Why do we recognize induction as a category?

Dear Colleagues,

Here’s a basic (and possibly wrong-headed) question. Probably, if I were a better student of logic and/or epistemology, I would see the answer, but at the moment I don’t.

Why do we even recognize a category of inductive inferences (or, as some would have it, inductive standards of inference)? Why not treat all inferences as deductive, but with some sort of probabilistic qualification built into the conclusions of some of those deductive inferences?

That is, instead of characterizing such inferences in these terms …

1. This is a fair, six-faced, cubical die and I shall roll it in the normal way.
So probably
2. I shall not roll a “6.”

3. The first 999 crows I saw were black
So probably
4. The next crow I see will be black.

… why not characterize them in the following terms?

1. This is a fair, six-faced, cubical die and I shall roll it in the normal way.
Therefore (certainly):
2*. Probably, I shall not roll a “6.”

3. The first 999 crows I saw were black
Therefore (“certainly”):
4*. Probably, the next crow I see will be black.

Of course, I see that there’s a difference between the above arguments and standard deductive arguments such as:

5. If Fluffy is a vixen, then Fluffy is a female.
6. Fluffy is a vixen.
Therefore,
7. Fluffy is a female.

But that difference could be expressed in terms of the presence or absence of a probability qualifier in the conclusion, and not in terms of a fundamentally different kind of inference.

So I repeat my question: why do we allow for two kinds of inference, instead of only one?

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Purdue Conference on the Epistemology of Moral and Religious Belief

On September 6-8, 2012, Purdue University will host an interdisciplinary conference entitled “Challenges to Religious and Moral Belief: Disagreement and Evolution”.

The conference will focus on three main challenges to religious and moral beliefs:

  1. Widespread interpersonal disagreement among intellectual peers on religious and on moral topics provides reason to doubt these beliefs;
  2. Belief-source disagreement on moral issues between commonsense moral intuitions and religious belief sources raises doubts about both methods of belief formation;
  3. Evolutionary accounts of the origins of our religious and moral beliefs create doubts about these beliefs by undermining our confidence in the reliability of their sources.

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Defeating Defeaters

I gain evidence that this used car salesman is unreliable.  He tells me he’s the most honest person I’ll ever know.  It would be ridiculous, on that basis, to think “Well, gee, I guess he’s reliable after all.”  We need independent confirmation that his testimony is reliable.  Here are two more controversial examples.  I gain evidence that my moral intuitions are unreliable.  Can my moral intuitions defeat that evidence?   It seems not: to defeat that undercutting evidence, you would need to appeal to something independent of the intuitions undercut.  You’re smart, but we disagree about P, which gives me some reason to think that my relevant arguments and intuitions aren’t reliable.  Can I rely on those intuitions and arguments to defeat the evidence of my unreliability?  It seems not: again, we seem to think we need something independent of those arguments and intuitions.

Our intuitions suggest that, to defeat undercutting evidence, we need to appeal to something independent of what’s undercut.  I think those intuitions are wrong.  Suppose I receive testimony from a reliable source that all my belief-forming methods are unreliable.  Given our “independence intuitions”, this undercutting evidence is impervious to defeat.  Since it undercuts everything, there is nothing to which I can appeal.  Yet the mere generality of the defeater should not make it invincible.

When we realize that the intuitions are wrong, we have some explaining to do.  If undercut evidence can defeat the undercutting evidence, then what’s the problem with trusting the testimony of the car salesman?  And what’s the problem with relying on the wall’s appearing red to give me evidence of my reliability in the context where the wall is lit by red lights?  If our “independence intuitions” don’t explain what’s going on in these cases, why can’t we appeal to the undercut evidence to defeat the undercutting evidence?

Feel free to comment on the above quick and dirty argument without consulting the material below the fold.  For those who want to see the argument against our independence intuitions laid out more carefully, see below. Continue reading

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Philosopher’s Carnival #141

Here.

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On the women-friendliness of epistemology: a challenge

In the past few months, I have heard several epistemologists make remarks about epistemology’s relative lack of friendliness to women (in comparison with philosophy’s other subfields).  Perhaps the most often-cited evidence was the ratio of men to women in epistemology, compared to the ratios in other subfields of philosophy; salient high-profile epistemology conferences at which most or all of the invited speakers are men; several high-profile epistemology volumes at which most or all of the invited contributions are from men; and the relative lack of women epistemologists on many epistemology syllabi.  I have not done any investigations to confirm any of these allegations (and I have not compared epistemology to other subfields).  Still, it seems to me that we have a problem so long as these are the impressions that are had by prominent epistemologists.   (I also cannot say that my experiences in epistemology give me confidence that these claims are wholly inaccurate.)

I do not post this to cast aspersions or to accuse.  Rather, in the spirit of the undergraduate women students at Northwestern who recently started the WiPhi (“Women into Philosophy”) group here in the NU Philosophy Department, I post this to challenge the epistemology community.   With these excellent undergraduates (and the many, many others like them all over the world) in mind, I challenge us to see whether, within a period of a few years, we might change our practices in such a way that, far from being seen as not particularly women-friendly, epistemology will be, and will come to be seen as, one of the most women-friendly subdisciplines within philosophy.  (Of course, this should be part of an effort to make philosophy as an entire discipline more women-friendly, as well as more friendly to all underrepresented groups; but perhaps this smaller and more focused effort can help these larger aims.)

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Latest Issue of IJSS

The new issue of International Journal for the Study of Skepticism is now out. Thanks to everyone who has helped us establish this new journal. I’m pleased to announce that since it’s doing so well, we will shortly be moving to four issues a year rather than the current two.

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Field on Attitudinalism

“But where does this default entitlement come from?” It needn’t “come from” anywhere: entitlement isn’t a fluid whose creation needs explanation. Probably the best view is that we simply have an attitude of regarding some beliefs as entitled under some circumstances, others not; and we regard some of them as entitled in absence of evidence for or against, even though there might someday be evidence that disconfirms them. And to put it crudely, there are no “facts about entitlement”, there is nothing beyond these attitudes; we can evaluate attitudes as good or bad, but such evaluation is not a “factual” enterprise.

Full paper here, titled “Recent Debates about A Priori.”

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Informal Logic and Critical Thinking Essay Prize

The Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking invites submissions the 2012 AILACT Essay Prize. Value: $300 U.S. The prize-winning paper will be published in Informal Logic, contingent upon meeting the conditions specified in the prize’s notice, available at http://ailact.mcmaster.ca/. Papers related to the teaching or theory of informal logic or critical thinking, and papers on argumentation theory, will be considered for the prize. Authors need not be members of AILACT. Previously unpublished papers, and papers published or accepted for publication between January 1, 2009 and October 31, 2012, are eligible. Maximum length: 6,000 words. Please send the paper ready for blind-reviewing. The deadline for receipt of submissions now is October 31, 2012. For further questions, contact Susana Nuccetelli at sinuccetelli@stcloudstate.edu.

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Dogmatism vs Bayesianism: Why Should Bayesianism Win?

Perceptual dogmatism is the view that a perceptual seeming that P prima facie justifies P.  Classical Bayesianism (CB), as I am using the term, is the idea that justification is accurately modelled by classical probability theory, which includes Bayes’ Theorem.  A popular way of objecting to dogmatism goes something like this: dogmatism is incompatible with CB, so dogmatism is false.  I’ll assume that you have some familiarity with this sort of objection, which can be found in White’s “Problems for Dogmatism”, Schiffer’s “Skepticism and the Vagaries of Justified Belief” (pgs 175-6), and Wright’s “The Perils of Dogmatism” (pg 42).

Suppose we grant the premise that dogmatism is incompatible with CB.  Why in the world should we conclude that the CB wins?  Why shouldn’t we reject CB instead?  The latter view does have a number of virtues, but it is not as though dogmatism has nothing going for it.  And CB has a number of well-known problems.  So I repeat: if dogmatism and CB are incompatible, why should the Classical Bayesian win?

Here is a way of approaching the question: if the incompatibility between CB and dogmatism depends on the most controversial features of Classical Bayesianism, then dogmatism should win.  For example, I find it implausible that a rational human being should assign a credence to every proposition or a credence of 1 to every necessary truth.  I take it that these implausible claims are entailed by CB.  To whatever extent the incompatibility arises because of CB’s commitment to either of those two claims, dogmatism should win and we should rework CB.  If, however, the incompatibility relies only on the least controversial features of CB, then CB should win.  Perhaps an example of something uncontroversial would be: if S assigns a credence to both P and P or Q, S is irrational for assigning P or Q a lower credence than P. Continue reading

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A Technical Issue with a Functionalist Account of Belief

Fans of pragmatic encroachment need a way to resist the arguments of Weatherson and Nagel and Bach, arguments that show that in many of the motivating cases, an explanation in terms of pragmatic encroachment into belief itself can replace pragmatic encroachment into knowledge or justification. One way to push this response to the motivating cases is to defend a functionalist account of belief, and this is Weatherson’s tack. He endorses this account:

BEL(p) \leftrightarrow \forall A \forall B \forall q(A \ge_q B \leftrightarrow A \ge_{q \& p} B)

A and B are actions, and q is a proposition. The \ge symbol stands for preference, so the account says that you believe a claim just in case the ordering of your conditional preferences isn’t affected by adding that claim to the condition. Later in the article, Brian notes that this formulation needs to require that p and q are consistent, but I think that restriction doesn’t go far enough. If p and q are probabilistically or evidentially in tension, the account is subject to counterexample.

Consider this case. Given that it seems to me that I’m not married, I prefer leaving my wedding ring in the drawer to wearing it. But given that it seems to me that not I’m married but actually married, my preferences reverse. But I do in fact believe that I’m married.

The fix strikes me as simple, however: Just restrict q to propositions independent of p. Would love to hear, though, if that can’t work. (For Weatherson aficianados, I should note that the quantifiers above are restricted, but that the restrictions in question don’t rule out counterexamples of this sort. I’ll leave it to the reader to verify that I’m right about this.)

[UPDATE: I fixed the original garbled example, sorry for any confusion! And a bit more below the fold.]
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