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Robin Hanson's avatar

Nicholas, I hope I will eventually figure out what you mean by "reason based epistemology." You seem to imply that it, in contrast to stark Bayesianism, is not relativist.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

The reason it’s not simply a terminological issue is precisely because of the criticism, adverted to in Nick B’s (c), that Bayesians frequently want to make of reason based epistemology (and I agree that it is a significant point to make). But you can’t have it both ways. Either you abjure reason based epistemology altogether, put up with whatever account of rational belief you can manage on that basis, and can advance the criticism as a problem your epistemology avoids, or admit elements of reason based epistemology and accept that the criticism is a problem that you too face. I think the choice is stark here, and you can either be a Normative Bayesian or you can be a reason based epistemologist (some of whom, like me, think that insights from formal methods are important but require carefully thought out application). I might be wrong about this, but I think you two think there’s a position in between. Currently, Normative Bayesianism is a relativist position because there is not a solution to the problem of the priors, so if you want to be a non-relativist Normative Bayesian that problem has to be solved Bayesianly. Of course, Aumann’s and Robin’s papers are interesting steps in that direction, so I’m not saying that the non-relativist Normative Bayesian programme is a degenerating one.

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