Showing papers by "Isaac Levi published in 1977"

Subjunctives, dispositions and chances

Abstract: X says ‘It is probable that h’ and Y says ‘It is improbable that h’. No doubt X and Y disagree in some ways. In particular, they disagree in the way they evaluate h with respect to credal (or personal) probability to be used in practical deliberation and scientific inquiry in computing expectations.

Four Types of Ignorance

Abstract: jlCCORDING to his own lights, X is ignorant of the truth value of h if and only if both the ruth and falsity of are serious possibilities from his po nt of view. Thus experiment X is ignorant concern ng the superiority of therapy A ov therapy whe it is p ssible as far as e knows hat rapy A i supe ior and it a so possible th t it i ot. lte a ively tat d, X is ignorant if he suspends judgm n conc ning the truth values of these alternatives.

Epistemic Utility and the Evaluation of Experiments

Abstract: 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 which Goosens' argument is based. In particular, I demonstrate that my theory does not violate the requirement that an "ideal experiment" be no worse than any alternative experiment.