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Why Bayesian Psychology Is Incomplete

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Frank Döring
Frank Döring*
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati
*
†Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221–0374; email: doringf@email.uc.edu.
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Abstract

Bayesian psychology, in what is perhaps its most familiar version, is incomplete: Jeffrey conditionalization is not a complete account of rational belief change. Jeffrey conditionalization is sensitive to the order in which the evidence arrives. This order effect can be so pronounced as to call for a belief adjustment that cannot be understood as an assimilation of incoming evidence by Jeffrey's rule. Hartry Field's reparameterization of Jeffrey's rule avoids the order effect but fails as an account of how new evidence should be assimilated.

Type
Probability and Statistical Inference
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1999 , 1999 , pp. S379 - S389
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Thanks to Christopher Gauker, Richard Jeffrey, and Robert Rynasiewicz for helping me sort out my thoughts on Bayesian updating.

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