Accuracy and Verisimilitude: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

It seems like we care about at least two features of our credence function: gradational-accuracy (high credences in truths, low credences in falsehoods) and verisimilitude (in-vesting higher credence in worlds that are more similar to the actual world). Accuracy-first epistemology requires that we c...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Schoenfield, Miriam (Author)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Oxford University Press (OUP), 2021-03-17T14:23:52Z.
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Summary:It seems like we care about at least two features of our credence function: gradational-accuracy (high credences in truths, low credences in falsehoods) and verisimilitude (in-vesting higher credence in worlds that are more similar to the actual world). Accuracy-first epistemology requires that we care about one feature of our credence function:gradational-accuracy. So if you want to be a verisimilitude-valuing accuracy-firster,you must be able to think of the value of verisimilitude as somehow built into thevalue of gradational-accuracy. Can this be done? In a recent article, Oddie has arguedthat it cannot, at least if we want the accuracy measure to be proper. I argue that it can.