Gradational accuracy and nonclassical semantics

Review of Symbolic Logic 5 (4):513-537 (2012)
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Abstract

Joyce (1998) gives an argument for probabilism: the doctrine that rational credences should conform to the axioms of probability. In doing so, he provides a distinctive take on how the normative force of probabilism relates to the injunction to believe what is true. But Joyce presupposes that the truth values of the propositions over which credences are defined are classical. I generalize the core of Joyce’s argument to remove this presupposition. On the same assumptions as Joyce uses, the credences of a rational agent should always be weighted averages of truth value assignments. In the special case where the truth values are classical, the weighted averages of truth value assignments are exactly the probability functions. But in the more general case, probabilistic axioms formulated in terms of classical logic are violated—but we will show that generalized versions of the axioms formulated in terms of non-classical logics are satisfied

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Author Profiles

Robert Williams
University of Leeds
Jared Williams
University of Houston

Citations of this work

Anti-exceptionalism about logic.Ole Thomassen Hjortland - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (3):631-658.
Epistemic Utility and Norms for Credences.Richard Pettigrew - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (10):897-908.
Epistemic Utility and the Normativity of Logic.Richard Pettigrew - 2017 - Logos and Episteme 8 (4):455-492.
Talking about worlds.Matthew Mandelkern - 2018 - Philosophical Perspectives 32 (1):298-325.
The normative status of logic.Florian Steinberger - 2017 - Stanford Enyclopedia of Philosophy.

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General semantics.David K. Lewis - 1970 - Synthese 22 (1-2):18--67.
A nonpragmatic vindication of probabilism.James M. Joyce - 1998 - Philosophy of Science 65 (4):575-603.

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