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Graded Incoherence for Accuracy-Firsters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Glauber De Bona  and
Julia Staffel
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Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between two evaluative claims about agents’ degrees of belief: (i) that it is better to have more rather than less accurate degrees of belief and (ii) that it is better to have less rather than more probabilistically incoherent degrees of belief. We show that, for suitable combinations of inaccuracy measures and incoherence measures, both claims are compatible, although not equivalent; moreover, certain ways of becoming less incoherent always guarantee improvements in accuracy. Incompatibilities between particular incoherence and inaccuracy measures can be exploited to argue against particular ways of measuring either inaccuracy or incoherence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , April 2017 , pp. 189 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Glauber De Bona is financially supported by CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development). We would like to thank the reviewers, Leszek Wronski, Liam Kofi Bright, and Carlos Stein Naves de Brito for their valuable insights. Both authors contributed equally.

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