Shifty evidence and shifty books

Abstract

Are all epistemic notions – including evidence and rational credence – sensitive to practical considerations? A number of philosophers have argued that the answer must be ‘No’, since otherwise rational agents would be susceptible to diachronic Dutch books (Greco 2013, Rubin 2015, Schroeder 2018). After unpacking this challenge, I show how it can be resisted by appealing to an analogy between shifting stakes and memory loss. The upshot: pervasive epistemic shiftiness may be tenable after all .

evidence, contextualism, subject sensitive invariantism, dutch books, rationality