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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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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer Netherlands
2018
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6414088 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Springer Netherlands |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT williamsonjon justifyingtheprincipleofindifference |