The Department of Logic & Philosophy of Sciences Colloquium Series presents

"Conditionalization: What Is It and Why Should We Do It?"
with Richard Pettigrew, University of Bristol

Friday, April 25, 2014
3:00-5:00 p.m.
Social Science Tower, Room 777 (LPS Conference Room)

A central tenet of Bayesian epistemology is the updating rule of Bayesian Conditionalization, which relates prior and posterior probabilities. Yet there is a good deal of controversy over how to formulate the principle precisely: Does it govern updating plans or updating practices? Does it require that an agent know in advance the different pieces of evidence she might learn? Does it apply when the evidence that an agent might acquire does not form a partition? Does it apply to agents who lack perfect introspection?. And there is also controversy over why we should adopt the principle, however it is to be formulated: Does the diachronic Dutch Book argument succeed? Do arguments from accuracy fare better?  In this talk, Pattigrew will present an account of Conditionalization that avoids the standard problems, and he'll present a new type of accuracy argument in its favour.

For further information, please contact Patty Jones, patty.jones@uci.edu or 949-824-1520.