Learning from Simple Indicative Conditionals

Erkenntnis 82 (3):583-601 (2017)
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Abstract

An agent who receives information in the form of an indicative conditional statement and who trusts her source will modify her credences to bring them in line with the conditional. I will argue that the agent, upon the acquisition of such information, should, in general, expand her prior credence function to an indeterminate posterior one; that is, to a set of credence functions. Two different ways the agent might interpret the conditional will be presented, and the properties of the resulting indeterminate posteriors compared. The cause of the expansion from a single prior credence function to a set of credence functions forming the indeterminate posterior one will be explained. The expansion undermines the Bayesian dogma that the result of assimilating new information into a determinate prior credence functions is always a determinate posterior one.

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References found in this work

The Logic of Decision.Richard C. Jeffrey - 1965 - New York, NY, USA: University of Chicago Press.
A Theory of Conditionals.Robert Stalnaker - 1968 - In Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford,: Blackwell. pp. 98-112.
Philosophical Guide to Conditionals.Jonathan Bennett - 2003 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
On conditionals.Dorothy Edgington - 1995 - Mind 104 (414):235-329.
Inquiry.Robert Stalnaker - 1984 - Synthese 79 (1):171-189.

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