"Epistemic
Value Theory and Judgment Aggregation: From the Doctrinal Paradox to
the Lottery Paradox?"
Abstract:
Several philosophers (e.g., Hempel, Levi, Lehrer, Maher, Goldman) have
claimed that decision theory can be applied to epistemic decisions (e.g., about
what to believe, about whether to gather evidence, about which
experiments to perform). In particular, they suggest that such
decisions turn on exactly what our epistemic
values (or utilities) are. In this talk, epistemic value theory is applied
to the problem of deciding how to aggregate the judgments of several
individuals into a single collective
judgment. Recently, several philosophers (e.g., Bovens, List,
Pettit) have discussed the doctrinal
paradox of judgment aggregation. I describe this paradox
and show how it parallels two famous epistemic paradoxes (viz., the
lottery paradox and the paradox of the preface). I argue that
epistemic value theory provides a plausible resolution to all of these
paradoxes.