Guessing is a familiar activity, one we engage in when we are uncertain of the answer to a question under discussion. It is also an activity that lends itself to normative evaluation: some guesses are better than others. The question that interests me here is what makes for a good guess. In recent work, Dorst and Mandelkern have argued that good guesses are distinguished from bad ones by how well they optimize a tradeoff between accuracy and specificity. Here I argue that Dorst and Mandelkern’s implementation of this idea fails to satisfy some plausible constraints on good guesses, and I develop an alternative implementation that satisfies the relevant constraints. The result is a new account of good guesses which retains the positive aspects of Dorst and Mandelkern’s proposal, but without the drawbacks.

猜测是一种熟悉的活动，当我们不确定所讨论问题的答案时，我们就会进行猜测。这也是一种有助于规范评估的活动：一些猜测比其他猜测更好。在这里让我感兴趣的问题是什么是一个好的猜测。在最近的工作中，Dorst 和 Mandelkern 认为，好猜测与坏猜测的区别在于它们如何优化准确性和特异性之间的权衡. 在这里，我认为 Dorst 和 Mandelkern 对这个想法的实施未能满足对良好猜测的一些似是而非的限制，并且我开发了一个满足相关限制的替代实施。结果是对良好猜测的新解释，它保留了 Dorst 和 Mandelkern 提议的积极方面，但没有缺点。