Chloé de Canson (Groningen): “Why Subjectivism?”

Few philosophical positions are as unpopular as radical subjective Bayesianism. In this paper, I seek, if not to rehabilitate subjectivism, at least to show its critic what is attractive about the position. I argue that what is at stake in the subjectivism/anti- subjectivism debate is not, as is commonly thought, which norms of rationality are true, but rather, the conception of rationality that we adopt: there is an alternative approach to the widespread telic approach to rationality, which I call the poric approach, on which subjectivism is an attractive position. I end by considering the prospects for escaping subjectivism, and I suggest that they are bleak.

Chloé de Canson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen.