Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Mind Research Interest Group Talk (Jennifer Rose Carr, California, San Diego)

The Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Mind Research Group welcomes Jennifer Rose Carr, an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Carr works primarily in epistemology, including in epistemic utility theory, belief modeling, and normative uncertainty. She is also interested in philosophy of language, in particular modals and conditionals.

Join the Zoom meeting: https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/88904748500

Talk Title

The Infectious Indeterminacy of Indeterminate Credences

Talk Abstract

Bayesianism represents a rational agent’s degrees of belief with a probability function. A popular generalization, imprecise bayesianism, instead uses sets of probability functions. Recently, some imprecise bayesians have argued that imprecise credences should be understood as indeterminate, and governed by the same norms as determinate precise credences. I argue that this interpretation has unattractive consequences: agents with indeterminate credences are never determinately epistemically rational, and in typical decision problems governed by indeterminate credences, there’ll be no determinately rational option. The only rational statuses for these choices—and for beliefs in general—are indeterminate rationality and determinate irrationality, and the latter is easy to avoid. So where indeterminate credences are relevant, the highest achievable justificatory status is cheap.

About the Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Mind Research Group

One of six departmental research interest groups, the Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Mind Group undertakes research in philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, traditional and formal epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.