The first Thursday Seminar for the semester will be given by Nevin Climenhaga (ACU), from 3:30-5:30PM in Coombs Extension LT 1.04. The talk will be preceded by a pre-talk for the graduate students at 1:30PM in the Benjamin Library, and followed by drinks and dinner. Please let me Justin know, at your earliest convenience, if you would like to come to dinner. You will find the title and abstract below.

Title: The Structure of Epistemic Probabilities

Abstract: The epistemic probability of A given B is the degree to which B evidentially supports A. This paper is a first step in answering the question of what determines the values of epistemic probabilities. I break down this question into two parts: the structural question and the substantive question. Just as an object’s weight is determined by its mass and gravitational acceleration, some probabilities are determined by other, more basic ones. The structural question asks what probabilities are not determined in this way—these are the basic probabilities which determine values for all other probabilities. The substantive question asks how the values of these basic probabilities are determined.

I defend an answer to the structural question on which basic probabilities are the probabilities of atomic propositions conditional on potential direct explanations. I defend this against the view, implicit in orthodox mathematical probability theory, that basic probabilities are the unconditional probabilities of complete worlds. I then apply my answer to the structural question to clear up common confusions in expositions of Bayesianism and shed light on the so-called “problem of the priors.”