Dutch Book Research Articles

Young Agents

Abstract Young Agents: the Young Author’s Role on the Dutch Republic’s Book Market1In this article, we investigate the role of young authors on the upcoming and flourishing book market of the Dutch Republic (1550-1800), focusing in particular on their ‘agency’. By investigating the specific contribution of young authors to this market and by discriminating between roles of young adults and adults, we introduce a new approach to early modern authorship. Combining quantitative digital experiments and qualitative textual analyses, we seek to tease out the dynamic relationship between the young authors’ independence, competences, and behaviour on the one hand, and representations, self-images and production figures on the other. The first results of our research reveal that young authors frequently showed themselves indebted to their masters, but also created their own voice, often self-confident and engaged, by appropriating specific genres and topics in new ways. Contrary to what contemporary poetics and well-known forms of (self)reflection suggest, young authors appear to have had a clear, outspoken presence in the Dutch book market which became ever more prominent in both the consumption and production of Dutch books.

Elitist Echelons: The Institutional Identity of Online Book Reviewing in the Netherlands

The introduction of new media intensifies the need of traditional media to re-evaluate their institutional function and, more importantly, to reshape their identity. Presenting a case study from the field of book reviewing, this article critically explores this tension between old and new media. In order to grasp such a friction, it makes use of the concept of institutional identity, which is defined as a complex blend of an institution’s auto-presentation and hetero-presentation. Analyzing the institutional identity of the Dutch book reviewing website “De Reactor,” the article shows how a discrepancy between the acts of auto-presentation and hetero-presentation reveals a discursive battle between old and new media.

A New Group Dutch Book Argument

AbstractIn this essay, I repair the group Dutch Book argument presented by Donald Gillies. I then examine what additional assumptions would be needed for the argument to generate genuinely normative prescriptions for groups of inquirers. Although the resulting norms will apply to fewer groups than Gillies originally intended, they are still an important addition to the normative landscape in social epistemology.

Hypothesis Testing, “Dutch Book” Arguments, and Risk

“Dutch Book” arguments and references to gambling theorems are typical in the debate between Bayesians and scientists committed to “classical” statistical methods. These arguments have rarely convinced non-Bayesian scientists to abandon certain conventional practices (like fixed-level null hypothesis significance testing), partially because many scientists feel that gambling theorems have little relevance to their research activities. In other words, scientists “don’t bet.” This article examines one attempt, by Schervish, Seidenfeld, and Kadane, to progress beyond such apparent stalemates by connecting “Dutch Book”–type mathematical results with principles actually endorsed by practicing experimentalists.

A non-probabilist principle of higher-order reasoning

The author uses a series of examples to illustrate two versions of a new, nonprobabilist principle of epistemic rationality, the special and general versions of the metacognitive, expected relative frequency (MERF) principle. These are used to explain the rationality of revisions to an agent’s degrees of confidence in propositions based on evidence of the reliability or unreliability of the cognitive processes responsible for them—especially reductions in confidence assignments to propositions antecedently regarded as certain—including certainty-reductions to instances of the law of excluded middle or the law of noncontradiction in logic or certainty-reductions to the certainties of probabilist epistemology. The author proposes special and general versions of the MERF principle and uses them to explain the examples, including the reasoning that would lead to thoroughgoing fallibilism—that is, to a state of being certain of nothing (not even the MERF principle itself). The author responds to the main defenses of probabilism: Dutch Book arguments, Joyce’s potential accuracy defense, and the potential calibration defenses of Shimony and van Fraassen by showing that, even though they do not satisfy the probability axioms, degrees of belief that satisfy the MERF principle minimize expected inaccuracy in Joyce’s sense; they can be externally calibrated in Shimony and van Fraassen’s sense; and they can serve as a basis for rational betting, unlike probabilist degrees of belief, which, in many cases, human beings have no rational way of ascertaining. The author also uses the MERF principle to subsume the various epistemic akrasia principles in the literature. Finally, the author responds to Titelbaum’s argument that epistemic akrasia principles require that we be certain of some epistemological beliefs, if we are rational.

Sleeping Beauty in a grain of rice

In the Sleeping Beauty problem, Beauty is woken once if a coin lands heads or twice if the coin lands tails but promptly forgets each waking on returning to sleep. Philosophers have divided over whether her waking credence in heads should be a half or a third. Beauty has centered beliefs about her world and about her location in that world. When given new information about her location she should update her worldly beliefs before updating her locative beliefs. When she conditionalizes in this way, her credence in heads is a half before and after being told it is Monday. In applications of Dutch Book arguments to the Sleeping Beauty problem, the probability of a particular outcome has often been confounded with consequences of that outcome. Heads and tails are equally likely but twice as much is at stake if the coin falls tails because Beauty is fated to make the same choice twice. As a consequence, the possibility of tails should be given twice the weight of the possibility of heads when deciding whether to bet on heads even though heads and tails are equally likely.

Deductive Reasoning Under Uncertainty: A Water Tank Analogy

This paper describes a cubic water tank equipped with a movable partition receiving various amounts of liquid used to represent joint probability distributions. This device is applied to the investigation of deductive inferences under uncertainty. The analogy is exploited to determine by qualitative reasoning the limits in probability of the conclusion of twenty basic deductive arguments (such as Modus Ponens, And-introduction, Contraposition, etc.) often used as benchmark problems by the various theoretical approaches to reasoning under uncertainty. The probability bounds imposed by the premises on the conclusion are derived on the basis of a few trivial principles such as “a part of the tank cannot contain more liquid than its capacity allows”, or “if a part is empty, the other part contains all the liquid”. This stems from the equivalence between the physical constraints imposed by the capacity of the tank and its subdivisions on the volumes of liquid, and the axioms and rules of probability. The device materializes de Finetti’s coherence approach to probability. It also suggests a physical counterpart of Dutch book arguments to assess individuals’ rationality in probability judgments in the sense that individuals whose degrees of belief in a conclusion are out of the bounds of coherence intervals would commit themselves to executing physically impossible tasks.

Agreeing to agree and Dutch books

We say that agreeing to agree is possible for an event E if there exist posterior beliefs of the agents with a common prior such that it is common knowledge that the agents' posteriors for E coincide. We propose a notion called Dutch book which is a profile of interim contracts between an outsider and the agents based on the occurrence of E, such that the outsider makes positive profit in all states. We show that in a finite state space, when the agents cannot tell whether E occurred or not, agreeing to agree is possible for E if and only if there is no Dutch book on E. This characterization also holds in countable state spaces with two agents. We weaken the notion of Dutch book to characterize agreeing to agree in a countable state space with multiple agents, when each set in each agent's information partition is finite.

Rational Probabilistic Incoherence? A Reply to Michael Caie

In Michael Caie's article “Rational Probabilistic Incoherence,” Caie argues that in light of certain situations involving self-reference, it is sometimes rational to have probabilistically incoherent credences. This essay further considers his arguments. It shows that probabilism isn't to blame for the failure of rational introspection and that Caie's modified accuracy criterion conflicts with Dutch book considerations, is scoring rule dependent, and leads to the failure of rational introspection.

Measuring inconsistency in probabilistic logic: rationality postulates and Dutch book interpretation

Inconsistency measures have been proposed as a way to manage inconsistent knowledge bases in the AI community. To deal with inconsistencies in the context of conditional probabilistic logics, rationality postulates and computational efficiency have driven the formulation of inconsistency measures. Independently, investigations in formal epistemol-ogy have used the betting concept of Dutch book to measure an agent's degree of incoherence. In this paper, we show the impossibility of joint satisfiability of the proposed postulates, proposing to replace them by more suitable ones. Thus we reconcile the rationality postulates for inconsistency measures in probabilistic bases and show that several inconsistency measures suggested in the literature and computable with linear programs satisfy the reconciled postulates. Additionally, we give an interpretation for these feasible measures based on the formal epistemology concept of Dutch book, bridging the views of two so far separate communities in AI and Philosophy. In particular, we show that incoherence degrees in formal epistemology may lead to novel approaches to inconsistency measures in the AI view.

Dutch Book Argument in favor of Probabilism?

Cílem této práce je rozebrat možnosti argumentu holandské sázky ve prospěch probabilismu a stanovit jeho meze. Existuje mnoho podob argumentu, proto se nejprve budu věnovat popisu argumentu v jeho klasické podobě. Následně je podroben kritice ve třech oblastech: (1) problémy behaviorismu, (2) užitku peněz, (3) vztah koherence, jisté ztráty a racionality. Zásadní je dle mého především třetí oblast týkající se neschopnosti jednoduše propojit probabilistickou nekoherenci stupňů přesvědčení s jistou ztrátou a pragmatickou racionalitou. Věnuji se třem současným reinterpretacím argumentu ve prospěch probabilistických norem (Armendt, Howson, Christensen), přičemž v textu docházím k závěru, že ani jedna z nich není uspokojivá. Selhávají v řešení problémů (Armendt, Christensen), nebo neříkají nic zajímavého ve prospěch probabilismu (Howson). Proto se domnívám, že rozbor argumentu především ukazuje, že pragmatická obhajoba epistemických norem racionality, jako je ta v argumentu holandské sázky, není pro probabilismus schůdnou cestou. Závěr se snaží nastínit, proč tomu tak je.

Can rational choice guide us to correct de se beliefs?

Significant controversy remains about what constitute correct self-locating beliefs in scenarios such as the Sleeping Beauty problem, with proponents on both the "halfer" and "thirder" sides. To attempt to settle the issue, one natural approach consists in creating decision variants of the problem, determining what actions the various candidate beliefs prescribe, and assessing whether these actions are reasonable when we step back. Dutch book arguments are a special case of this approach, but other Sleeping Beauty games have also been constructed to make similar points. Building on a recent article (James R.~Shaw. {\em De se} belief and rational choice. {\em Synthese}, 190(3):491-508, 2013), I show that in general we should be wary of such arguments, because unintuitive actions may result for reasons that are unrelated to the beliefs. On the other hand, I show that, when we restrict our attention to {\em additive} games, then a thirder will necessarily maximize her {\em ex ante} expected payout, but a halfer in some cases will not (assuming causal decision theory). I conclude that this does not necessarily settle the issue and speculate about what might.

A Dutch book against sleeping beauties who are evidential decision theorists

In the context of the Sleeping Beauty problem, it has been argued that so-called "halfers" can avoid Dutch book arguments by adopting evidential decision theory. I introduce a Dutch book for a variant of the Sleeping Beauty problem and argue that evidential decision theorists fall prey to it, whether they are halfers or thirders. The argument crucially requires that an action can provide evidence for what the agent would do not only at other decision points where she has exactly the same information, but also at decision points where she has different but "symmetric" information.

To Adopt or Not to Adopt? The RFID Adoption Consideration by Entrepreneurs in a Purchasing Cooperative in Dutch Book Retailing

Our focus is on the agenda-setting of a purchasing cooperative aiming to have their members consider the adoption of a new logistics information system based on RFID. Adding "technology trust", we used the UTAUT model to determine the adoption intention of associated book retailers. Using structural equation modeling, data analysis shows that the original UTAUT model fits this process of agenda-setting, but two alternative models with technology trust show a better fit, indicating that performance expectancy is mediating all other factors, but "facilitating conditions". This model may therefore better work in studying collective forms of technology adoption.

Measuring the overall incoherence of credence functions

Many philosophers hold that the probability axioms constitute norms of rationality governing degrees of belief. This view, known as subjective Bayesianism, has been widely criticized for being too idealized. It is claimed that the norms on degrees of belief postulated by subjective Bayesianism cannot be followed by human agents, and hence have no normative force for beings like us. This problem is especially pressing since the standard framework of subjective Bayesianism only allows us to distinguish between two kinds of credence functions—coherent ones that obey the probability axioms perfectly, and incoherent ones that don’t. An attractive response to this problem is to extend the framework of subjective Bayesianism in such a way that we can measure differences between incoherent credence functions. This lets us explain how the Bayesian ideals can be approximated by humans. I argue that we should look for a measure that captures what I call the ‘overall degree of incoherence’ of a credence function. I then examine various incoherence measures that have been proposed in the literature, and evaluate whether they are suitable for measuring overall incoherence. The competitors are a qualitative measure that relies on finding coherent subsets of incoherent credence functions, a class of quantitative measures that measure incoherence in terms of normalized Dutch book loss, and a class of distance measures that determine the distance to the closest coherent credence function. I argue that one particular Dutch book measure and a corresponding distance measure are particularly well suited for capturing the overall degree of incoherence of a credence function.

Coherence in the aggregate: A betting method for belief functions on many-valued events

Betting methods, of which de Finetti's Dutch Book is by far the most well-known, are uncertainty modelling devices which accomplish a twofold aim. Whilst providing an (operational) interpretation of the relevant measure of uncertainty, they also provide a formal definition of coherence. The main purpose of this paper is to put forward a betting method for belief functions on MV-algebras of many-valued events which allows us to isolate the corresponding coherence criterion, which we term coherence in the aggregate. Our framework generalises the classical Dutch Book method.

Literary Transfer between Peripheral Languages: A Production of Culture Perspective

Literary translations from Hebrew into Dutch and vice versa between 1991 and 2010 are examined as a test case for cultural transfer between two peripheral languages, using a production of culture perspective (Peterson and Anand 2004). The findings show 138 Dutch books translated from Hebrew against 52 Hebrew books translated from Dutch. The data are analyzed by genre, translator’s productivity, and number of books per author. The analysis reveals that both directions were similar in distribution of genres, but differed significantly in translator’s productivity (the productivity of the average Dutch translator is more than twice as high as that of his or her Hebrew counterpart) and in the number of translated titles per author (twice as many in the Dutch market). The discussion traces these differences to the different structure of the translation labour market in Israel as compared to that of the Netherlands and Belgium and to the dominance of Dutch state subsidy and Flemish Community subsidy in both directions of the transfer, however with a different policy of subsidy in each direction. It seems that significant conclusions can be reached by examining such factors as size and distribution of the corpus on the backdrop of labour conditions and state subsidy.

BELIEF REVISION, PROBABILISM, AND LOGIC CHOICE

AbstractThis paper presents a probabilist paraconsistent theory of belief revision. This theory is based on a very general theory of probability, that fits with a wide range of classical and nonclassical logics. The theory incorporates a version of Jeffrey conditionalisation as its method of updating. A Dutch book argument is given, and the theory is applied to the problem of choosing a logical system.

Dutch Books, Coherence, and Logical Consistency

AbstractIn this paper I present a new way of understanding Dutch Book Arguments: the idea is that an agent is shown to be incoherent iff (s)he would accept as fair a set of bets that would result in a loss under any interpretation of the claims involved. This draws on a standard definition of logical inconsistency. On this new understanding, the Dutch Book Arguments for the probability axioms go through, but the Dutch Book Argument for Reflection fails. The question of whether we have a Dutch Book Argument for Conditionalization is left open.

Safeguards of a Disunified Mind

The papers focuses on pragmatic arguments for various rationality constraints on a decision maker’s state of mind: on her beliefs or preferences. An argument of this kind typically targets constraint violations. It purports to show that a violator of a given constraint can be confronted with a decision problem in which she will act to her guaranteed disadvantage. Dramatically put, she can be exploited by a clever bookie who doesn’t know more than the agent herself. Examples of pragmatic arguments of this kind are synchronic Dutch Books, for the standard probability axioms, diachronic Dutch Books, for the more controversial principles of reflection and conditionalization, and Money Pumps, for the acyclicity requirement on preferences. The paper suggests that the proposed exploitation set-ups share a common feature. If the violator of a given constraint is logically and mathematically competent, and if she prefers to be better off rather than worse off, she can be exploited only if she is disunified in her decision-making, i.e. only if she makes decisions on various issues she faces separately rather than jointly. Unification in decision making is relatively unproblematic in synchronic contexts, but it may be costly and inconvenient diachronically. On this view, therefore, pragmatic arguments should be seen as delivering conditional recommendations: If you want to afford disunification, then you’d better satisfy these constraints. They identify safeguards of a disunified mind. Isaac Levi’s position on these matters is diametrically different. According to Levi, only synchronic pragmatic arguments are valid (indeed, categorically so). The diachronic ones, he argues, lack any validity at all. This line of reasoning is questioned in the paper.