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A PUZZLE ABOUT EXPERTS, EVIDENTIAL SCREENING-OFF AND CONDITIONALIZATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2018

Abstract

I present a puzzle about the epistemic role beliefs about experts' beliefs play in a rational agent's system of beliefs. It is shown that accepting the claim that an expert's degree of belief in a proposition, A, screens off the evidential support another proposition, B, gives to A in case the expert knows and is certain about whether B is true, leads in some cases to highly unintuitive conclusions. I suggest a solution to the puzzle according to which evidential screening off is rejected, but show that the price of this solution is either giving up on the mere idea of deferring to expert's opinion or giving up on Bayesian conditionalization.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

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References

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