Vagueness and imprecise credence

Mahtani, Anna ORCID: 0000-0003-1581-4325 (2019) Vagueness and imprecise credence. In: Dietz, Richard, (ed.) Vagueness and Rationality in Language Use and Cognition. Language, Cognition, and Mind. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, Cham, CH, 7 - 30. ISBN 9783030159306

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Abstract

In this paper I investigate an alternative to imprecise probabilism. Imprecise probabilism is a popular revision of orthodox Bayesianism: while the orthodox Bayesian claims that a rational agent’s belief-state can be represented by a single credence function, the imprecise probabilist claims instead that a rational agent’s belief-state can be represented by a set of such functions. The alternative that I put forward in this paper is to claim that the expression ‘credence’ is vague, and then apply the theory of supervaluationism to sentences containing this expression. This gives us a viable alternative to imprecise probabilism, and I end by comparing the two accounts. I show that supervaluationism has a simpler way of handling sentences relating the belief-states of two different people, or of the same person at two different times; that both accounts may have the resources to develop plausible decision theories; and finally that the supervaluationist can accommodate higher-order vagueness in a way that is not available to the imprecise probabilist.

Item Type:	Book Section
Official URL:	https://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783030159306
Additional Information:	© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Divisions:	Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Date Deposited:	25 Aug 2020 12:03
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 18:03
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/106235

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