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    An agent who is ignorant about the color of a marble is t... — Carmelics
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    Home/Skepticism
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    An agent who is ignorant about the color of a marble is thereby rendered very opinionated about whether the color is Blue.

    SkepticismTruth & Knowledge
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Ignorance, on the Principle of Indifference (Keynes, *Treatise on Probability*), mandates uniform probability across all live hypotheses in a partition.
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    • 2.A uniform distribution over n colors assigns probability (n-1)/n to 'not Blue', which for large n constitutes a high-confidence belief that the marble is not Blue.
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    • 3.Holding high-confidence belief that the marble is not Blue just is being very opinionated about whether the color is Blue, satisfying the claim's core assertion.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.On Levi's epistemology of inquiry, suspending judgment requires treating all hypotheses as permissible, but permissibility is distinct from assigning equal credence across them.
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    • 2.When credences are forced by symmetry constraints (van Fraassen's Reflection and symmetry arguments), the agent's doxastic state is fully determined by the partition structure, not by genuine neutrality.
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    • 3.A fully determined doxastic state about Blue—even one yielding low credence—constitutes being opinionated rather than genuinely ignorant, vindicating the claim that ignorance paradoxically generates strong opinions.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Ignorance about the color of a marble requires equal probability distribution across all colors in the partition.
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    • 2.If the partition contains many colors, each color receives probability close to 0, including Blue.
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    • 3.Assigning near-zero probability to Blue constitutes being very opinionated that the marble is not Blue.
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    Connections

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    Related

    A fully determined doxastic state about Blue—even one yielding low credence—cons...A uniform distribution over n colors assigns probability (n-1)/n to 'not Blue', ...Assigning near-zero probability to Blue constitutes being very opinionated that ...Holding high-confidence belief that the marble is not Blue just is being very op...
    +5 moreShow less
    If the partition contains many colors, each color receives probability close to ...Ignorance about the color of a marble requires equal probability distribution ac...Ignorance, on the Principle of Indifference (Keynes, *Treatise on Probability*),...On Levi's epistemology of inquiry, suspending judgment requires treating all hyp...When credences are forced by symmetry constraints (van Fraassen's Reflection and...

    Similar

    If Sophia is ignorant about the color of a marble, the Principle of In...80%Assigning near-zero probability to Blue constitutes being very opinion...75%Harman can maintain that in both marble scenarios the agent merely has...73%One could be justified in believing one is experiencing a specific sha...70%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: formal-belief
    View source passageHide passage
    Subjective probability theory models ignorance with respect to a proposition \(A\) by assigning probability of .5 to \(A\) and its complement \(\neg A\). More generally, an agent with subjective probability Pr is said to be ignorant with respect to the partition \(\{A_{1},\ldots,A_{n}\}\) if and only if \(\Pr(A_{i}) = 1/n\). The Principle of Indifference requires a doxastic agent to distribute her subjective probabilities in this fashion whenever, roughly, the agent lacks evidence of the relevan
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit