Certain Doubts

David Lewis thought the following is true:
The Principal Principle (PP): Ps(A|Po(A)=x)=x (where Ps is a rational subjective probability, and Po is some objective probability).

Here’s a gloss of this claim, more or less accurate: if you know that the objective probability of A is x, then you should assign degree of belief x to A given that information.

So, first, a confession: I know there’s been considerable discussion of this principle in the literature but I haven’t read as much of it as I should. So there may easy answers here to the things that concern me, and pointing them out in the comments would be useful.

Second, my problem: I think, to go straight to the bottom line, that I may not know how to interpret conditional probability claims.

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One of the joys after the semester is getting to read. So, since Brian recommended “CIA Leaks”, I got to read the paper this morning. It’s full of neat examples and powerful arguments, but there is one argument that I don’t quite get, so I thought I’d see if someone can help me see the argument here.

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I’ve posted a long paper, “The (Mostly Harmless) Inconsistency of Knowledge Attributions.” It argues for a fourth alternative to contextualism, invariantism, and relativism: that knowledge-talk is governed by inconsistent inference-principles, but that these principles rarely lead us into contradiction. In fact, we can almost always assign an effective content to knowledge attributions even if their absolute content is self-contradictory. (The “effective content”/”absolute content” distinction is borrowed from Anil Gupta’s work on inconsistent discourses, which I draw on heavily.) So there is no reason to abandon knowledge-talk, even if it is inconsistent.

Pretty much the first thing I did after putting the paper up was to surf on over here and see Keith’s post, which seems quite relevant, since my paper compares and contrasts the inconsistency view with a version of contextualism on which an attribution of standards is always implicit (if often unvoiced).

Anyway, comments are of course welcome.

I have a draft of a paper on gradable adjectives — currently entitled “Gradable Adjectives: A Defense of Pluralism” — on line here (pdf). It’s largely an attack on what I call the “‘for an F’ myth” (or “Implicit Reference Class Theory”), advocating instead a “pluralist” account of the semantics of GAs, with some remarks about how this all may affect the debate regarding epistemic contextualism. Comments are welcome.

Kent Bach, who was kind enough to send me some comments on my paper, also recommended to me a new paper by Chris Kennedy: “Vagueness and Grammar: The Semantics of Relative and Absolute Gradable Adjectives.” Kennedy is still revising the paper, but a draft is available on-line here. I haven’t yet read Kennedy’s paper myself, but the title of his section 2.4. — “Eliminating comparison classes” — makes it sound as if he may be pushing here in at least roughly the same direction I am — though “eliminating” at least sounds more radical than I’m proposing. (But maybe that’s just eliminating c-classes from some exaggerated role they’re often assigned.)

In my replies from the Pacific meeting session on my book, I pursued an analogy between the value of truth and the disvalue of pain. Robert Johnson emailed me with some interesting thoughts about an alternative view of pain. The view I recommended was the view that pain is always and everywhere prima facie bad, but that it’s badness can be defeated or overridden. I then suggested that we answer some of the criticisms about the value of truth with the same kind of view.

Robert Johnson suggested an alternative, valence view of pain, where pain has no value or disvalue independent of a context, and that it acquires a positive or negative value depending on the context.

I recommend the following line of argument as a reductio of the valence view (I posted this idea here at Prosblogion as well). In early Christianity, the worry arose that heaven couldn’t be a wholly blessed experience because of the knowledge of the suffering of the damned in hell. One callous theologian (Tertullian, I think, but I can’t remember for sure) turned the argument on its head: he held that part of what makes heaven so blessed is the knowledge that the wicked are suffering in hell! On the valence view, this is exactly the right position to take. I’m strongly inclined to say, “So much the worse for the valence view,” but perhaps I underestimate its virtues…

I’ve finally finished writing up my responses to critics from the Pacific Division session on my book. They are here. As always, comments welcome.

The Rutgers Epistemology Conference announces the fifth bi-annual prize for the best essay submitted to the Conference by a person with a Ph.D. obtained by the time of submission but not earlier than ten (10) years prior to the date of the conference. Thus, for the Conference on May 4th/5th, 2007, the Ph.D. must not have been awarded prior to May, 1997. The prize winning essay will be presented at the bi-annual conference and will be published (along with the invited papers) in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. The winner of the prize will receive an award of $1,000 plus all travel and lodging expenses connected with the Conference.

The essay may be in any area of epistemology. The essay must be limited to 5,000 words (not including footnotes and bibliography) and submitted on a PC-formatted disk along with three (3) printed copies. The essays will be judged blindly and, thus, the three printed copies (but not the disk copy) must be prepared in such a way that the author’s identity is completely masked. Only papers submitted in that fashion will be considered. Papers must be postmarked by November 25, 2006. The winner of the prize will be announced by February 10, 2007. Please include your email address in the cover letter accompanying your paper. By submitting the essay, the author agrees to have it posted on the Rutgers Epistemology Conference Webpage and published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Please send all papers (along with the disk and a self-addressed postcard that will be returned to entrants acknowledging receipt of the essay) to:

The Young Epistemologist Prize
Philosophy Department
Rutgers University
26 Nichol Ave.
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-2882

THE 2007 RUTGERS EPISTEMOLOGY CONFERENCE

Plans for the REC07 are taking shape. The conference will be on Friday, May 4-5 (Friday and Saturday), 2007, at the Hyatt in New Brunswick. (Where it has been for the last 4 years.) It will begin at 1:00 p.m. on Friday and end by 7:00 p.m, on Saturday.

The main speakers will be: Paul Boghossian, Earl Conee, Sally Haslanger and Hilary Kornblith. The discussants/Round Table Panelists will be: Tamar Gendler, Mark Johnston, Helen Longino and Wayne Riggs.

There will also be a Conference Website on the department webpage here that will be taking shape. Peter Klein reports that it should be up in about two weeks.

The webpage for the conference we’re hosting at the University of Stirling on Epistemic Value this August has been updated, and now includes a provisional programme, along with titles and abstracts for most of the papers. Here’s the link.

The following combination of views seems a natural one to me, but (in my admittedly limited excursions into the field) I have not yet seen it defended:

1. True epistemically normative statements are made true by objective facts.
2. These facts are naturalistically respectable facts, having to do with e.g. the truth of the subject’s beliefs, or (better) their probable truth given her evidential position.
3. This does not mean epistemically normative statements are equivalent in meaning/sense to statements which are explicitly about truth of beliefs or their probable truth.

Cf. the corresponding view in ethics, that true moral statements are made true by objective natural facts about e.g. the maximization of utility, but do not have the same meaning/sense as statements which are explicitly about the maximization of utility.

Naturalism about epistemic norms often seems to get equated with the Quinean project; other options are not mentioned. I’d be interested to know if 1-3 are defended in some area of the literature that I haven’t yet managed to stumble upon!