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3709 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089
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Title: The Infectious Indeterminacy of Indeterminate Credences
Abstract:The imprecise credence model---where our belief states are represented with sets of credence functions---has lots of perks. It's an (arguably) psychologically plausible generalization of the traditional Bayesian model, and (arguably) better captures rational responses to ambiguous evidence. Formulating a plausible decision for the imprecise model has been a challenge, though. An influential proposal (defended recently by Rinard 2015) has been to interpret the model as representing indeterminacy in one's credence function---so that traditional Bayesian norms can apply, albeit indeterminately. This talk will explore the epistemic and pragmatic costs of interpreting imprecise credences as indeterminate sharp credences. The major cost, I'll argue, is that indeterminacy is infectious: credal indeterminacy infects the rational status of a surprisingly wide range of decisions, belief states, and updates. On the indeterminate interpretation, it's typically impossible to achieve determinate rationality (epistemic or pragmatic). And it's typically extremely easy to avoid determinately irrationality.
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