A Defense of the Principle of Indifference
A Defense of the Principle of Indifference
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对冷漠原则的辩护
DOI：
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发表时间：
2010
影响因子：
1.5
通讯作者：
Greg Novack
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Greg Novack
冷漠原则(下称“POI”)说，如果一个人没有比B更多的理由相信A(反之亦然)，那么一个人就不应该相信A多于B(反之亦然)。许多人认为这显然是错误的，尽管它有直觉上的似是而非，因为一种特殊的思维实验风格会产生反例。罗杰·怀特(罗杰·怀特，2008)为POI辩护，认为在这些思维实验中，POI的前件是错误的。像怀特一样，我相信坡，但我发现他的辩护不令人满意，原因有两个：它吸引了虚假的前提，它拯救了坡，但代价是坡的信徒可能认为同样重要的东西。因此，在这篇文章中，我为POI辩护，认为它的前因性在相关的思想实验中是成立的，并且拒绝POI所需的进一步命题是错误的。在这篇文章中，我只是在为自己辩护；我并不是说坡是真的(尽管我认为它是真的)，而是说一个流行的驳斥是错误的。在展示这一点时，我还注意到了一些据我所知没有被注意到的东西：在一些看似无害的假设下，否认POI等同于一种认识论放任主义，而POI本身就相当于一种认识论唯一性。
The principle of indifference (hereafter ‘Poi’) says that if one has no more reason to believe A than B (and vice versa), then one ought not to believe A more than B (nor vice versa). Many think it’s demonstrably false despite its intuitive plausibility, because of a particular style of thought experiment that generates counterexamples. Roger White (2008) defends Poi by arguing that its antecedent is false in these thought experiments. Like White I believe Poi, but I find his defense unsatisfactory for two reasons: it appeals to false premises, and it saves Poi only at the expense of something that Poi’s believers likely find just as important. So in this essay I defend Poi by arguing that its antecedent does hold in the relevant thought experiments, and that the further propositions needed to reject Poi are false. I play only defense in this essay; I don’t argue that Poi is true (even though I think it is), but rather that one popular refutation is faulty. In showing this, I also note something that has to my knowledge gone unnoticed: given some innocuous-looking assumptions the denial of Poi is equivalent to a version of epistemic permissivism, and Poi itself is equivalent to a version of epistemic uniqueness.