IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-00978005.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reasons for (prior) belief in Bayesian epistemology

Author

Listed:
  • Franz Dietrich

    (CERSES - UMR 8137 - Centre de recherche sens, ethique, société - UPD5 - Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Christian List

    (LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science)

Abstract

Bayesian epistemology tells us with great precision how we should move from prior to posterior beliefs in light of new evidence or information, but says little about where our prior beliefs come from. It o§ers few resources to describe some prior beliefs as rational or well-justiÖed, and others as irrational or unreasonable. A di§erent strand of epistemology takes the central epistemological question to be not how to change oneís beliefs in light of new evidence, but what reasons justify a given set of beliefs in the Örst place. We o§er an account of rational belief formation that closes some of the gap between Bayesianism and its reason-based alternative, formalizing the idea that an agent can have reasons for his or her (prior) beliefs, in addition to evidence or information in the ordinary Bayesian sense. Our analysis of reasons for belief is part of a larger programme of research on the role of reasons in rational agency (Dietrich and List 2012a,b).

Suggested Citation

  • Franz Dietrich & Christian List, 2013. "Reasons for (prior) belief in Bayesian epistemology," Post-Print halshs-00978005, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00978005
    DOI: 10.1007/s11229-012-0224-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jennifer A. Loughmiller-Cardinal & James Scott Cardinal, 2023. "The Behavior of Information: A Reconsideration of Social Norms," Societies, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-27, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bayesian epistemology; doxastic reasons; prior and posterior beliefs; principle of insu¢ cient reason; belief formation; belief change;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D0 - Microeconomics - - General
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • C0 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00978005. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.