Probabilities and health risks: a qualitative approach

Health risks, defined in terms of the probability that an individual will suffer a particular type of adverse health event within a given time period, can be understood as referencing either natural entities or complex patterns of belief which incorporate the observer's values and knowledge, the position adopted in the present paper. The subjectivity inherent in judgements about adversity and time frames can be easily recognised, but social scientists have tended to accept uncritically the objectivity of probability. Most commonly in health risk analysis, the term probability refers to rates established by induction, and so requires the definition of a numerator and denominator. Depending upon their specification, many probabilities may be reasonably postulated for the same event, and individuals may change their risks by deciding to seek or avoid information. These apparent absurdities can be understood if probability is conceptualised as the projection of expectation onto the external world. Probabilities based on induction from observed frequencies provide glimpses of the future at the price of acceptance of the simplifying heuristic that statistics derived from aggregate groups can be validly attributed to individuals within them. The paper illustrates four implications of this conceptualisation of probability with qualitative data from a variety of sources, particularly a study of genetic counselling for pregnant women in a U.K. hospital. Firstly, the official selection of a specific probability heuristic reflects organisational constraints and values as well as predictive optimisation. Secondly, professionals and service users must work to maintain the facticity of an established heuristic in the face of alternatives. Thirdly, individuals, both lay and professional, manage probabilistic information in ways which support their strategic objectives. Fourthly, predictively sub-optimum schema, for example the idea of AIDS as a gay plague, may be selected because they match prevailing social value systems

An externalist decision theory for a pragmatic epistemology

In recent years, some epistemologists have argued that practical factors can make the difference between knowledge and mere true belief. While proponents of this pragmatic thesis have proposed necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge, it is striking that they have failed to address Gettier cases. As a result, the proposed analyses of knowledge are either lacking explanatory power or susceptible to counterexamples. Gettier cases are also worth reflecting on because they raise foundational questions for the pragmatist. Underlying these challenges is the fact that pragmatic epistemologies not only rely upon normative theories of rational choice but also require externalist standards to rule out epistemic luck. Unfortunately, we lack adequate externalist theories of rational choice. In response, I address these foundational challenges by offering the outlines of an externalist decision theory. While this task is an ambitious one that I cannot hope to complete, I survey the outlines of a decision-theoretic framework on which a richer pragmatic epistemology can be developed. My hope is that this framework opens up new avenues of exploration for the pragmatic epistemologist

From Data to Decision: The Three Elements of Policymaking Illustrated by The Case of Global Warming

This article studies the process from data acquisition to policy decisions exemplified by studying an optimum policy on global warming. Policymakers must be reasonably skeptical before proposing remedies to curb warming, but policymakers cannot await the final proof of any proposal’s merit. Balancing evidence with doubt requires an informed approach, in which information is converted to knowledge and used to illuminate and compare human welfare connected to different scenarios. This article suggests, normatively, three essential elements for data based policies: evidence, consequence, and strategy. The presented framework for data based policymaking combines results from decision theory, economics, and political theory.data based, decision making, global warming, loss function, policymaking, social welfare, strategy, type-I error

Disjunctive antecedent conditionals

Disjunctive antecedent conditionals —conditionals of the form if A or B, C—sometimes seem to entail both of their simplifications and sometimes seem not to. I argue that this behavior reveals a genuine ambiguity in DACs. Along the way, I discuss a new observation about the role of focal stress in distinguishing the two interpretations of DACs. I propose a new theory, according to which the surface form of a DAC underdetermines its logical form: on one possible logical form, if A or B, C does entail both of its simplifications, while on the other, it does not

Explanation = Unification? A New Criticism of Friedman’s Theory and a Reply to an Old One

According to Michael Friedman’s theory of explanation, a law X explains laws Y1, Y2, …, Yn precisely when X unifies the Y’s, where unification is understood in terms of reducing the number of independently acceptable laws. Philip Kitcher criticized Friedman’s theory but did not analyze the concept of independent acceptability. Here we show that Kitcher’s objection can be met by modifying an element in Friedman’s account. In addition, we argue that there are serious objections to the use that Friedman makes of the concept of independent acceptability

When Conciliation Frustrates the Epistemic Priorities of Groups

Our aim in this chapter is to draw attention to what we see as a disturbing feature of conciliationist views of disagreement. Roughly put, the trouble is that conciliatory responses to in-group disagreement can lead to the frustration of a group's epistemic priorities: that is, the group's favoured trade-off between the "Jamesian goals" of truth-seeking and error-avoidance. We show how this problem can arise within a simple belief aggregation framework, and draw some general lessons about when the problem is most pronounced. We close with a tentative proposal for how to solve the problem raised without rejecting conciliationism

Soros’s Reflexivity Concept in a Complex World: Cauchy Distributions, Rational Expectations, and Rational Addiction

George Soros makes an important analytical contribution to understanding the concept of reflexivity in social science by explaining reflexivity in terms of how his cognitive and manipulative causal functions are connected to one another by a pair of feedback loops (Soros, 2013). Fallibility, reflexivity and the human uncertainty principle. Here I put aside the issue of how the natural sciences and social sciences are related, an issue he discusses, and focus on how his thinking applies in economics. I argue that standard economics assumes a ‘classical’ view of the world in which knowledge and action are independent, but that we live in a complex reflexive world in which knowledge and action are interdependent. I argue that Soros\u27s view provides a reflexivity critique of the efficient market hypothesis seen as depending on untenable claims about the nature of random phenomena and the nature of economic agents. Regarding the former, I develop this critique in terms of Cauchy distributions; regarding the latter I develop it in terms of rational expectations and rational addiction reasoning