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Post-doc article selected for Philosopher’s Annual

Dr Richard Pettigrew

Dr Richard Pettigrew

21 September 2011

Dr Richard Pettigrew, British Academy Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, is co-author of an article that has been chosen by the Philosopher’s Annual as one of the ten best articles published in philosophy in 2010.

The article, entitled ‘An Objective Justification of Bayesianism II: The Consequences of Minimizing Inacurracy', was written with Hannes Leitgeb and appeared in Philosophy of Science, vol. 77, no. 2, in April 2010.

Dr Pettigrew explained the thinking behind the article: ‘Suppose that I know that a die will be rolled; and suppose that I believe that it will land on three more strongly than I believe that it will land on an odd number. We would say that I am irrational. But why?  In this article, we sought to answer this and other questions about how our degrees of beliefs ought to relate to one another. We argued that people whose degrees of beliefs do not relate to one another in the prescribed ways can expect themselves to have less accurate beliefs than those whose degrees of beliefs do.’

The Philosopher’s Annual aims to select the ten best articles published in philosophy each year (something it acknowledges is ‘as simple to state as it is admittedly impossible to fulfil’), and is available online.

Professor James Ladyman, Head of the Department of Philosophy, said: ‘The Philosopher’s Annual is compiled by an international panel of editors of the very best philosophy journals. Articles in all areas of philosophy are considered and only ten are chosen. It is an exceptional achievement for a young philosopher to have a paper appear in this compilation.’

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