Let’s say that you are assigned to teach a graduate seminar (in a philosophy department) introducing your students to current work in Formal Epistemology. They all have a working knowledge of first order logic and a decent mathematical education as well (let’s say that, for the most part, they have algebra and calculus under their belts). You want the course to give your students the basic lay of the land in Formal Epistemology so that, after taking your course, a student could attend FEW, for example, and understand the basic topics being discussed. Some questions: What textbook do you use? Is there a single favorite textbook that you have in mind that introduces most of the recent topics being discussed by formal epistemologists?
Out of the textbooks that I am aware of, the one that I think does the job best would be Kyburg and Teng’s Uncertain Inference (Google books). That said, I’m really curious to hear others’ recommendations.
Incidentally, I was that graduate student about five years ago. At that time, I was in the odd situation of knowing that I would really love formal epistemology if I only knew more precisely what it was. I was attending FEWs and spending most of the time wishing that I had a basic introductory knowledge of the topics being discussed. So what textbook(s) can we recommend such newcomers to the field?
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Jonah’s question is quite relevant I think. At the moment there does not exist a textbook capable of covering all relevant areas of formal epistemology. Kyburg and Teng’s book is a fine book although it is obviously influenced by Kyburg’s own views about probability and statistical inference. What is needed is an objective introduction to the main areas of contemporary formal epistemology.
Vincent Hendricks, Johan van Benthem and I are now in the process of completing the edition of a book that could serve as an introduction of the sort that Jonah has in mind. The book is divided in five sections: (1) Bayesian Epistemology, (2) Decision Theory, (3) Belief Change, (4) Interactive Epistemology, and (5) Epistemic Logic. Each section contains reprints of influential essays in each of these areas plus introductions written by the editors.
The book will be distributed by Cambridge University Press in 2010. The tentative title is Readings in Formal Epistemology. We are still deciding the contents of some of the main sections and preparing the introductions.
I think that a book of this type could be useful for the type of course that Jonah has in mind. Suitable complemented with other papers the book can be used as well for a more advanced course.
Sounds great Horacio! I look forward to this book’s publication. I wonder just how extensive your section introductions are going to be (?). I think whether this book would fully serve the purpose that I have in mind would be a question primarily of the nature and extent of these introductions. For one thing, are these introductions introducing the reader to the topic itself, or are they introducing the reader merely to the papers that are included in the corresponding section?
Even if the answer is the latter, this comes as a very useful publication; perhaps the best option for texts for the sort of course that I have in mind would be a combination of an introductory text (of the sort that I was talking about) as well as your forthcoming anthology. On that topic, how well do you think that your text would cohere with Kyburg and Teng’s?
We are beginning to think about the introductions to some sections. So, we have still to think what is the best way to proceed. My personal opinion would be to provide an introduction to the topic itself and then (1) introduce the papers and (2) give pointers to additional literature in the field.
A similar book would be, for example, Decision, Probability and Utility: Selected Readings by Peter Gärdenfors and Nils-Eric Sahlin. The introductions in this book are brief but focusing on the topics. Nevertheless, the book cannot replace a textbook in decision theory. But it could be used to complement a textbook of this sort. At least I tend to use the book in this way in my classes on rational choice.
Kyburg and Teng’s book has basic introductions to first order logic, logics for AI and probability theory, for example. Some of this will be taken for granted in our book, I think. K&T’s book has also chapters on belief revision and non-monotonic logic. In this respect we will offer something similar. The section on belief change, for example, contains articles by Hansson. Rott, Levi, Spohn, Pearl and the original AGM article, plus a general introduction. This offers a variety of semantics for belief change (possible worlds semantics, decision theoretic semantics of two types, ranking functions, etc). So, reading the basic sections of K&T could motivate the reader to go deeper.
But K&T’s book has chapters on evidential probability and scientific and statistical inference which reflect Kyburg’s own views. We will cover only a subset of these topics. For example, we will not include papers on statistical inference, and about evidential probability we will only include a paper by Kyburg.
The book has to have a reasonable size, so one faces tough choices when it comes to select material. But I think that the book as it is conceived right now can be used at a slightly more advanced level than K&T’s book, which requires a minimum of mathematical and philosophical maturity on the part of the reader. I think that a reader that has some knowledge of logic (say, the completeness results for first order and modal logic) and decision theory (a basic course in rational choice) would be an ideal reader for the entire book. But a reader with exposure to at least some of the basic chapters of K&T’s book might be able to read most of the material in the book. So, under this point of view the two books could complement each other.
Thanks for the post. I’m one of those people who wishes they knew more about formal epistemology but doesn’t really know where to start. I had ordered Kyburg and Teng’s book figuring that it couldn’t hurt and would probably help. (Incidentally, you can get a copy from Labyrinth Books for cheap. They are selling copies for about $8.) Keep the suggestions coming, please, and if anyone can recommend a good introduction to decision theory, that would be fantastic.
Clayton: some recommendations for introductions to decision theory. A philosophically oriented introduction that has been around for a while is:
Choices: An Introduction to Decision Theory by Michael D. Resnik.
A new book that seems interesting (although I have not read it in its entirety) is:
An Introduction to Decision Theory (Cambridge Introductions to Philosophy) by Martin Peterson
This book is also philosophically oriented and not very difficult under a mathematical point of view.
A new book that seems very interesting is:
Theory of Decision under Uncertainty (Econometric Society Monographs) by Itzhak Gilboa
It has a philosophical introduction and then it offers a mathematically more involved presentation of Savage, De Finetti, etc. Perhaps this is one of the best existing introductions.
In the past I usually used:
Notes On The Theory Of Choice (Underground Classics in Economics) by David Kreps
This is an excellent book, perhaps the most technically oriented of the previous books. But it is very well written and the selection of topics is excellent.
Perhaps the most complete books in this area are the books written by Peter Fishburn. But most of them are out of print. They are mathematically more involved but they are almost self contained.
If you have some previous knowledge of decision theory and some mathematical background perhaps Kreps is the best option. Otherwise the combination of Peterson (Resnik) and Gilboa might be optimal. Hope that this helps.
Horacio,
I’ll certainly take a look at a few of those, thanks for the recommendations.
I’d add a different book to Horacio’s excellent recommendations, one that is designed to address a prerequisite that one often sees but might wonder whether he has, or, if sure he does not, how to get it: mathematical maturity.
Paul Halmos (he who coined ‘iff’ for ‘if and only if’, among a few other things), wrote in his ‘automathography’ that a good way to learn a lot of mathematics is by reading the first chapters of many mathematics books. Wouldn’t it be great if someone wrote a single book in the spirit of this advice, but put the material order, cross-referenced it, showed connections between different areas, and included exercises? That’s what Eric Schechter’s Handbook of Analysis and Its Foundations does. I simply love this book.
If you see a technique in a paper that stumps you–assuming it is not written in the annoying “analytic” style, which dusts out the formal tracks for the sake of “clarity”–a book like Schechter’s can help you to get under the puzzling construction to (hopefully) allow you to build up to understanding it or, sometimes nearly as valuable, understanding more about what it is that you do not understand in that case.
First, thanks to Jonah for starting the thread and reviving the blog! I agree with the suggestions made by Horacio and Greg. I would add Representation and Invariance of Scientific Structures by Pat Suppes. While this masterful book is more concerned with methodology than epistemology, many of the central issues are relevant to areas like decision theory. Also, as far as decision theory, I think that Games and Decisions by Luce and Raiffa is still worth reading. I continue to use the chapter on decision making under uncertainty in my undergraduate class on rational choice. Clayton, Luce and Raiffa’s book is available as an inexpensive Dover edition. Likewise for Foundations of Statistics by Savage.
For decision and game theory, “The Theory of Choice”, edited by Shaun Hargreaves-Heap, is also highly recommendable (though it is a bit demanding for undergraduates without any mathematical education).