Probability and Propositions

The conference on probability, organized by Alan Hajek here at the ANU a couple of weeks ago, was terrific.  I've put some photos online, as have Al and Brad Armendt.

I've also put online my paper from the conference: Probability and Propositions.  This paper will also be my contribution to the Online Philosophy Conference (which I gather has now been postponed until May), with David Braun as commentator.  The paper argues that Bayesian accounts of reasoning are in strong tension with referentialist views of the objects of credence, and uses this point to argue against referentialist views of the objects of thought.  In effect, it raises a probabilistic version of Frege's puzzle, with credence playing the role of cognitive value.  It's a fairly obvious idea, but it's interesting to see how the details play out in this territory.  At the end of the paper I also put forward a positive view of the objects of credence, by putting a probabilistic spin on two-dimensional semantic values.

The two key cases in the paper involve Wanda Tinasky and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  I like the former, but the latter is just a placeholder until I find a better example with the same structure.  You can find the case near the start of the paper: the basic structure involves knowing under one mode of presentation that x has property P, knowing under another that x has Q, without knowing that x has P&Q, where x's having P&Q would be strong evidence for some relevant hypothesis.  It's easy to come up with cases with this form, but it would be nice to have a really clean and memorable version of it.  So I thought I would throw the challenge open to readers of this weblog.  Suggestions in the comments or by e-mail are welcome -- of course I'll give credit for any suggestions that I use in the final version.  Any comments on the paper itself are also very welcome.

Comments

[Erick Chastain]

What about Shakespeare's Identity? ie whether he is actually shakespeare, francis bacon, Edward de Vere (The Earl of Oxford), Marlowe, or one of his servants
(jokingly suggested by harold bloom).