Bayesian epistemology

‘Bayesian epistemology’ became an epistemological movement in the 20 century, though its two main features can be traced back to the eponymous Reverend Thomas Bayes (c. 1701–61). Those two features are: (1) the introduction of a formal apparatus for inductive logic; (2) the introduction of a pragmatic self-defeat test (as illustrated by Dutch Book Arguments) for epistemic rationality as a way of extending the justification of the laws of deductive logic to include a justification for the laws of inductive logic. The formal apparatus itself has two main elements: the use of the laws of probability as coherence constraints on rational degrees of belief (or degrees of confidence) and the introduction of a rule of probabilistic inference, a rule or principle of conditionalization. Bayesian epistemology did not emerge as a philosophical program until the first formal axiomatizations of probability theory in the first half of the 20 century. One important application of Bayesian epistemology has been to the analysis of scientific practice in Bayesian Confirmation Theory. In addition, a major branch of statistics, Bayesian statistics, is based on Bayesian principles. In psychology, an important branch of learning theory, Bayesian learning theory, is also based on Bayesian principles. Finally, the idea of analyzing rational degrees of belief in terms of rational betting behavior led to the 20 century development of a new kind of decision theory, Bayesian decision theory, which is now the dominant theoretical model for both the descriptive and normative analysis of decisions. The combination of its precise formal apparatus and its novel pragmatic self-defeat test for justification makes Bayesian epistemology one of the most important developments in epistemology in the 20 century, and one of the most promising avenues for further progress in epistemology in the 21 century. 1. Deductive and Probabilistic Coherence and Deductive and Probabilistic Rules of Inference 2. A Simple Principle of Conditionalization 3. Dutch Book Arguments 4. Bayes' Theorem and Bayesian Confirmation Theory Bayes' Theorem and a Corollary Bayesian Confirmation Theory 5. Bayesian Social Epistemology 6. Potential Problems 6.1 Objections to the Probability Laws as Standards of Synchronic Coherence 6.2 Objections to The Simple Principle of Conditionalization as a Rule of Inference and Other Objections to Bayesian Confirmation Theory 7. Other Principles of Bayesian Epistemology Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries