Isaac Levi
Biographic Data
| ID | 3866162 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Isaac Levi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Isaac |
| FAMILY NAME | Levi |
| SIGNATURE | LEVI I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Columbia University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 63 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 148 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 63 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1896 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Deductive closure
Probability logic, logical probability, and inductive support
Identity and Conflict
carry many different identities. X may be a US citizen, a Democrat, a secular humanist, a father, a husband, a grandfather, bureaucrat, and a great many other things.1 As Sen recognizes, to say that all agents carry many different identities should not be equated with the banal observation that each of us possesses many different characteristics at a given time and over time. An agent identifies only with some of the groups with whom the agent sh…
Symposium on “Cognition and Rationality: Part I” Minimal rationality
Contraction: On the Decision-Theoretical Origins of Minimal Change and Entrenchment
Decisions and Revisions: Philosophical Essays on Knowledge and Value
Howard Stein
Carol Rovane
List and Pettit
Gaifman
Amartya Sen
Seidenfeld
Jaakko Hintikka
Schick
Mild contraction: Evaluating Loss of Information Due to Loss of Belief
Isaac Levi's new book develops further his pioneering work in formal epistemology, focusing on the problem of belief contraction, or how rationally to relinquish old beliefs. Levi offers the most penetrating analysis to date of this key question in epistemology, offering a completely new solution and explaining its relation to his earlier proposals. He mounts an argument in favour of the thesis that contracting a state of belief by giving up spec…
Contracting From Epistemic Hell is Routine
Money Pumps and Diachronic Books
The idea that rational agents should have acyclic preferences and should obey conditionalization has been defended on the grounds that otherwise an agent is threatened with becoming a “money pump.” This essay argues that such arguments fail to prove their claims
The Covenant of Reason
Value Commitments, Value Conflict, and the Separability of Belief and Value
Leeds (1990) levels an objection against the criterion of rational choice I have proposed (Levi 1997, Ch. 6; 1980; 1986), pointing out that the criterion is sensitive to the way possible consequences are partitioned. Seidenfeld, Kadane and Schervish (1989) call into question the defense of the cross product rule by appeal to Pareto Unanimity Principles that I had invoked in my 1986. I offer clarifications of my proposals showing that the differen…
Prediction, Bayesian Deliberation and Correlated Equilibrium
Two notions of epistemic validity: Epistemic models for Ramsey's conditionals
Cognitive Value and the Advancement of Science
Undercutting and the Ramsey test for conditionals
The Fixation of Belief and its Undoing: Changing Beliefs through Inquiry
The Fixation of Belief and Its Undoing
On the Seriousness of Mistakes
Several authors have recently contended that modern statistical theory provides a powerful argument in favor of the view that if scientists accept or reject hypotheses at all they do so only in a behavioral sense—i.e., in a sense which reduces “accepting P ” to “acting on the basis of P relative to an objective O ”. In this paper, the argument from statistics in favor of a behavioral view is outlined; an interpretation of two statistical procedur…
Imprecision and Indeterminacy in Probability Judgment
Bayesians often confuse insistence that probability judgment ought to be indeterminate (which is incompatible with Bayesian ideals) with recognition of the presence of imprecision in the determination or measurement of personal probabilities (which is compatible with these ideals). The confusion is discussed and illustrated by remarks in a recent essay by R. C. Jeffrey
Probability Kinematics
Subjunctives, dispositions and chances
Iteration of conditionals and the Ramsey test
Hard Choices: Decision Making under Unresolved Conflict
It is a commonplace that in making decisions agents often have to juggle competing values, and that no choice will maximise satisfaction of them all. However, the prevailing account of these cases assumes that there is always a single ranking of the agent's values, and therefore no unresolvable conflict between them. Isaac Levi denies this assumption, arguing that agents often must choose without having balanced their different values and that to…
Information and inference
Direct Inference and Confirmational Conditionalization
The article responds to some of the points raised by B. van Fraassen concerning probability kinematics and direct inference within the framework of the approach to the revision of probability judgment proposed by Levi in The Enterprise of Knowledge. In particular, the critical importance of the question of direct inference is emphasized and explained
Ignorance, probability and rational choice
Consensus as shared agreement and outcome of inquiry
Are statistical hypotheses covering laws
Value Commitments, Value Conflict, and the Separability of Belief and Value
Leeds (1990) levels an objection against the criterion of rational choice I have proposed (Levi 1997, Ch. 6; 1980; 1986), pointing out that the criterion is sensitive to the way possible consequences are partitioned. Seidenfeld, Kadane and Schervish (1989) call into question the defense of the cross product rule by appeal to Pareto Unanimity Principles that I had invoked in my 1986. I offer clarifications of my proposals showing that the differen…
Two notions of epistemic validity: Epistemic models for Ramsey's conditionals
Money Pumps and Diachronic Books
The idea that rational agents should have acyclic preferences and should obey conditionalization has been defended on the grounds that otherwise an agent is threatened with becoming a “money pump.” This essay argues that such arguments fail to prove their claims
The Covenant of Reason
The Fixation of Belief and Its Undoing
Estimation and error free information
Epicycles
Illusions About Uncertainty
Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability
The Matter of Chance
Probability logic, logical probability, and inductive support
List and Pettit
Jaakko Hintikka
If Jones Only Knew More
La clôture du Talmud et les Saboraïm
Lévi Isaac. La clôture du Talmud et les Saboraïm. In: Revue des études juives, tome 33, n°65, juillet-septembre 1896. pp. 1-17
On the Seriousness of Mistakes
Several authors have recently contended that modern statistical theory provides a powerful argument in favor of the view that if scientists accept or reject hypotheses at all they do so only in a behavioral sense—i.e., in a sense which reduces “accepting P ” to “acting on the basis of P relative to an objective O ”. In this paper, the argument from statistics in favor of a behavioral view is outlined; an interpretation of two statistical procedur…
Recent work in probability and induction (review article)
Information and inference
Probability Kinematics
Are statistical hypotheses covering laws
Confirmation, linguistic invariance, and conceptual innovation
Gambling with Truth: An Essay on Induction and the Aims of Science
If Jones Only Knew More
Truth, Content, and Ties
The Matter of Chance
On Indeterminate Probabilities
Some men disclaim certainty about anything. I am certain that they deceive themselves. Be that as it may, only the arrogant and foolish maintain that they are certain about everything. It is appropriate, therefore, to consider how judgments of uncertainty discriminate between hypotheses with respect to grades of uncertainty, probability, belief, or credence. Discriminations of this sort are relevant to the conduct of deliberations aimed at making…
Subjunctives, dispositions and chances
Epistemic Utility and the Evaluation of Experiments
William K. Goosens claims to show that my account of epistemic utility runs into serious difficulties when confronted with certain attractive conditions of adequacy for the evaluation of experiments. I show that those conditions of adequacy which are, indeed, acceptable to both of us are satisfied by the procedures for evaluating experiments mandated by combining my theory of epistemic utilities with the approach to evaluating experiments on whic…
Support and Surprise: L. J. Cohen's View of Inductive Probability
The Enterprise of knowledge: An Essay on Knowledge, Credal Probability, and Chance
Incognizables
Direct Inference and Confirmational Conditionalization
The article responds to some of the points raised by B. van Fraassen concerning probability kinematics and direct inference within the framework of the approach to the revision of probability judgment proposed by Levi in The Enterprise of Knowledge. In particular, the critical importance of the question of direct inference is emphasized and explained
Liberty and welfare
According to A. K. Sen, liberalism (or ‘libertarianism’ as he now prefers to call it1) permits each individual in society ‘the freedom to determine at least one social choice, for example having his own walls pink rather than white, other things remaining the same for him and the rest of society’.
Ignorance, probability and rational choice
Theory and Evidence
Kyburg on Random Designators
To ground judgments of credal probability on knowledge of chance via direct inference, one should appeal to the information about chances available relative to the most specific description known to be true of the trial event. Thus, to obtain a judgment of credal probability concerning the hypothesis that coin a landed heads at t given that it is known that at t it is known that a was tossed by Levi in 728 Philosophy Hall, the pertinent knowledge…
Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability
The Enterprise of Knowledge: An Essay on Knowledge, Credal Probability, and Chance
Decisions and Revisions: Philosophical Essays on Knowledge and Value
This is a collection of Isaac Levi's philosophical papers. Over the period represented by the work here, Professor Levi has developed an interrelated set of views, in the tradition of Peirce and Dewey, on epistemology and the philosophy of science and social science. This focus has been on the problem of induction and the growth of knowledge, the foundations of probability and the theory of rational decision-making. His most important essays in t…
Philosophy (58 works) · Epistemology (55 works) · Philosophy of science (29 works) · Computer Science (25 works) · Metaphysics (25 works) · Philosophy of language (24 works) · Mathematics (22 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (19 works) · Mathematical economics (16 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (13 works)