What Evidence Do You Have

Bibliographic Data

ID8399080
AuthorsRam Neta (0000-0002-0903-9468, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume59
Issue1
Pages89-119
Publication date2008-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0882 • E-ISSN: 1464-3537
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/bjps/axn003
OpenAlexW2113397006
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited10

Your evidence constrains your rational degrees of confidence both locally and globally. On the one hand, particular bits of evidence can boost or diminish your rational degree of confidence in various hypotheses, relative to your background information. On the other hand, epistemic rationality requires that, for any hypothesis h, your confidence in h is proportional to the support that h receives from your total evidence. Why is it that your evidence has these two epistemic powers? I argue that various proposed accounts of what it is for something to be an element of your evidence set cannot answer this question. I then propose an alternative account of what it is for something to be an element of your evidence set. 1. Introduction2. The elements of one's evidence set are propositions3. Which kinds of propositions are in one's evidence set?3.1. Doxastic accounts of evidence3.2. Non-doxastic accounts of evidence4. Elaborating and defending the LIE

Doxastic logic · Element (criminal law) · Epistemology · Mathematical economics · Political science · Rationality · Set (abstract data type) · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science