Current Topics in Epistemology

Readings

All readings for the course will be posted on this page. Scroll down for the reading schedule.

Requirements

I will expect enrolled students to write one term paper for the seminar.

Website

Current course information can be found on the course web site, at:

http://fitelson.org/current/

The home page of our website is reserved mainly for announcements. You should keep an eye on the course website, as it will be updated regularly with various content and announcements pertaining to the course. The only two computer applications you will need to view/print, etc. the content on our website are: (i) your favorite web browser, and (ii) Adobe Reader (version 6 or later, or – if you prefer – another program that can read Acrobat PDF version 6 files).

Tentative Schedule (subject to change and evolution – so stay tuned)

I will be leading the seminar for the first two (2) weeks. Then, we will have the following guest seminar leaders.

• Adam Elga & Agustín Rayo (9/23)
• Jane Friedman (9/30)
• Laurie Paul (10/7)
• Fabrizio Cariani (10/14)
• No meeting on 10/21 (Branden will be in Tilburg)
• Jonathan Weisberg (10/28)
• Dimitri Gallow (11/4)
• Jonathan Vogel (11/11)
• Susanna Rinard (11/18)
• Dan Greco (11/25)
• Sophie Horowitz (12/2)
• Miriam Schoenfield (12/9)
• Make-up meeting: Tamar Lando & Justin Bledin (12/11)

OK, here are the notes, readings, etc., for the seminar. This list will evolve as the semester unfolds, so stay tuned…

• 09/02/14: No meeting this week (Branden's at Bridges)
• 09/09/14: Full Belief & Partial Belief I
  • Required Readings
    • Easwaran, Dr. Truthlove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bayesian Probabilities
    • Easwaran & Fitelson, Accuracy, Coherence and Evidence
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Titelbaum, Beliefs and Degrees of Belief, Chapter 1 of Fundamentals of Bayesian Epistemology
    • Christensen, Two Models of Belief [Chapter 2 of his Putting Logic in its Place]
    • Foley, Beliefs, Degrees of Belief, and the Lockean Thesis
    • Hempel, Deductive-Nomological vs. Statistical Explanation (section 12)
    • Pettigrew, Epistemic Utility Arguments for Probabilism
    • Greaves, Epistemic Decision Theory
    • Konek & Levinstein, The Foundations of Epistemic Decision Theory
    • Carr, Epistemic Utility Theory and the Aim of Belief
    • Joyce, Accuracy and Coherence: Prospects for an Alethic Epistemology of Partial Belief
• Hawthorme & Bovens, The Preface, the Lottery, and the Logic of Belief
• Douven & Williamson, Generalizing the Lottery Paradox
• Chandler, The Lottery Paradox Generalized?
• Lin & Kelly, A Geo-logical Solution to the Lottery Paradox, with Applications to Nonmonotonic Logic
• Christensen, Arguments for Deductive Cogency [Chapter 4 of his Putting Logic in its Place]
• Ryan, The Epistemic Virtues of Consistency
• Kolodny, How Does Coherence Matter?
• Broome, Normative Requirements
• Ramsey, Truth & Probability
• Buchak, Belief, Credence, and Norms
• Steinberger, Explosion and the Normativity of Logic
• Kaplan, Coming to Terms with our Human Fallibility: Christensen on the Preface
• 09/16/14: Full Belief & Partial Belief II
• Required Readings
  • Leitgeb, The Stability Theory of Belief
  • Fitelson, Belief and Credence: The View from Naive Epistemic Utility Theory
• Optional Background Readings (in addition to those from week 1 above)
  • Lin & Kelly, A Geo-logical Solution to the Lottery Paradox, with Applications to Nonmonotonic Logic
  • Lin & Kelly, Propositional Reasoning that Tracks Probabilistic Reasoning
  • Lin & Kelly, Comment on Leitgeb’s Stability Theory of Belief
  • Makinson, Outclassing Indices and the Problem of Coordinating Plain Belief with Probability
  • Weisberg, Varieties of Bayesianism (nice, general background article)
  • Hansson, Decision Theory: A Brief Introduction (good intro. to decision theory)
• 09/23/14: Guest seminar leader Adam Elga
  • Required Readings
    • Elga and Rayo, Fragmentation and information access (password protected — for seminar participants only)
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Schwitzgebel, Acting Contrary to Our Professed Beliefs, or The Gulf Between Occurrent Judgment and Dispositional Belief
    • Stalnaker, The problem of logical omniscience I
• 09/30/14: Guest seminar leader Jane Friedman
  • Required Readings
    • Friedman, Why Suspend Judging?
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Friedman, Suspended Judgment
    • Friedman, Question-Directed Attitudes
• 10/07/14: Guest seminar leader Laurie Paul
  • Required Readings
    • Paul, Decision Making [Afterword of Transformative Experience]
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Paul, Chapters 1-4 of Transformative Experience (password protected — for seminar participants only — same password as above)
• 10/14/14: Guest seminar leader Fabrizio Cariani
  • Required Readings
    • Dietrich & List, From Degrees of Belief to Beliefs: Lessons from Judgment-Aggregation Theory [sections 1 & 2]
    • Cariani, Local Supermajorities
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Briggs, Cariani, Easwaran, Fitelson, Individual Coherence and Group Coherence
    • Chandler, Acceptance, Aggregation and Scoring Rules
• 10/21/14: No meeting this week (Branden will be in Tilburg)
• 10/28/14: Guest seminar leader Jonathan Weisberg
  • Required Readings
    • Weisberg, Belief in Psyontology (complete presentation with references)
    • Ross and Schroeder, Belief, Credence, and Pragmatic Encroachment
    • Nagel, Epistemic Anxiety and Adaptive Invariantism
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Payne and Bettman, Walking with the Scarecrow: The Information-processing Approach to Decision Research
    • Kruglanski and Webster (Nelson), Motivated Closing of the Mind: "Seizing" and "Freezing"
    • Dunlosky and Bjork, The Integrated Nature of Metamemory and Memory
    • Weisberg, Knowledge in Action
• 11/04/14: Guest seminar leader Dimitri Gallow
  • Required Readings
    • Gallow, How to Learn from Theory-Dependent Evidence; or Commutativity and Holism: A Solution for Conditionalizers
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Weisberg, Commutativity or Holism? A Dilemma for Conditionalizers
    • Huber, For True Conditionalizers Weisberg’s Paradox is a False Alarm
• 11/11/14: Guest seminar leader Jonathan Vogel
  • Required Readings
    • Vogel, Explanation, Truth, and the External World
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Vogel, E&~H
    • Vogel, Skepticism and Structuralism
• 11/18/14: Guest seminar leader Susanna Rinard
  • Required Readings
    • Rinard, A Better Probabilistic Model of Belief
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Elga, Subjective Probabilities Should be Sharp
    • Rinard, A Decision Theory for Imprecise Credences
• 11/25/14: Guest seminar leader Dan Greco
  • Required Readings
    • Greco, Cognitive Mobile Homes
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Christensen, Confirmational Holism and Bayesian Epistemology
    • Greco, Could KK be OK?
• 12/02/14: Guest seminar leader Sophie Horowitz
  • Required Readings
    • Horowitz, Credences, Truth, and Educated Guesses
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Gibbard, Rational Credence and the Value of Truth
• 12/09/14: Guest seminar leader Miriam Schoenfield
  • Required Readings
    • Schoenfield, An Accuracy Based Approach to Higher Order Evidence
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Greaves & Wallace, Justifying Conditionalization: Conditionalization Maximizes Expected
      Epistemic Utility
    • Schoenfield, The Accuracy and Rationality of Imprecise Credences
• 12/11/14 (Make-up meeting): Guest seminar leaders Tamar Lando & Justin Bledin
  • Required Readings
    • Bledin & Lando, Closure and Epistemic Modals
  • Optional Background Readings
    • Yalcin, Epistemic Modals
    • Hawthorne, Rothschild and Spectre, Belief is Weak