Arguably, using Bayesianism to evaluate schools of epistemology (which may not be Bayesian) is a type error.
If it’s a type error is that because bayesianism’s domain does not extend to all knowledge?
If bayesianism doesn’t cover all knowledge that would make it an incomplete epistemology. This is problematic for a few reasons (so I’m not sure this is what you mean); one is that it becomes unreliable for any knowledge because it cannot tell you what you are missing or how that missing part is involved in meaningful judgements.
If bayesianism does cover all knowledge than either epistemology (and bayesianism) seemingly doesn’t count as knowledge or we have a contradiction.
Or maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean?
Personally, I’ve long thought that an epistemology should be able to evaluate itself (and other epistemic schools/ideas). This belief was quite formative for me and is one reason that I gravitated to fallibilism (broadly) since it seemed like any ‘true’ theory of epistemology would have this quality.
While I’m asking this to demonstrate that bad priors and naivety are the default state, I’m also genuinely interested in the answer.
It’s not quite clear to me what you’re getting at.
All bayesian answers to the original question (that I’ve seen in this thread) assume the bayesian already has good priors and isn’t naive. But that isn’t how we find ourselves in the world. We start from bad priors (random or worse) and naivety. So, while I agree real-world bayesians can avoid being scammed, I am not sure that bayesianism avoids it since the way of avoiding it is to have already obtained the knowledge you need to avoid it. I’m trying to see if there’s something more fundamental. That real-world bayesians don’t get scammed isn’t really a surprise, one doesn’t need a correct understanding of epistemology to reason about the world—e.g., we were able to do science and make progress before we understood science—but if we are concerned about whether bayesianism is correct or not, then it does matter.
I’m interested in how these kinds of issues (novel unintuitive systems) are dealt with when one doesn’t have obvious crutches like a known good state to start from.
The reason for asking about using Bayesianism to evaluate schools of epistemology is because epistemology is notoriously hard to make progress in. I was hoping that the idea we start with bad priors and naivety was more obvious in this context.
Hope that helps explain what I’m getting at.
Sorry for the delayed replay. My comments are being held for review.
epistemology is not complete as a project! I think meta-epistemology in particular is still pretty confusing. i suspect that the pragmatically right approach still involves Bayesian updating, because Bayesian updating is just correct in many situations.
I think you’re using the word “Bayesian” to mean “someone who believes all knowledge can be derived from Bayesian updating” and this is not really standard. There’s a lot of types of Bayesian, e.g. most Bayesians just favor Bayesian statistical methods. The claim that we ought to use Bayesian updating is probably consistent with many epistemologies.
Now you’re arguing that you have to learn to not trust mail scams. But this is true whether or not youre Bayesian, for standard no free lunch reasons. Bayesianism tells you how to work with the knowledge that you have. I feel like you’re being uncharitable here.
If it’s a type error is that because bayesianism’s domain does not extend to all knowledge?
If bayesianism doesn’t cover all knowledge that would make it an incomplete epistemology. This is problematic for a few reasons (so I’m not sure this is what you mean); one is that it becomes unreliable for any knowledge because it cannot tell you what you are missing or how that missing part is involved in meaningful judgements.
If bayesianism does cover all knowledge than either epistemology (and bayesianism) seemingly doesn’t count as knowledge or we have a contradiction.
Or maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean?
Personally, I’ve long thought that an epistemology should be able to evaluate itself (and other epistemic schools/ideas). This belief was quite formative for me and is one reason that I gravitated to fallibilism (broadly) since it seemed like any ‘true’ theory of epistemology would have this quality.
All bayesian answers to the original question (that I’ve seen in this thread) assume the bayesian already has good priors and isn’t naive. But that isn’t how we find ourselves in the world. We start from bad priors (random or worse) and naivety. So, while I agree real-world bayesians can avoid being scammed, I am not sure that bayesianism avoids it since the way of avoiding it is to have already obtained the knowledge you need to avoid it. I’m trying to see if there’s something more fundamental. That real-world bayesians don’t get scammed isn’t really a surprise, one doesn’t need a correct understanding of epistemology to reason about the world—e.g., we were able to do science and make progress before we understood science—but if we are concerned about whether bayesianism is correct or not, then it does matter.
I’m interested in how these kinds of issues (novel unintuitive systems) are dealt with when one doesn’t have obvious crutches like a known good state to start from.
The reason for asking about using Bayesianism to evaluate schools of epistemology is because epistemology is notoriously hard to make progress in. I was hoping that the idea we start with bad priors and naivety was more obvious in this context.
Hope that helps explain what I’m getting at.
Sorry for the delayed replay. My comments are being held for review.
epistemology is not complete as a project! I think meta-epistemology in particular is still pretty confusing. i suspect that the pragmatically right approach still involves Bayesian updating, because Bayesian updating is just correct in many situations.
I think you’re using the word “Bayesian” to mean “someone who believes all knowledge can be derived from Bayesian updating” and this is not really standard. There’s a lot of types of Bayesian, e.g. most Bayesians just favor Bayesian statistical methods. The claim that we ought to use Bayesian updating is probably consistent with many epistemologies.
Now you’re arguing that you have to learn to not trust mail scams. But this is true whether or not youre Bayesian, for standard no free lunch reasons. Bayesianism tells you how to work with the knowledge that you have. I feel like you’re being uncharitable here.