Peirce, Pedigree, Probability

An aspect of Peirce's thought that might still be underappreciated is his resistance to what Levi calls pedigree epistemology, i.e., to the idea that a central focus in epistemology should be the justification of current beliefs. Somewhat more widely appreciated is his rejection of the subjective view of probability. We argue that Peirce's criticisms of subjectivism, to the extent that they grant that such a conception of probability is viable at all, revert back to pedigree epistemology. A thoroughgoing rejection of pedigree in the context of probabilistic epistemology, however, does challenge prominent subjectivist responses to the problem of the priors.