The Stability of Belief

Leitgeb, Hannes (2017): The Stability of Belief. How Rational Belief Coheres with Probability. First edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Abstract

This book develops a joint normative theory of rational all-or-nothing belief and rational numerical degrees of belief. While all-or-nothing belief is studied in traditional epistemology and is usually assumed to obey logical norms, degrees of belief constitute the subject matter of Bayesian epistemology and are normally taken to conform to probabilistic norms. One of the central open questions in formal epistemology is what such beliefs and degrees of belief have to be like in order for them to cohere with each other. The answer defended in this book is a stability account of belief: a rational agent believes a proposition just in case she assigns a stably high degree of belief to it. The book explains what this stability thesis amounts to, how the thesis relates to other joint principles of belief and degrees of belief, such as the so-called Lockean thesis, and how the approach avoids notorious paradoxes, such as the famous Lottery Paradox. It determines the theory's consequences for learning, suppositional reasoning, decision-making, and assertion; and it justifies the theory on various grounds, including those of epistemic decision theory.

• Item Type: Monograph
• Faculties: Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Religious Science > Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP) > Logic; Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Religious Science > Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP) > Epistemology
• Subjects: 100 Philosophy and Psychology > 120 Epistemology; 100 Philosophy and Psychology > 160 Logic
• ISBN: 978-0-19-873263-1
• Place of Publication: Oxford
• Language: English