Speaker: Alexander Meehan, UW–Madison, Dept of Philosophy
Abstract: Philosophers of science have long struggled to develop adequate accounts of scientific confirmation and scientific inference.Bayesian epistemology is a framework that arguably delivers on this goal, solving many old problems and providing a general account for how one ought to update one’s uncertainties in light of new evidence. However, there is recent pressure from some philosophers of physics, such as John Earman, who argue that the standard Bayesian framework is not able to adequately model uncertainty about quantum events. According to these theorists, the standard Bayesian framework needs to be adjusted to allow for belief functions over a non-commutative algebra of events or observables. I argue that the claims for a need to revise the standard Bayesian framework in this way, by moving to a model based on "quantum probability theory" rather than "classical probability theory", are likely overblown. I present some formal results that aim to illuminate the relationship between the frameworks. I then suggest that although the new framework shouldn't replace the standard one, it may still have several useful applications. I focus on Bayesian approaches to quantum state tomography as a potential case study.