Epistemic values and the value of learning

Abstract

In addition to purely practical values, cognitive values also figure into scientific deliberations. One way of introducing cognitive values is to consider the cognitive value that accrues to the act of accepting a hypothesis. Although such values may have a role to play, such a role does not exhaust the significance of cognitive values in scientific decision-making. This paper makes a plea for consideration of epistemic value-that is, value attaching to a state of belief-and defends the notion of cognitive epistemic value against some criticisms that have been raised. A stability requirement for epistemic value functions is argued for on the basis of considerations of diachronic coherence. This stability requirement is sufficient to obtain the Value of Learning Theorem, which says that the expected utility of cost-free learning cannot be negative. This holds also for cognitive epistemic values, provided that the stability requirement is met.

Deference Done Better

“…10 Here and throughout we leave implicit the restriction that the conditional probability is well-defined. 11 Reflection has also been proposed as specifying the conditions under which shifting opinions from 𝜋 to 𝑃 counts as a "genuine learning experience" (Jeffrey 1988;Graves 1989;Skyrms 1990Skyrms , 1997Myrvold 2012;Huttegger 2013Huttegger , 2014Huttegger , 2017. The above suggests that this is too demanding, since one can surely regard the shift to some new opinions as a genuine learning experience even when those new opinions are modest (i.e., in this context, less than perfectly introspective).…”

“…15 Value is related to a substantial literature arising out of Good (1967) about the conditions under which we should obtain additional information before deciding (e.g. Blackwell 1953;Savage 1954;Brown 1976;Skyrms 1990;Oddie 1997;Williamson 2000;Kadane et al 2008;Myrvold 2012;Buchak 2013;Huttegger 2014;Bradley and Steele 2016; Ahmed and Salow 2018; Campbell-Moore and Salow 2019; Das 2020a; Pettigrew 2020). See Salow (2020) for a philosophical overview.…”

Epistemic feedback loops (or: how not to get evidence)

“…LIKEABLE LEVI: Levi fears that his Sunday league football teammates don't like him. This causes him to unconsciously seek out evidence that 3 For example, Good (1966) and the subsequent literature it generated; Hall & Johnson (1998); Maher (1990); Myrvold (2012); Friedman (2019Friedman ( , 2020; Millson (2021); Stjernberg (2021); Thorstad (2021); Falbo (fc); Salow (fc); Carr (ms); and Flores and Woodard (ms), amongst others.…”

A Pragmatist’s Guide to Epistemic Utility

“…21 Indeed, we can quantify the expected value of performing E 21. See Myrvold (2012) for an in-depth discussion of Good's theorem and scoring rules.…”