Why does coherence appear truth-conducive?

This paper aims to reconcile (i) the intuitively plausible view that a higher degree of coherence among independent pieces of evidence makes the hypothesis they support more probable, and (ii) the negative results in Bayesian epistemology to the effect that there is no probabilistic measure of coherence such that a higher degree of coherence among independent pieces of evidence makes the hypothesis they support more probable. I consider a simple model in which the negative result appears in a stark form: the prior probability of the hypothesis and the individual vertical relations between each piece of evidence and the hypothesis completely determine the conditional probability of the hypothesis given the total evidence, leaving no room for the lateral relation (such as coherence) among the pieces of evidence to play any role. Despite this negative result, the model also reveals that a higher degree of coherence is indirectly associated with a higher conditional probability of the hypothesis because a higher degree of coherence indicates stronger individual supports. This analysis explains why coherence appears truth-conducive but in such a way that it defeats the idea of coherentism since the lateral relation (such as coherence) plays no independent role in the confirmation of the hypothesis. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the workshop Coherence: Interpreting the Impossibility Results held in Lund, Sweden. I would like to thank the participants of the workshop, especially Erik J. Olsson who subsequently sent me written comments. I would also like to thank Ken Akiba for comments on precursors of this paper     

Coherence of the contents and the transmission of probabilistic support

This paper examines how coherence of the contents of evidence affects the transmission of probabilistic support from the evidence to the hypothesis. It is argued that coherence of the contents in the sense of the ratio of the positive intersection reduces the transmission of probabilistic support, though this negative impact of coherence may be offset by other aspects of the relations among the contents. It is argued further that there is no broader conception of coherence whose impact on the transmission of probabilistic support is never offset by other aspects of the relations among the contents. The paper also examines reasons for the contrary impression that coherence of the contents increases the transmission of probabilistic support, especially in the special case where the hypothesis to evaluate is the conjunction of the contents of evidence.     

The evidential relevance of self-locating information

Philosophical interest in the role of self-locating information in the confirmation of hypotheses has intensified in virtue of the Sleeping Beauty problem. If the correct solution to that problem is 1/3, various attractive views on confirmation and probabilistic reasoning appear to be undermined; and some writers have used the problem as a basis for rejecting some of those views. My interest here is in two such views. One of them is the thesis that self-locating information cannot be evidentially relevant to a non-self-locating hypothesis. The other, a basic tenet of Bayesian confirmation theory, is the thesis that an ideally rational agent updates her credence in a non-self-locating hypothesis in response to new information only by conditionalization. I argue that we can disprove these two theses by way of cases that are much less puzzling than Sleeping Beauty. I present two such cases in this paper.     

Feminist Radical Empiricism,Values, and Evidence

Feminist epistemologies consider ways in which gender (among other social factors) influences knowledge. In this article, I want to consider a particular kind of feminist empiricism that has been called feminist radical empiricism (where the empiricism, not the feminism, is radical). I am particularly interested in this view's treatment of values as empirical, and consequently up for revision on the basis of empirical evidence. Proponents of this view cite the fact that it allows us to talk about certain things such as racial and gender equality as objective facts: not just whether we have achieved said equality in our society, but whether we are, in fact, all equal. I will raise the concern that the way in which they model the role of values in epistemology may be a problematic idealization of the open‐mindedness of human agents. In some cases, resistance to value‐change cannot be diagnosed as a failure to respond adequately to evidence. If so, the strategy of empirically testing our values that some feminist radical empiricists suggest may not be as useful a tool for social change as they think.     

Justification by Coherence from Scratch

In this paper we make three points about justification of propositions by coherence “from scratch”, where pieces of evidence that are coherent have no individual credibility. First, we argue that no matter how many pieces of evidence are coherent, and no matter what relation we take coherence to be, coherence does not make independent pieces of evidence with no individual credibility credible. Second, we show that an intuitively plausible informal reasoning for justification by coherence from scratch is deficient since it relies on an understanding of “individual credibility” inappropriate for justification from scratch. Third, we show that coherence, when it is recurrent, can make independent sources of evidence with no individual credibility credible. We describe specifically a case in which the same group of independent witnesses with no individual credibility repeatedly produce reports that are in agreement with each other, and their reports become credible as a result.     

Relevance-driven information search in "pseudodiagnostic" reasoning

When faced with two competing hypotheses, people sometimes prefer to look at multiple sources of information in support of one hypothesis rather than to establish the diagnostic value of a single piece of information for the two hypotheses. This is termed pseudodiagnostic reasoning and has often been understood to reflect, among other things, poor information search strategies. Past research suggests that diagnostic reasoning may be more easily fostered when participants seek data to help in the selection of one of two competing courses of action as opposed to situations where they seek data to help infer which of two competing hypotheses is true. In the experiment reported here, we provide the first empirical evidence demonstrating that manipulating the relevance of the feature for which participants initially receive information determines whether they will make a nominally diagnostic or pseudodiagnostic selection. The discussion of these findings focuses on implications for the ability to engage in diagnostic hypothesis testing.     

MORAL RELEVANCE AND CETERIS PARIBUS PRINCIPLES

My goal in this paper is twofold: to provide an account of what makes properties morally relevant, and to indicate the role such properties have in our moral thinking. I suppose that a property is morally relevant just in case it must, ceteris paribus, determine the moral status (the rightness or wrongness) of actions having it. The main part of the paper concerns the conditions under which the ceteris paribus caveat is satisfied, that is, when other things are equal. I argue that the caveat is satisfied when, with respect to a proposed set of morally relevant properties, an act differs from its alternatives at most in the degree to which it has one of those properties. Since other things are seldom equal, it is natural to wonder why what is true when they are equal should be important when they are not. That is, why is moral relevance, as I characterize it, a useful moral notion? I suggest that it is only by recognizing the moral relevance of properties that we are able to engage in useful moral thinking about the future.     

Relevance-driven information search in “pseudodiagnostic” reasoning

When faced with two competing hypotheses, people sometimes prefer to look at multiple sources of information in support of one hypothesis rather than to establish the diagnostic value of a single piece of information for the two hypotheses. This is termed pseudodiagnostic reasoning and has often been understood to reflect, among other things, poor information search strategies. Past research suggests that diagnostic reasoning may be more easily fostered when participants seek data to help in the selection of one of two competing courses of action as opposed to situations where they seek data to help infer which of two competing hypotheses is true. In the experiment reported here, we provide the first empirical evidence demonstrating that manipulating the relevance of the feature for which participants initially receive information determines whether they will make a nominally diagnostic or pseudodiagnostic selection. The discussion of these findings focuses on implications for the ability to engage in diagnostic hypothesis testing.     

The Effect of Evidential Impact on Perceptual Probabilistic Judgments

In a series of three behavioral experiments, we found a systematic distortion of probability judgments concerning elementary visual stimuli. Participants were briefly shown a set of figures that had two features (e.g., a geometric shape and a color) with two possible values each (e.g., triangle or circle and black or white). A figure was then drawn, and participants were informed about the value of one of its features (e.g., that the figure was a “circle”) and had to predict the value of the other feature (e.g., whether the figure was “black” or “white”). We repeated this procedure for various sets of figures and, by varying the statistical association between features in the sets, we manipulated the probability of a feature given the evidence of another (e.g., the posterior probability of hypothesis “black” given the evidence “circle”) as well as the support provided by a feature to another (e.g., the impact, or confirmation, of evidence “circle” on the hypothesis “black”). Results indicated that participants’ judgments were deeply affected by impact, although they only should have depended on the probability distributions over the features, and that the dissociation between evidential impact and posterior probability increased the number of errors. The implications of these findings for lower and higher level cognitive models are discussed.     

Probabilistic measures of coherence: from adequacy constraints towards pluralism

The debate on probabilistic measures of coherence flourishes for about 15 years now. Initiated by papers that have been published around the turn of the millennium, many different proposals have since then been put forward. This contribution is partly devoted to a reassessment of extant coherence measures. Focusing on a small number of reasonable adequacy constraints I show that (i) there can be no coherence measure that satisfies all constraints, and that (ii) subsets of these adequacy constraints motivate two different classes of coherence measures. These classes do not coincide with the common distinction between coherence as mutual support and coherence as relative set-theoretic overlap. Finally, I put forward arguments to the effect that for each such class of coherence measures there is an outstanding measure that outperforms all other extant proposals. One of these measures has recently been put forward in the literature, while the other one is based on a novel probabilistic measure of confirmation.     

A problem for the alternative difference measure of confirmation

Among Bayesian confirmation theorists, several quantitative measures of the degree to which an evidential proposition E confirms a hypothesis H have been proposed. According to one popular recent measure, s, the degree to which E confirms H is a function of the equation P(H|E) ? P(H|~E). A consequence of s is that when we have two evidential propositions, E1 and E2, such that P(H|E1) = P(H|E2), and P(H|~E1) ≠ P(H|~E2), the confirmation afforded to H by E1 does not equal the confirmation afforded to H by E2. I present several examples that demonstrate the unacceptability of this result, and conclude that we should reject s (and other measures that share this feature) as a measure of confirmation.     

Why Simpler Arguments are Better

In this paper, I argue that, other things being equal, simpler arguments are better. In other words, I argue that, other things being equal, it is rational to prefer simpler arguments over less simple ones. I sketch three arguments in support of this claim: an argument from mathematical proofs, an argument from scientific theories, and an argument from the conjunction rule.     

Causal diversity effects in information seeking

When trying to determine the root cause of an observed effect, people may seek out information with which to test a candidate hypothesis. In two studies, we investigated how knowledge of causal structure influences this information-seeking process. Specifically, we asked whether people would choose to test for pieces of evidence that were far apart or close together in the learned causal structure of a disease category. In parallel with findings showing people’s tendency to select diverse evidence in argument testing (López, 1995), our participants tested for evidence distantly located within the causal structure. Simultaneously, they rated the probability of occurrence of such diverse evidence as comparatively low. These findings suggest that rather than seeking out information most likely to confirm the hypothesis, people seek out evidence that they believe will most strongly support the hypothesis if present but that they also believe is relatively unlikely to be present (that is, might disconfirm the hypothesis).     

ROCK BOTTOM: COHERENTISM'S SOFT SPOT

Often coherentism is taken to be the view that justification is solely a function of the coherence among a person's beliefs. I offer a counterexample to the idea that when so understood coherence is sufficient for justification. I then argue that the counterexample will still work if coherence is understood as coherence among a person's beliefs and experiences. I defend a form of nondoxastic foundationalism that takes sensations and philosophical intuitions as basic and sees nearly all other justification as depending on inference to the best explanation. I take up Wilfrid Sellars's Dilemma, which starts with the idea that the foundations must be either propositional in nature or not. The argument continues: if they are, they stand in need of justification; if they are not, they cannot confer justification. It concludes that there cannot be foundations that confer justification on other beliefs. I deny both horns of this dilemma, arguing that philosophical intuitions are propositional but do not stand in need of justification and that sensations are not propositional but can confer justification on perceptual beliefs.     

The path or the goal? Decision vs. information focus in biased information seeking after preliminary decisions

Research on the phenomenon of selective exposure to information demonstrates that after preliminary or final decisions, people show a preference for supporting rather than conflicting information (confirmation bias). In this article, we examine conditions that increase or decrease distortions in the search for information. We report on four experiments indicating that the confirmation bias is influenced by whether people focus on their decision or on the presented pieces of information during the information search. Focusing on the decision, for example, because a reward for a correct decision is promised or simply because participants repeatedly think of it, increases the confirmation bias. On the other hand, if participants focus on the available pieces of information because they have to invest money in order to search for information or because they have to evaluate the individual pieces of information, the confirmation bias decreases. Implications for theoretical understanding and interventions for decision-making situations are discussed.     

Will jurors correct for evidence interdependence in their verdicts? It depends

Throughout an investigation, pieces of evidence are likely to contaminate one another, yet at trial jurors are expected to treat pieces of evidence as if they are independent. Are jurors able to understand potential evidence contamination? The present study showed mock jurors a videotaped trial simulation. Participants were randomly assigned to hear testimony regarding one piece of evidence, two pieces of independent evidence, or two pieces of interdependent evidence. The study tested the hypothesis that jurors who hear evidence that is interdependent will be just as likely to find the defendant guilty as jurors who hear about two pieces of independent evidence. When an eyewitness's identification was the uncontaminated piece of evidence, our hypothesis was supported. However, when the confession was the uncontaminated piece of evidence, jurors seemed to understand that one piece of evidence had been influenced by another and adjusted their beliefs about the defendant's guilt accordingly. This study supports the conclusion that jurors can sometimes identify and correct for evidence contamination in their perceptions of a defendant's guilt. Implications for reform support are discussed.     

An Accuracy Based Approach to Higher Order Evidence

The aim of this paper is to apply the accuracy based approach to epistemology to the case of higher order evidence: evidence that bears on the rationality of one's beliefs. I proceed in two stages. First, I show that the accuracy based framework that is standardly used to motivate rational requirements supports steadfastness—a position according to which higher order evidence should have no impact on one's doxastic attitudes towards first order propositions. The argument for this will require a generalization of an important result by Greaves and Wallace for the claim that conditionalization maximizes expected accuracy. The generalization I provide will, among other things, allow us to apply the result to cases of self‐locating evidence. In the second stage, I develop an alternative framework. Very roughly, what distinguishes the traditional approach from the alternative one is that, on the traditional picture, we're interested in evaluating the expected accuracy of conforming to an update procedure. On the alternative picture that I develop, instead of considering how good an update procedure is as a plan to conform to, we consider how good it is as a plan to make. I show how, given the use of strictly proper scoring rules, the alternative picture vindicates calibrationism: a view according to which higher order evidence should have a significant impact on our beliefs. I conclude with some thoughts about why higher order evidence poses a serious challenge for standard ways of thinking about rationality.     

Decision science: from Ramsey to dual process theories

The hypothesis that human reasoning and decision-making can be roughly modeled by Expected Utility Theory has been at the core of decision science. Accumulating evidence has led researchers to modify the hypothesis. One of the latest additions to the field is Dual Process theory, which attempts to explain variance between participants and tasks when it comes to deviations from Expected Utility Theory. It is argued that Dual Process theories at this point cannot replace previous theories, since they, among other things, lack a firm conceptual framework, and have no means of producing independent evidence for their case.     

Intrinsic Natures: A Critique of Langton on Kant

This paper argues that there is an important respect in which Rae Langton's recent interpretation of Kant is correct: Kant's claim that we cannot know things in themselves should be understood as the claim that we cannot know the intrinsic nature of things. However, I dispute Langton's account of intrinsic properties, and therefore her version of what this claim amounts to. Langton's distinction between intrinsic, causally inert properties and causal powers is problematic, both as an interpretation of Kant, and as an independent metaphysical position. I propose a different reading of the claim that we cannot know things intrinsically. I distinguish between two ways of knowing things: in terms of their effects on other things, and as they are apart from these. 1 argue that knowing things' powers is knowing things in terms of effects on other things, and therefore is not knowing them as they are in themselves, and that there are textual grounds for attributing this position to Kant.     

Conceptual Similarity and Communicative Need Shape Colexification: An Experimental Study

Colexification refers to the phenomenon of multiple meanings sharing one word in a language. Cross-linguistic lexification patterns have been shown to be largely predictable, as similar concepts are often colexified. We test a recent claim that, beyond this general tendency, communicative needs play an important role in shaping colexification patterns. We approach this question by means of a series of human experiments, using an artificial language communication game paradigm. Our results across four experiments match the previous cross-linguistic findings: all other things being equal, speakers do prefer to colexify similar concepts. However, we also find evidence supporting the communicative need hypothesis: when faced with a frequent need to distinguish similar pairs of meanings, speakadjust their colexification preferences to maintain communicative efficiency and avoid colexifying those similar meanings which need to be distinguished in communication. This research provides further evidence to support the argument that languages are shaped by the needs and preferences of their speakers.