The standard Bayesian story goes something like this: probabilities represent a rational agent's degrees of belief. When the agent learns something new she conditions on it, meaning that she updates her probabilities according to Bayes' rule. Importantly, the interpretation of the probability function is that it represents the agent's degrees of belief about how likely… Continue reading Paper Review: New Semantics for Bayesian Inference: The Interpretive Problem
Tag: philosophy of science
Paper Review: The Transmission Sense of Information
We're taught in school something like the following: DNA is the blueprint for an organism. We can sharpen up this kind of idea using ideas from information theory. In particular, biologists tend to say things like "DNA transmits information" or "DNA sequences are coded instructions". However, some philosophers of biology have claimed that when biologists… Continue reading Paper Review: The Transmission Sense of Information
Paper Review: Subjective Probability and the Theory of Games: Comments on Kadane and Larkey’s Paper
Last week I reviewed Kadane and Larkey's paper. In short, the main claim of their paper was that since the solution concepts used in game theory do not depend on the beliefs of the players they are irrelevant to game theory. Haranyi wrote a response to this paper, which it what I will review today.… Continue reading Paper Review: Subjective Probability and the Theory of Games: Comments on Kadane and Larkey’s Paper
Paper Review: The Evolution of Social Norms
I write a lot on this blog about rationality. Not only is it interesting in its own right, but the claim that we are rational creatures has been at the center of western philosophy for millennia, even when under attack. However, regardless of whether or not one thinks we are rational beings, there is one… Continue reading Paper Review: The Evolution of Social Norms
Paper Review: Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics
One of the more interesting things I've learned in my life is that our best account of epistemology is that rational beliefs are governed by the probability axioms. Furthermore, there is a specific way in a rational agent updates her beliefs given new evidence---Bayesian conditionalization. Of course there is disagreement on this. At this point… Continue reading Paper Review: Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics
Paper Review: The Idea of a Scientific Philosophy
Often when someone learns I am studying philosophy of science I get a confused look in response. Even worse is when I use the term mathematical philosophy (see here, the top of page 1 for my favourite definition of mathematical philosophy), which often gets the response "math and philosophy, aren't those opposites?!" I've developed a… Continue reading Paper Review: The Idea of a Scientific Philosophy
Paper Review: Unified dynamics for microscopic and macroscopic systems
In the wake of the quantum measurement problem there is a constellation of competing theories of quantum mechanics. Any adequate solution to the measurement problem must make predictions that agree with the observed quantum statistics. In particular, the theory must explain why small particles exhibit counter-intuitive behaviour and why this seems to go away at… Continue reading Paper Review: Unified dynamics for microscopic and macroscopic systems
Paper Review: Subject and Object
One way to think about the quantum measurement is to think about the conflict between subjective and objective probability. We looked at some of Everett's earlier thoughts along these lines last week. As I mentioned in that post, later on in one version of his thesis he provided a much cleaner account of the measurement… Continue reading Paper Review: Subject and Object
Paper Review: Objective versus Subjective Probability
Hugh Everett III proposed his many worlds (or as he preferred to call it, relative state) formulation of quantum mechanics back in the mid 50s in order to solve the quantum measurement problem. Although it took a while for the theory to gain traction, it (or some form of it) is one of the more… Continue reading Paper Review: Objective versus Subjective Probability
Paper Review: The measurement theory of Everett and de Broglie’s pilot wave
I've written before on this blog about quantum mechanics. We've looked at a questionable interpretation of a recent experiment, the way in which quantum mechanics is radically nonlocal, and certain theoretical constructs needed for the thought experiments used in physics. One of the main reasons why quantum physics fascinates people is because the phenomenon themselves… Continue reading Paper Review: The measurement theory of Everett and de Broglie’s pilot wave
The Crow's Nest 