Degrees of Belief [Paperback]

This anthology is the first book to give a balanced overview of the competing theories of degrees of belief. It also explicitly relates these debates to more traditional concerns of the philosophy of language and mind and epistemic logic.

Belief and Degrees of Belief.- Belief and Degrees of Belief.- Plain Belief and Degrees of Belief.- Beliefs, Degrees of Belief, and the Lockean Thesis.- The Lockean Thesis and the Logic of Belief.- Partial Belief and Flat-Out Belief.- What Laws Should Degrees of Belief Obey?.- Epistemic Probability and Coherent Degrees of Belief.- Non-Additive Degrees of Belief.- Accepted Beliefs, Revision and Bipolarity in the Possibilistic Framework.- A Survey of Ranking Theory.- Arguments ForOr AgainstProbabilism?.- Diachronic Coherence and Radical Probabilism.- Accuracy and Coherence: Prospects for an Alethic Epistemology of Partial Belief.- Logical Approaches.- Degrees All the Way Down: Beliefs, Non-Beliefs and Disbeliefs.- Levels of Belief in Nonmonotonic Reasoning.

From the reviews:

Degrees of Belief is a strong collection of essays distinguished by its inclusion of an unusually wide array of approaches to understanding its subject. & the book is best suited for formally proficient advanced students (graduate or upper-level undergraduate) or professionals seeking to explore other approaches to degree of belief than the ones in which they currently work. & Degrees of Belief is an excellent springboard for exploring the many approaches to degrees of belief currently being investigated in the literature. (Lyle Zynda, Metascience, Vol. 21, 2012)

This is a fascinating collection that brings together issues in traditional and formal epistemology, and succeeds in posing new challenges for both. Especially notable are the arguments for and against attempted justification of probability representations of opinion, with special reference to self-locating beliefs and rules for updating.ló{