Live briefing
Everything about Certainty
Belief without doubt in propositions that are in fact true
Certainty is the epistemic property of beliefs which a person has no rational grounds for doubting. One standard way of defining epistemic certainty is that a belief is certain if and only if the person holding that belief could not be mistaken in holding that belief. Other common definitions of certainty involve the indubitable nature of such beliefs or define certainty as a property of those beliefs with the greatest possible justification. Certainty is closely related to knowledge, although contemporary philosophers tend to treat knowledge as having lower requirements than certainty. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: CertaintyA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: Introduction to the GRADE tool for rating certainty in evidence and recommendationsInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: Über GewissheitThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: Large population stochastic dynamic games: closed-loop McKean-Vlasov systems and the Nash certainty equivalence principleCited 1,312 times
- Go sideways: Gödel's incompleteness theoremsA closely related topic
- Go sideways: ConsistencyA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
Noun The state of being certain.
Noun An instance of being certain.
Noun A fact or truth unquestionably established.
🗂️ The subject at a glance
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
Large population stochastic dynamic games: closed-loop McKean-Vlasov systems and the Nash certainty equivalence principle
Judgment under emotional certainty and uncertainty: The effects of specific emotions on information processing.
GRADE guidelines: 18. How ROBINS-I and other tools to assess risk of bias in nonrandomized studies should be used to rate the certainty of a body of evidence
The GRADE Working Group clarifies the construct of certainty of evidence
Advances in the GRADE approach to rate the certainty in estimates from a network meta-analysis
Landslide susceptibility mapping using certainty factor, index of entropy and logistic regression models in GIS and their comparison at Mugling–Narayanghat road section in Nepal Himalaya
Rating the certainty in evidence in the absence of a single estimate of effect
Knowing with certainty: The appropriateness of extreme confidence.
🆕 Influential since 2022
Introduction to the GRADE tool for rating certainty in evidence and recommendations
GRADE guidance 35: update on rating imprecision for assessing contextualized certainty of evidence and making decisions
AI is better when I'm sure: The influence of certainty of needs on consumers' acceptance of AI chatbots
Using Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) to rate the certainty of evidence of study outcomes from systematic reviews: A quick tutorial
Markets in crypto-assets regulation: Does it provide legal certainty and increase adoption of crypto-assets?
📚 Books worth reading
Über GewissheitLudwig Wittgenstein · 1969
Hare Brain, Tortoise MindGuy Claxton · 1997
On certainty =Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1969
Wittgenstein's on CertaintyRush Rhees · 2003- 📕Exploring CertaintyRobert Greenleaf Brice · 2014
- 📕On the Edge of CertaintyRaymond Tallis · 1999
- 📕Probabilit©♭s subjectives et rationalit©♭ de l'actionMartin, Thierry · 2003
Wittgenstein & knowledgeMorawetz, Thomas · 1978
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
🔗 Related topics
- Gödel's incompleteness theorems Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that are concerned with the limits of provability in formal axiomatic theories.…
- Consistency In deductive logic, a consistent theory is one that does not lead to a logical contradiction. A theory T is consistent if there is no formula φ such that…
- Large cardinal In the mathematical field of set theory, a large cardinal property is a certain kind of property of transfinite cardinal numbers. Cardinals with such properties…
- Equiconsistency In mathematical logic, two theories are equiconsistent if the consistency of one theory implies the consistency of the other theory, and vice versa. In…
- Hilbert's program In mathematics, Hilbert's program, formulated by German mathematician David Hilbert in the early 1920s, was a proposed solution to the foundational crisis…
- Continuum hypothesis In mathematics, specifically set theory, the continuum hypothesis (abbreviated CH) is a hypothesis about the possible sizes of infinite sets. It states:…
- Foundations of mathematics Foundations of mathematics are the logical and mathematical frameworks that allow the development of mathematics without generating self-contradictory…
- Axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption, is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments…