It has recently become popular to analyze scenarios in which we guess, in terms of a trade‐off between the accuracy of our guess (namely, its credence) and its specificity (namely, how many answers it rules out). Dorst and Mandelkern describe an account of guessing, based on epistemic utility theory (EUT), in which permissible guesses vary depending on how one weighs accuracy against specificity. We provide a minimal formal account of guessing that: (i) does not employ EUT, but rests on how such trade‐offs are treated in the sciences; (ii) is relatively parsimonious; and (iii) is consistent with a variety of more specific models that describe what an agent is doing when they (rationally) guess. Our account also recovers patterns of guessing and predictions about typical outcomes of guessing, as identified by Dorst and Mandelkern. Furthermore, we focus on how permissible guesses can be improved upon, via changes in an agent's credence distribution. Such better permissible guesses can be generated in solving Fermi problems—guessing problems of a type that has received almost no attention in the philosophical literature—which we also analyze. Our account strengthens the case for understanding guessing (now, very broadly considered) in terms of accuracy‐specificity trade‐offs.

中文翻译：

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 更好的猜测


最近，分析我们猜测的场景变得很流行，即我们猜测的准确性（即它的可信度）和它的特异性（即它排除了多少答案）之间的权衡。Dorst 和 Mandelkern 描述了一种基于认识效用理论 （EUT） 的猜测，其中允许的猜测取决于人们如何权衡准确性与特异性。我们提供了一个最低限度的正式猜测说明：（i） 不使用 EUT，而是取决于科学中如何处理此类权衡;（ii） 相对简洁;（iii） 与各种更具体的模型一致，这些模型描述了代理在（理性地）猜测时正在做什么。我们的叙述还恢复了 Dorst 和 Mandelkern 所确定的猜测模式和对猜测的典型结果的预测。此外，我们关注如何通过改变代理的可信度分布来改进允许的猜测。在解决费米问题时可以产生这种更好的允许的猜测——猜测在哲学文献中几乎没有受到关注的问题——我们也分析了这个问题。我们的叙述加强了从准确性-特异性权衡的角度理解猜测（现在，非常广泛地考虑）的案例。