James Michael Joyce

James Joyce is C. H. Langford Collegiate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

He works at the intersection of three fields central to contemporary philosophy: epistemology, decision theory, and the philosophy of science. Bayesian approaches in epistemology and decision theory have gained increasing importance in recent decades, and their relevance to scientific problems as diverse as the neuroscience of learning and the search for dark matter in astronomy is increasingly recognized.

His monograph, The Foundations of Causal Decision Theory, resolved doubts about the theory by proving a representation theorem. It provided a sustained account of the advantages of causal decision theory over Jeffrey's canonical formulation of Evidential Decision Theory and developed a unified framework within which the Bayesian project as a whole would be conceived. In subsequent writings he showed how a Bayesian approach can clarify a range of longstanding problems in normative epistemology, helping to break down barriers between "formal" and "traditional" epistemology.