Julia Staffel (Colorado): “Updating Incoherent Credences – Extending the Dutch Strategy Argument for Conditionalization”

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Abstract: In this paper, we ask: how should an agent who has incoherent credences update when they learn new evidence? The standard Bayesian answer for coherent agents is that they should conditionalize; however, this updating rule is not defined for incoherent starting credences. We show how one of the main arguments for conditionalization, the Dutch strategy argument, can be extended to devise a target property for updating plans that can apply to them regardless of whether the agent starts out with coherent or incoherent credences. The main idea behind this extension is that the agent should avoid updating plans that increase the possible sure loss from Dutch strategies. This happens to be equivalent to avoiding updating plans that increase incoherence according to a distance-based incoherence measure.

Julia Staffel is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She specialises in epistemology, with a focus on formal epistemology.