Consequences of Calibration

Drawing on a passage from Ramsey’s ‘Truth and Probability’, we formulate a simple, plausible constraint on evaluating the accuracy of credences: the calibration test. We show that any additive, continuous accuracy measure that passes the calibration test will be strictly proper. Strictly proper accuracy measures are known to support the touchstone results of accuracy-first epistemology, for example, vindications of probabilism and conditionalization. We show that our use of calibration is an improvement on previous such appeals by showing how it answers or sidesteps problems that have been raised for previous work in this area.