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ACCURACY UNCOMPOSED: AGAINST CALIBRATIONISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2017

B. A. Levinstein
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Abstract

Pettigrew offers new axiomatic constraints on legitimate measures of inaccuracy. His axiom called ‘Decomposition’ stipulates that legitimate measures of inaccuracy evaluate a credence function in part based on its level of calibration at a world. I argue that if calibration is valuable, as Pettigrew claims, then this fact is an explanandum for accuracy-first epistemologists, not an explanans, for three reasons. First, the intuitive case for the importance of calibration isn't as strong as Pettigrew believes. Second, calibration is a perniciously global property that both contravenes Pettigrew's own views about the nature of credence functions themselves and undercuts the achievements and ambitions of accuracy-first epistemology. Finally, Decomposition introduces a new kind of value compatible with but separate from accuracy-proper in violation of Pettigrew's alethic monism.

Type
Symposium: Pettigrew's Accuracy and the Laws of Credence
Information
Episteme , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 59 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

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