Begging the Question and Bayesians

In a recent article Patrick Maher shows that the ‘depragmatised’ form of Dutch Book arguments for Bayesianism tend to beg the question against their most interesting anti-Bayesian opponents. I argue that the same criticism can be levelled at Maher’s own argument for Bayesianism. The arguments for Bayesianism in the literature fall into three broad categories. There are Dutch Book arguments, both of the traditional pragmatic variety and the modern ‘depragmatised’ form. And there are arguments from the so-called ‘representation theorems’. The arguments have many similarities, for example they have a common conclusion, and they all derive epistemic constraints from considerations about coherent preferences, but they have enough differences to produce hostilities between their proponents. In a recent paper, Maher (1997) has argued that the pragmatised Dutch Book arguments are unsound and the depragmatised Dutch Book arguments question begging. He urges we instead use the representation theorem argument as in Maher (1993). In this paper I argue that Maher’s own argument is question-begging, though in a more subtle and interesting way than his Dutch Book wielding opponents.