Title: The heuristic use of conditionalisation

Abstract:

This paper argues that Bayesian conditionalisation should not be viewed as a universal norm of updating, but rather as a heuristic principle that is helpful in some circumstances but fails in others. I go on to show that the heuristic use of conditionalisation can be validated by an approach to inductive logic that appeals to the maximum entropy principle, namely objective Bayesian inductive logic (OBIL). This develops and generalises a line of argument of Williamson (2010, Chapter 4). This argument has far-reaching consequences. In particular, Bayesian conditionalization should not be thought of as constitutive of Bayesianism; instead, Bayesianism needs to be grounded in a more general framework, such as OBIL, that can provide an account of the scope of conditionalisation.

The seminar will held online on March 12th at 14:30 (Rome time) on the Microsoft Teams platform, here.