St Andrews (c. 1280), the priory transferred ashore. While retaining its traditional name, the ‘Priory of May (alias Pittenweem)’ was subsumed within the Augustinian priory of St Andrews. Its prior was elected from among the canons of the new mother house, but it was many decades before a resident community of canons was set up in Pittenweem. The traditional view, based principally on the ‘non-conventual’ status of the priory reiterated in fifteenth-century documents, is that there was ‘no resident community’ before the priorship of Andrew Forman (1495–1515). Archaeological evidence in Pittenweem, however, indicates that James Kennedy had embarked on significant development of the priory fifty years earlier. This suggests that, when the term ‘non-conventual’ is used in documents emanating from Kennedy's successors (Graham and Scheves), we should interpret it more as an assertion of superiority and control than as a description of realities in the priory.

Realism and the Stock Market

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-495
Author(s):  
Henry B. Wonham
Keyword(s):  
Stock Market ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Economic Developments ◽  
Securities Trading

Henry B. Wonham, “Realism and the Stock Market: The Rise of Silas Lapham” (pp. 473–495) William Dean Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) is usually approached as a representative text in the American realist mode and an unambiguous expression of Howells’s disdain for—in Walter Benn Michaels’s words—“the excesses of capitalism,” especially as embodied in the novel’s rendering of “the greedy and heartless stock market.” Like many commentators of the period, Howells promoted a traditional view of honest industry against the emerging phenomenon of speculative finance, and yet to read the novel as an allegory of opposition to Wall Street speculation is to oversimplify Howells’s complicated attitudes toward high finance and to make a caricature out of the novel’s treatment of complex economic developments. In this essay, I reassess Silas’s investment career and the novel’s surprisingly dense engagement with the dynamics of securities trading as a form of commerce. Critics such as Michaels and Neil Browne have contended that through Silas’s failed investment career, Howells “attempts to disarticulate…an emergent market ethos,” but as I read the novel this same “market ethos” is inseparable from Howells’s conception of realism and of the vocation of the literary realist.

Θεωρία in Ancient Greek Exegetical Literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-104
Author(s):  
Борис Тимофеев
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Near East ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The World ◽  
Genesis 1 ◽  
Book Of Genesis

Современная научная богословская мысль склонна к унификации терминов и явлений в сфере своих компетенций. Эта тенденция в современных исследованиях в некоторых случаях распространяется и на древние христианские памятники. Так, например, слово θεωρία многие учёные определяют как мистический метод духовного толкования Священного Писания. Это определение нередко применяется в качестве универсального технического определения при анализе экзегетических произведений древних авторов. При этом игнорируется узус самих экзегетов, которые употребляют это слово в иных значениях. В рамках данной статьи предпринимается попытка выявить и показать основные значения слова θεωρία в древней греческой экзегетической литературе. The article deals with the theology, composition and literary form of the narrations which constitute the prologue part of the book of Genesis (1, 1-11, 26). During the second half of the 19th and at the turn of the 20th cent., following the emergence of the Documentary hypothesis as well as the comparison of the Holy Scripture with the newly-discovered literary monuments of Ancient Near East, the greater part of the narrations that constitute the Prologue were labeled myths and ancient Hebrew folklore (J. Wellhausen, H. Gunkel, J. Frazer). In addition to the then detected Near Eastern parallels, this new attitude towards the narrations of the Prologue was fostered by its lack of a clearly expressed historical dedication and the symbolic form of their exposition. Defending the traditional view of the Prologue as sacred history and prophetic revelation, bishop Kassian (Bezobrazov) proposed to consider all the biblical narrations that contain theophanies as metahistorical. Archpriest Sergey Bulgakov, A. F. Losev and B. P. Vysheslavtsev, who analyzed the phenomenon of myth-making, called the Biblical narration of the origins of the world a myth, but in a sense different from that proposed by Gunkel and Frazer. They have founded a new and positive conception according to which a myth is not fi but rather a kind of reality based upon mystical experience. The author of the article analyzes each of the terms enumerated - «history», «myth», «metahistory» - in their use relating them to the Prologue; he also examines the possibility of their harmonizing with the traditional ecclesiastical view of this part of the book of Genesis.

Prologue to Genesis (1, 1-11, 26): Prophetic Revelation, History, Myth or Metahistory?

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-46
Author(s):  
Михаил Анатольевич Скобелев
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Near East ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The World ◽  
Genesis 1 ◽  
Book Of Genesis

В статье рассматриваются богословие, композиция и литературная форма сюжетов, входящих в состав Пролога книги Бытия (1, 1-11, 26). Во второй половине XIX - начале XX вв. в результате появления Документальной гипотезы и сопоставления Священного Писания с литературными памятниками Древнего Ближнего Востока большая часть сюжетов, составляющих Пролог, была объявлена мифами и древнееврейским фольклором (Ю. Велльгаузен, Г. Гунекель, Дж. Фрезер). Кроме выявленных ближневосточных параллелей, новому отношению к повествованиям Пролога книги Бытия способствовали: отсутствие в нём ясно выраженной исторической задачи и символичность изложения. Защищая традиционный взгляд на Пролог как на священную историю и пророческое откровение, епископ Кассиан (Безобразов) предложил рассматривать все библейские сюжеты, содержащие теофанию, как метаисторию. Протоиерей Сергий Булгаков, А. Ф. Лосев, Б. П. Вышеславцев, занимавшиеся феноменом мифотворчества, назвали библейское повествование о начале мироздания мифом, но в ином смысле, чем это делали Г. Гункель и Дж. Фрезер. Они обосновали новый положительный взгляд, согласно которому миф не есть выдумка или фантазия, а реальность, основанная на мистическом опыте. В статье анализируется каждый из перечисленных терминов: «история», «миф», «метаистория» применительно к Прологу, а также рассматривается возможность их согласования с традиционным церковным взглядом на эту часть книги Бытия. The article deals with the theology, composition and literary form of the narrations which constitute the prologue part of the book of Genesis (1, 1-11, 26). During the second half of the 19th and at the turn of the 20th cent., following the emergence of the Documentary hypothesis as well as the comparison of the Holy Scripture with the newly-discovered literary monuments of Ancient Near East, the greater part of the narrations that constitute the Prologue were labeled myths and ancient Hebrew folklore (J. Wellhausen, H. Gunkel, J. Frazer). In addition to the then detected Near Eastern parallels, this new attitude towards the narrations of the Prologue was fostered by its lack of a clearly expressed historical dedication and the symbolic form of their exposition. Defending the traditional view of the Prologue as sacred history and prophetic revelation, bishop Kassian (Bezobrazov) proposed to consider all the biblical narrations that contain theophanies as metahistorical. Archpriest Sergey Bulgakov, A. F. Losev and B. P. Vysheslavtsev, who analyzed the phenomenon of myth-making, called the Biblical narration of the origins of the world a myth, but in a sense different from that proposed by Gunkel and Frazer. They have founded a new and positive conception according to which a myth is not fiction but rather a kind of reality based upon mystical experience. The author of the article analyzes each of the terms enumerated - «history», «myth», «metahistory» - in their use relating them to the Prologue; he also examines the possibility of their harmonizing with the traditional ecclesiastical view of this part of the book of Genesis.

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