Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T19:43:37.034Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

ACCURACY UNCOMPOSED: AGAINST CALIBRATIONISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2017

Abstract

Pettigrew offers new axiomatic constraints on legitimate measures of inaccuracy. His axiom called ‘Decomposition’ stipulates that legitimate measures of inaccuracy evaluate a credence function in part based on its level of calibration at a world. I argue that if calibration is valuable, as Pettigrew claims, then this fact is an explanandum for accuracy-first epistemologists, not an explanans, for three reasons. First, the intuitive case for the importance of calibration isn't as strong as Pettigrew believes. Second, calibration is a perniciously global property that both contravenes Pettigrew's own views about the nature of credence functions themselves and undercuts the achievements and ambitions of accuracy-first epistemology. Finally, Decomposition introduces a new kind of value compatible with but separate from accuracy-proper in violation of Pettigrew's alethic monism.

Type
Symposium: Pettigrew's Accuracy and the Laws of Credence
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

de Finetti, B. 1974. Theory of Probability, Volume 1. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
DeGroot, M. H. and Fienberg, S. E. 1982. ‘Assessing Probability Assessors: Calibration and Refinement.’ In Gupta, S. S. and Berger, J. O. (eds), Statistical Decision Theory and Related Topics III, Volume 1. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
DeGroot, M. H. and Fienberg, S. E. 1983. ‘The Comparison and Evaluation of Forecasters.’ In Proceedings of the 1982 I.O.S. Annual Conference on Practical Bayesian Statistics, Volume 32, pp. 12–22. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Joyce, J. M. 1998. ‘A Nonpragmatic Vindication of Probabilism.’ Philosophy of Science 65, 575603.Google Scholar
Joyce, J. M. 2009. ‘Accuracy and Coherence: Prospects for an Alethic Epistemology of Partial Belief.’ In Huber, F. and Schmidt-Petri, C. (eds), Degrees of Belief, Volume 342, pp. 263–97. New York, NY: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leitgeb, H. and Pettigrew, R. 2010. ‘An Objective Justification of Bayesianism. I: Measuring Inaccuracy.’ Philosophy of Science, 77: 201–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettigrew, R. 2013. ‘Accuracy and Evidence.’ Dialectica, 67: 579–96.Google Scholar
Ramsey, F. P. 1931. ‘Truth and Probability.’ In Braithwaite, R. (ed.), Foundations of Mathematics and Other Essays, pp. 156–98. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Shimony, A. 1988. ‘An Adamite Derivation of the Calculus of Probability.’ In Fetzer, J. (ed.), Probability and Causality. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, B. 1983. ‘Calibration: Frequency Justification for Personal Probability.’ In Cohen, R. and Laudan, L. (eds), Physics, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis, pp. 295–319. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar