How to Learn from Theory-Dependent Evidence; or Commutativity and Holism: A Solution for Conditionalizers

Abstract

Weisberg ([2009]) provides an argument that neither conditionalization nor Jeffrey conditionalization is capable of accommodating the holist’s claim that beliefs acquired directly from experience can suffer undercutting defeat. I diagnose this failure as stemming from the fact that neither conditionalization nor Jeffrey conditionalization give any advice about how to rationally respond to theory-dependent evidence, and I propose a novel updating procedure that does tell us how to respond to evidence like this. This holistic updating rule yields conditionalization as a special case in which our evidence is entirely theory independent. 1 Introduction 2 Conditionalization 3 Holism and Conditionalization 4 A Holistic Update 5 HCondi and Dutch Books 6 Commutativity and Learning about Background Theories 6.1 Commutativity 6.2 Learning about background theories 7 In Summation

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