Masterclass on Probabilistic Knowledge with Sarah Moss

Masterclass on Probabilistic Knowledge with Sarah Moss
King's College London
March 6th-7th 2018

In this masterclass Sarah Moss (Michigan) will present some of the core ideas of her forthcoming book, Probabilistic Knowledge. A short presentation of the book is given below.

Guest talks by Siliva Milano (LSE), Jason Konek (Bristol), Matt Mandelkern (Oxford) & Daniel Rothschild (UCL), Bernhard Salow (Cambridge) and Richard Holton (Cambridge) will adress aspects of her work. The keynote lecture is a joint session with LSE's Choice Group. 

Programme

Tuesday Wed 6th

• 11:00-12:30 Sarah Moss (Michigan) Probabilistic Knowledge: a Brief Introduction
• 2:00-3:15 Silvia Milano (LSE) Updating as Communication
• 3:30-4:45 Jason Konek (Bristol)
• 5:00-6:15 Matt Mandelkern (All Souls) & Daniel Rothschild (UCL) Comments on Probabilistic Contexts

Wednesday March 7th

• 11:00-12:30 Sarah Moss Full Belief and Loose Speech
• 2:00-3:15 Bernard Salow (Cambridge)
• 3:30-4:45 Richard Holton (Cambridge) How Psychologically Realistic are Credences?
• 5:30-7:00 Sarah Moss Probabilistic Knowledge and Legal Proof
  (joint session with LSE's Choice Group)

Registration

The event is open to graduate students and researchers from any institution. Attendance is free but registration is required. To register fill in the form on the masterclass' webpage.

Strike Warning

The event has been scheduled long before the ongoing strike over pensions was planned and could not be moved. The event has to take place during the strike on KCL's campuses. The organiser and many participants are not happy with crossing the picket lines but we decided to maintain it. We expect that most of the talks (incl. Sarah Moss's) will take place.

Sarah Moss's Probabilistic Knowledge

Traditional philosophical discussions of knowledge have focused on the epistemic status of full beliefs. Probabilistic Knowledge argues that in addition to full beliefs, credences can constitute knowledge. For instance, your .3 credence that it is raining outside can constitute knowledge, in just the same way that your full beliefs can. In addition, you can know that it might be raining, and that if it is raining then it is probably cloudy, where this knowledge is not knowledge of propositions, but of probabilistic contents. The notion of probabilistic content introduced in this book plays a central role not only in epistemology, but in the philosophy of mind and language as well. Just as tradition holds that you believe and assert propositions, you can believe and assert probabilistic contents. 

Accepting that we can believe, assert, and know probabilistic contents has significant consequences for many philosophical debates, including debates about the relationship between full belief and credence, the semantics of epistemic modals and conditionals, the contents of perceptual experience, peer disagreement, pragmatic encroachment, perceptual dogmatism, and transformative experience. In addition, accepting probabilistic knowledge can help us discredit negative evaluations of women's speech, explain why merely statistical evidence is insufficient for legal proof, and identify epistemic norms violated by acts of racial profiling. Hence the central theses of this book not only help us better understand the nature of our own mental states, but also help us better understand the nature of our responsibilities to each other.

Organisation

The event is organized by the Formal Methods research group of KCL's philosophy department.