Bayesian Orgulity

____________________________________________

“Bayesian Orgulity.” Philosophy of Science 83 (2013) 483–503.

(published version) [preprint]

Abstract. A piece of folklore enjoys some currency among philosophical Bayesians, according to which Bayesian agents that, intuitively speaking, spread their credence over the entire space of available hypotheses are certain to converge to the truth. The goals of the present discussion are to show that kernel of truth in this folklore is in some ways fairly small and to argue that Bayesian convergence-to-the-truth results are a liability for Bayesianism as an account of rationality, since they render a certain sort of arrogance rationally mandatory.

Some responses to this paper:

Jessi Cisewski, Joseph Kadane, Mark Schervish, Teddy Seidenfeld, and Rafael Stern (2018) “Standards for Modest Bayesian Credences.” Philosophy of Science 85: 53–78.

Adam Elga (2016) “Bayesian Humility.” Philosophy of Science 83: 305–323.

Simon Huttegger (2015) “Bayesian Convergence to the Truth and the Metaphysics of Possible Worlds” Philosophy of Science 82: 587–602.

Luciano Pomatto and Alvaro Sandroni (2018) “An Axiomatic Theory of Inductive Inference.” Philosophy of Science 85: 293–315.

Brian Weatherson (2015) “For Bayesians, Rational Modesty Requires Imprecision.” Ergo 2: 529–545.

_____________________________________________