May 14th at 16:30 at Aula Grandori (basement of Polimi building 4, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile ed Ambientale, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32).

Abstract: Which credences does rationality permit you to have in response to your total evidence? Some, such as the subjective Bayesian, say that rationality is permissive: for many bodies of evidence, there are many rational credal responses. Others, such as the objective Bayesian, say that rationality is impermissive: for any body of evidence, there is a unique rational credal response. I’ll argue for permissivism about epistemic rationality. And I’ll do that within the framework of accuracy-first epistemology. My argument runs roughly as follows: There are many different rationally permissible attitudes to risk in the epistemic setting; if we represent those different attitudes within accuracy-first epistemology, there are correspondingly many different rationally permissible credal responses to most bodies of evidence; therefore, epistemic rationality is permissive. I’ll show how this approach allows us to answer the usual objections to epistemic permissivism.