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Justifying the principle of indifference

This paper presents a new argument for the Principle of Indifference. This argument can be thought of in two ways: as a pragmatic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold if one is to minimise worst-case expected loss, or as an epistemic argument, justifying the principle as needing to...

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Autor principal: Williamson, Jon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6414088/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30956734
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13194-018-0201-0
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author Williamson, Jon
author_facet Williamson, Jon
author_sort Williamson, Jon
collection PubMed
description This paper presents a new argument for the Principle of Indifference. This argument can be thought of in two ways: as a pragmatic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold if one is to minimise worst-case expected loss, or as an epistemic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold in order to minimise worst-case expected inaccuracy. The question arises as to which interpretation is preferable. I show that the epistemic argument contradicts Evidentialism and suggest that the relative plausibility of Evidentialism provides grounds to prefer the pragmatic interpretation. If this is right, it extends to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for the Principle of Indifference, and also to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for other norms of Bayesian epistemology.
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spelling pubmed-64140882019-04-03 Justifying the principle of indifference Williamson, Jon Eur J Philos Sci Original paper in Formal Epistemology This paper presents a new argument for the Principle of Indifference. This argument can be thought of in two ways: as a pragmatic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold if one is to minimise worst-case expected loss, or as an epistemic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold in order to minimise worst-case expected inaccuracy. The question arises as to which interpretation is preferable. I show that the epistemic argument contradicts Evidentialism and suggest that the relative plausibility of Evidentialism provides grounds to prefer the pragmatic interpretation. If this is right, it extends to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for the Principle of Indifference, and also to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for other norms of Bayesian epistemology. Springer Netherlands 2018-03-13 2018 /pmc/articles/PMC6414088/ /pubmed/30956734 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13194-018-0201-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Original paper in Formal Epistemology
Williamson, Jon
Justifying the principle of indifference
title Justifying the principle of indifference
title_full Justifying the principle of indifference
title_fullStr Justifying the principle of indifference
title_full_unstemmed Justifying the principle of indifference
title_short Justifying the principle of indifference
title_sort justifying the principle of indifference
topic Original paper in Formal Epistemology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6414088/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30956734
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13194-018-0201-0
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