There is more to a paradox than credence
نویسندگان
چکیده
Besides the usual business of solving paradoxes, there has been recent philosophical work on their essential nature. Lycan characterises a paradox as “an inconsistent set of propositions, each of which is very plausible”. Building on this definition Paseau offers a numerical measure of paradoxicality of a set of principles: a function of the degrees to which a subject believes the principles considered individually (all typically high), and of the degree to which the subject believes the principles considered together (typically low). We argue (a) that Paseau’s measure fails to score certain paradoxes properly, and (b) that this failure is not due to the particular measure but rather that any any such function just of credences fails to adequately capture paradoxicality. Our analysis leads us to conclude that Lycan’s definition also fails to capture the notion of paradox.
منابع مشابه
Paradox and Relativism
Since the time of Plato, relativism has been attacked as a self-refuting theory. Today, there are two basic kinds of argument that are used to show that global relativism is logically incoherent: first, a direct descendent of the argument Plato uses against Protagoras, called the peritrope; and, second, a more recent argument that relativism leads to an infinite regress. Although some relativis...
متن کاملBertrand’s Paradox Revisited: More Lessons about that Ambiguous Word, Random
The Bertrand paradox question is: “Consider a unit-radius circle for which the length of a side of an inscribed equilateral triangle equals 3 . Determine the probability that the length of a ‘random’ chord of a unit-radius circle has length greater than 3 .” Bertrand derived three different ‘correct’ answers, the correctness depending on interpretation of the word, random. Here we employ geomet...
متن کاملSelected paper in the IAMA International Food and Agribusiness Management Association WORLD FOOD AND AGRIBUSINESS SYMPOSIUM AND FORUM June 21-24, 2003 CANCUN, MEXICO Impact of Information on the Demand for Credence Characteristics
Most quality properties of food products can be considered as credence characteristics, quality of which cannot be inferred before the purchase, and sometimes not even after the purchase. Our objectives are: (1) To assess how much consumers are willing to pay (WTP) for meat products, of which e.g. origins and production practices are known, especially with regard to safety issues; (2) To compar...
متن کاملOckham’s Razor, Hume’s Problem, Ellsberg’s Paradox, Dilation, and Optimal Truth Conduciveness
Classical Bayesianism represents ignorance, if at all, by flatness of prior probabilities. Such probabilities are an essential part of the standard Bayesian explanation of Ockham’s razor. But flatness as a model of ignorance is called into question by Ellsberg’s paradox, which has led to the consideration of incoherent or inexact degrees of belief, both of which undermine the usual explanation ...
متن کاملDiscretization of a fractional order ratio-dependent functional response predator-prey model, bifurcation and chaos
This paper deals with a ratio-dependent functional response predator-prey model with a fractional order derivative. The ratio-dependent models are very interesting, since they expose neither the paradox of enrichment nor the biological control paradox. We study the local stability of equilibria of the original system and its discretized counterpart. We show that the discretized system, which is...
متن کامل