Bayesian

We can think of belief as an all-or-nothing affair. For example, I believe that I am alive, and I don’t believe that I am a historian of the Mongol Empire. However, often we want to make distinctions between how strongly we believe or disbelieve something. I strongly believe that I am alive, am fairly confident that I will stay alive until my next conference presentation, less confident that the presentation will go well, and strongly disbelieve that its topic will concern the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire. The idea that beliefs can come in different strengths is a central idea behind Bayesian epistemology. Such strengths are called degrees of belief, or credences. Bayesian epistemologists study norms governing degrees of beliefs, including how one’s degrees of belief ought to change in response to a varying body of evidence. Bayesian epistemology has a long history. Some of its core ideas can be identified in Bayes’ (1763) seminal paper in statistics (Earman 1992: ch. 1), with applications that are now very influential in many areas of philosophy and of science.