Comment by elliotto
6 months ago
Ah I understand, you're exactly right I misinterpreted the notation of P(#). I was considering each model as assigning binary truth values to the propositions (e.g., physicalism might reject all but Postulate #1, while an anthropocentric model might affirm only #1, #2, and #6), and modeling the probability distribution over those models instead. I think the expected value computation ends up with the same downstream result of distributions over propositions.
By incoherent I was referring to the internal inconsistencies of a model, not the probabilistic claims. Ie a model that denies your own consciousness but accepts the consciousness of others is a difficult one to defend. I agree with your statement here.
Thanks for your comment I enjoyed thinking about this. I learned the estimating distributions approach from the rationalist/betting/LessWrong folks and think it works really well, but I've never thought much about how it applies to something unfalsifiable.
You're welcome! Probability distributions over inherently unfalsifiable claims is exotic territory at first, but when I see actual philosophers in the wild debate things I often find a back-and-forth of such claims that definitely looks like two people shifting around likelihood values. I take this as evidence that such a process is what's "really" going on when we go one level removed from the arguments and their background assumptions themselves.