Our beliefs come in degrees. I'm 70% confident it will rain tomorrow, and 0.001% sure my lottery ticket will win. What's more, we think these degrees of belief should abide by certain principles if they are to be rational. For instance, you shouldn't believe that a person's taller than 6ft more strongly than you believe that they're taller than 5ft, since the former entails the latter. In Dutch Book arguments, we try to establish the principles of rationality for degrees of belief by appealing to their role in guiding decisions. In particular, we show that degrees of belief that don't satisfy the principles will always guide action in some way that is bad or undesirable. In this Element, we present Dutch Book arguments for the principles of Probabilism, Conditionalization, and the Reflection Principle, among others, and we formulate and consider the most serious objections to them.
This Element establishes the principles of rationality for degrees of belief by appealing to their role in guiding decisions.Reviews'If the book is of interest to academics across disciplines, it may also serve well those who enjoy leisurely gambling, and possibly future bookies.' Luc Lichtsteiner, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics
Book InformationISBN 9781108713443
Author Richard PettigrewFormat Paperback
Page Count 75
Imprint Cambridge University PressPublisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 160g
Dimensions(mm) 230mm * 150mm * 10mm