Thursday, November 23, 2017

Formal Epistemology and Skepticism

I've just found about this monograph by Tomoji Shogenji that makes use of model selection theory to (allegedly) defeat Cartesian skepticism: Formal Epistemology and Cartesian Skepticism: In Defense of Belief in the Natural World (Routledge). Click here for more information.

3 comments:

  1. It is not accurate to say that Shogenji's monograph "makes use of Bayesian reasoning to (allegedly) defeat Cartesian skepticism". The monograph actually argues that Bayesian reasoning can NOT defeat Cartesian skepticism, and makes use of model selection theory to defeat Cartesian skepticism.

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  2. I assume you're Tomoji. Thanks for the correction. I tried to provide an accurate description of the book on the basis of the information I found on the book's webpage. I'll now correct the post.

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  3. Thanks for revising the post--and yes, I'm Tomoji. If I may elaborate, the book argues against the skeptic’s alternative scenario (such as the brains-in-vats scenario) not on the ground that it is less probable, but on the ground that it has a greater (estimated) divergence from the truth. The reason is that the skeptic’s alternative scenario as a probabilistic model is more complex (than the standard natural-world model), and a more complex probabilistic model has a greater (estimated) divergence from the truth, other things being equal, because a more complex model (with more adjustable parameters) is more prone to chase random variation (“noise”) in the data.

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