Contents
70 found
Order:
1 — 50 / 70
  1. On the pragmatic and epistemic virtues of inference to the best explanation.Richard Pettigrew - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):12407-12438.
    In a series of papers over the past twenty years, and in a new book, Igor Douven has argued that Bayesians are too quick to reject versions of inference to the best explanation that cannot be accommodated within their framework. In this paper, I survey their worries and attempt to answer them using a series of pragmatic and purely epistemic arguments that I take to show that Bayes’ Rule really is the only rational way to respond to your evidence.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  2. Unobservability of short-lived particles: ground for skepticism about observational claims in elementary particle physics.Marcoen J. T. F. Cabbolet - manuscript
    The physics literature contains many claims that elementary particles have been observed: such observational claims are, of course, important for the development of existential knowledge. Regarding claimed observations of short-lived unstable particles in particular, the use of the word 'observation' is based on the convention in physics that the observation of a short-lived unstable particle can be claimed when its predicted decay products have been observed with a significance of 5 sigma. This paper, however, shows that this 5 sigma convention (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  3. Pooling, Products, and Priors.Richard Pettigrew & Jonathan Weisberg -
    We often learn the opinions of others without hearing the evidence on which they're based. The orthodox Bayesian response is to treat the reported opinion as evidence itself and update on it by conditionalizing. But sometimes this isn't feasible. In these situations, a simpler way of combining one's existing opinion with opinions reported by others would be useful, especially if it yields the same results as conditionalization. We will show that one method---upco, also known as multiplicative pooling---is specially suited to (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Inferring to the Best Explanation from Uncertain Evidence.Finnur Dellsén - forthcoming - Philosophy of Science.
    This paper presents a new problem for the inference rule commonly known as Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). The problem is that uncertainty about parts of one’s evidence may undermine the inferrability of a hypothesis that would provide the best explanation of that evidence, especially in cases where there is an alternative hypothesis that would provide a better explanation of only the more certain pieces of evidence. A potential solution to the problem is sketched, in which IBE is generalized (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. Explaining Phenomenal Explanationism: Précis of Appearance & Explanation.McCain Kevin & Luca Moretti - forthcoming - Asian Journal of Philosophy.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Defending Phenomenal Explanationism: Responses to Fumerton, Huemer, McAllister, Piazza, Steup, and Zhang.Kevin McCain & Luca Moretti - forthcoming - Asian Journal of Philosophy.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. Refuting the refutations of the Wigner-Neumann interpretation in quantum mechanics.Spyridon Kakos - 2024 - Harmonia Philosophica Papers.
    One of the most controversial interpretations in quantum mechanics is the Wigner-Neumann interpretation, according to which the superstitions collapse only when a conscious observer observes the quantum system. In general, there is much opposition against this specific interpretation and the reasons are more philosophical than purely scientific. By refuting a specific refutation of the Wigner-Neumann interpretation postulated by Anderson and Carpenter, this paper shows how cancelling the Wigner interpretation is simply not possible at least with our current understanding of the (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. (1 other version)Philosophical reasoning about science: a quantitative, digital study.Moti Mizrahi & Michael Adam Dickinson - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2).
    In this paper, we set out to investigate the following question: if science relies heavily on induction, does philosophy of science rely heavily on induction as well? Using data mining and text analysis methods, we study a large corpus of philosophical texts mined from the JSTOR database (n = 14,199) in order to answer this question empirically. If philosophy of science relies heavily on induction, just as science supposedly does, then we would expect to find significantly more inductive arguments than (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  9. The Art of Abduction. By Igor Douven. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2022. Pp. xx + 349. Price $50.00.). [REVIEW]Mousa Mohammadian - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (3):881-884.
    One of the many notable virtues of Igor Douven's The Art of Abduction is that it is open access. Since a well-written chapter-by-chapter overview of the book is.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. The Costs of HARKing.Mark Rubin - 2022 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (2):535-560.
    Kerr coined the term ‘HARKing’ to refer to the practice of ‘hypothesizing after the results are known’. This questionable research practice has received increased attention in recent years because it is thought to have contributed to low replication rates in science. The present article discusses the concept of HARKing from a philosophical standpoint and then undertakes a critical review of Kerr’s twelve potential costs of HARKing. It is argued that these potential costs are either misconceived, misattributed to HARKing, lacking evidence, (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  11. Integrating Abduction and Inference to the Best Explanation.Michael J. Shaffer - 2022 - European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 14 (2):1-18.
    Tomis Kapitan’s work on Peirce’s conception of abduction was instrumental for our coming to see how Peircean abduction both relates to and is importantly different from inference to the best explanation (IBE). However, he ultimately concluded that Peirce’s conception of abduction was a muddle. Despite the deeply problematic nature of Peirce’s theory of abduction in these respects, Kapitan’s work on Peircean abduction offers insight into the nature of abductive inquiry that is importantly relevant to the task of making sense of (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Resolving the Raven Paradox: Simple Random Sampling, Stratified Random Sampling, and Inference to Best Explanation.Barry Ward - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (2):360-377.
    Simple random sampling resolutions of the raven paradox relevantly diverge from scientific practice. We develop a stratified random sampling model, yielding a better fit and apparently rehabilitating simple random sampling as a legitimate idealization. However, neither accommodates a second concern, the objection from potential bias. We develop a third model that crucially invokes causal considerations, yielding a novel resolution that handles both concerns. This approach resembles Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and relates the generalization’s confirmation to confirmation of an (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13. Logical Maximalism in the Empirical Sciences.Constantin C. Brîncuș - 2021 - In Parusniková Zuzana & Merritt David (eds.), Karl Popper's Science and Philosophy. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. pp. 171-184.
    K. R. Popper distinguished between two main uses of logic, the demonstrational one, in mathematical proofs, and the derivational one, in the empirical sciences. These two uses are governed by the following methodological constraints: in mathematical proofs one ought to use minimal logical means (logical minimalism), while in the empirical sciences one ought to use the strongest available logic (logical maximalism). In this paper I discuss whether Popper’s critical rationalism is compatible with a revision of logic in the empirical sciences, (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  14. On the Argument from Double Spaces: A Reply to Moti Mizrahi.Seungbae Park - 2021 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 10 (2):1-6.
    Van Fraassen infers the truth of the contextual theory from his observation that it has passed a crucial test. Mizrahi infers the comparative truth of our best theories from his observation that they are more successful than their competitors. Their inferences require, according to the argument from double spaces, the prior belief that it is more likely that their target theories were pulled out from the T-space than from the O-space. The T-space is the logical space of unconceived theories whose (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  15. Mathematics and Explanatory Generality: Nothing but Cognitive Salience.Juha Saatsi & Robert Knowles - 2021 - Erkenntnis 86 (5):1119-1137.
    We demonstrate how real progress can be made in the debate surrounding the enhanced indispensability argument. Drawing on a counterfactual theory of explanation, well-motivated independently of the debate, we provide a novel analysis of ‘explanatory generality’ and how mathematics is involved in its procurement. On our analysis, mathematics’ sole explanatory contribution to the procurement of explanatory generality is to make counterfactual information about physical dependencies easier to grasp and reason with for creatures like us. This gives precise content to key (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  16. Should Explanations Omit the Details?Darren Bradley - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (3):827-853.
    There is a widely shared belief that the higher-level sciences can provide better explanations than lower-level sciences. But there is little agreement about exactly why this is so. It is often suggested that higher-level explanations are better because they omit details. I will argue instead that the preference for higher-level explanations is just a special case of our general preference for informative, logically strong, beliefs. I argue that our preference for informative beliefs entirely accounts for why higher-level explanations are sometimes (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  17. The structure of epistemic probabilities.Nevin Climenhaga - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (11):3213-3242.
    The epistemic probability of A given B is the degree to which B evidentially supports A, or makes A plausible. This paper is a first step in answering the question of what determines the values of epistemic probabilities. I break this question into two parts: the structural question and the substantive question. Just as an object’s weight is determined by its mass and gravitational acceleration, some probabilities are determined by other, more basic ones. The structural question asks what probabilities are (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  18. Explanatory Consolidation: From ‘Best’ to ‘Good Enough’.Finnur Dellsén - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (1):157-177.
    In science and everyday life, we often infer that something is true because it would explain some set of facts better than any other hypothesis we can think of. But what if we have reason to believe that there is a better way to explain these facts that we just haven't thought of? Wouldn't that undermine our warrant for believing the best available explanation? Many philosophers have assumed that we can solve such underconsideration problems by stipulating that a hypothesis should (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  19. Cómo afilar tu navaja nueva: un principio de parsimonia ideológica para argumentar en metafísica.Óscar Antonio Monroy Pérez - 2020 - Dissertation, National Autonomous University of Mexico
    En metafísica contemporánea, es común trabajar bajo una metodología basada en virtudes teóricas. En caso de disputa, esta metodología nos aconseja elegir la teoría que mejor satisfaga las virtudes teóricas estándar: precisión empírica, fecundidad, poder unificador, consistencia y simplicidad. Sin embargo, no hay consenso sobre cómo deben frasearse tales virtudes, ni sobre cómo ponderarlas. Aquí me concentraré en ofrecer razones a favor de una manera de frasear el principio de parsimonia ideológica, una especie de simplicidad. Defiendo que dicho principio debería (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. Unification and the Myth of Purely Reductive Understanding.Michael J. Shaffer - 2020 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 27:142-168.
    In this paper significant challenges are raised with respect to the view that explanation essentially involves unification. These objections are raised specifically with respect to the well-known versions of unificationism developed and defended by Michael Friedman and Philip Kitcher. The objections involve the explanatory regress argument and the concepts of reduction and scientific understanding. Essentially, the contention made here is that these versions of unificationism wrongly assume that reduction secures understanding.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  21. Abductive two-dimensionalism: a new route to the a priori identification of necessary truths.Biggs Stephen & Wilson Jessica - 2020 - Synthese 197 (1):59-93.
    Epistemic two-dimensional semantics, advocated by Chalmers and Jackson, among others, aims to restore the link between necessity and a priority seemingly broken by Kripke, by showing how armchair access to semantic intensions provides a basis for knowledge of necessary a posteriori truths. The most compelling objections to E2D are that, for one or other reason, the requisite intensions are not accessible from the armchair. As we substantiate here, existing versions of E2D are indeed subject to such access-based objections. But, we (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  22. The material theory of induction and the epistemology of thought experiments.Michael T. Stuart - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 83 (C):17-27.
    John D. Norton is responsible for a number of influential views in contemporary philosophy of science. This paper will discuss two of them. The material theory of induction claims that inductive arguments are ultimately justified by their material features, not their formal features. Thus, while a deductive argument can be valid irrespective of the content of the propositions that make up the argument, an inductive argument about, say, apples, will be justified (or not) depending on facts about apples. The argument (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  23. Beyond Falsifiability: Normal Science in a Multiverse.Sean M. Carroll - 2019 - In Dawid Richard, Dardashti Radin & Thebault Karim (eds.), Epistemology of Fundamental Physics: Why Trust a Theory? Cambridge University Press.
    Cosmological models that invoke a multiverse - a collection of unobservable regions of space where conditions are very different from the region around us - are controversial, on the grounds that unobservable phenomena shouldn't play a crucial role in legitimate scientific theories. I argue that the way we evaluate multiverse models is precisely the same as the way we evaluate any other models, on the basis of abduction, Bayesian inference, and empirical success. There is no scientifically respectable way to do (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  24. Conjunctive Explanations and Inference to the Best Explanation.Jonah Schupbach - 2019 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 38 (3):143-162.
    Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) advises reasoners to infer exactly one explanation. This uniqueness claim apparently binds us when it comes to “conjunctive explanations,” distinct explanations that are nonetheless explanatorily better together than apart. To confront this worry, explanationists qualify their statement of IBE, stipulating that this inference form only adjudicates between competing hypotheses. However, a closer look into the nature of competition reveals problems for this qualified account. Given the most common explication of competition, this qualification artificially and (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  25. The Availability Heuristic and Inference to the Best Explanation.Michael J. Shaffer - 2019 - Logos and Episteme 10 (4):409-432.
    This paper shows how the availability heuristic can be used to justify inference to the best explanation in such a way that van Fraassen's infamous "best of a bad lot" objection can be adroitly avoided. With this end in mind, a dynamic and contextual version of the erotetic model of explanation sufficient to ground this response is presented and defended.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  26. Bayesianism and Explanatory Unification: A Compatibilist Account.Thomas Blanchard - 2018 - Philosophy of Science 85 (4):682-703.
    Proponents of IBE claim that the ability of a hypothesis to explain a range of phenomena in a unifying way contributes to the hypothesis’s credibility in light of these phenomena. I propose a Bayesian justification of this claim that reveals a hitherto unnoticed role for explanatory unification in evaluating the plausibility of a hypothesis: considerations of explanatory unification enter into the determination of a hypothesis’s prior by affecting its ‘explanatory coherence’, that is, the extent to which the hypothesis offers mutually (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  27. Expertise and Conspiracy Theories.M. R. X. Dentith - 2018 - Social Epistemology 32 (3):196-208.
    Judging the warrant of conspiracy theories can be difficult, and often we rely upon what the experts tell us when it comes to assessing whether particular conspiracy theories ought to be believed. However, whereas there are recognised experts in the sciences, I argue that only are is no such associated expertise when it comes to the things we call `conspiracy theories,' but that the conspiracy theorist has good reason to be suspicious of the role of expert endorsements when it comes (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  28. More in Defense of Weak Scientism.Moti Mizrahi - 2018 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 7 (4):7-25.
    In my (2017a), I defend a view I call Weak Scientism, which is the view that knowledge produced by scientific disciplines is better than knowledge produced by non-scientific disciplines. Scientific knowledge can be said to be quantitatively better than non-scientific knowledge insofar as scientific disciplines produce more impactful knowledge–in the form of scholarly publications–than non-scientific disciplines (as measured by research output and research impact). Scientific knowledge can be said to be qualitatively better than non-scientific knowledge insofar as such knowledge is (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  29. Weak Scientism Defended Once More: A Reply to Wills.Moti Mizrahi - 2018 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 7 (6):41-50.
    Bernard Wills (2018) joins Christopher Brown (2017, 2018) in criticizing my defense of Weak Scientism (Mizrahi 2017a, 2017b, 2018a). Unfortunately, it seems that Wills did not read my latest defense of Weak Scientism carefully, nor does he cite any of the other papers in my exchange with Brown.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  30. Why Scientific Knowledge Is Still the Best.Moti Mizrahi - 2018 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 7 (9):18-32.
    In his latest attack, even though he claims to be a practitioner of “close reading” (Wills 2018b, 34), it appears that Wills still has not bothered to read the paper in which I defend the thesis he seeks to attack (Mizrahi 2017a), or any of the papers in my exchange with Brown (Mizrahi 2017b; 2018a), as evidenced by the fact that he does not cite them at all. This explains why Wills completely misunderstands Weak Scientism and the arguments for the (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  31. (17 other versions)Системный подход, экзистенциальная депрессия и структурированная галлюцинация – есть ли связь?Vitalii Shymko - 2018 - Pro|Stranstvo.
    Публикация (#2) из научно-популярного цикла: "Структурная онтология познания с доктором Шимко".
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32. Cladistic Parsimony, Historical Linguistics and Cultural Phylogenetics.Frank Cabrera - 2017 - Mind and Language 32 (1):65-100.
    Here, I consider the recent application of phylogenetic methods in historical linguistics. After a preliminary survey of one such method, i.e. cladistic parsimony, I respond to two common criticisms of cultural phylogenies: that cultural artifacts cannot be modeled as tree-like because of borrowing across lineages, and that the mechanism of cultural change differs radically from that of biological evolution. I argue that while perhaps remains true for certain cultural artifacts, the nature of language may be such as to side-step this (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  33. Can there be a Bayesian explanationism? On the prospects of a productive partnership.Frank Cabrera - 2017 - Synthese 194 (4):1245–1272.
    In this paper, I consider the relationship between Inference to the Best Explanation and Bayesianism, both of which are well-known accounts of the nature of scientific inference. In Sect. 2, I give a brief overview of Bayesianism and IBE. In Sect. 3, I argue that IBE in its most prominently defended forms is difficult to reconcile with Bayesianism because not all of the items that feature on popular lists of “explanatory virtues”—by means of which IBE ranks competing explanations—have confirmational import. (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  34. How Explanation Guides Confirmation.Nevin Climenhaga - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (2):359-68.
    Where E is the proposition that [If H and O were true, H would explain O], William Roche and Elliot Sober have argued that P(H|O&E) = P(H|O). In this paper I argue that not only is this equality not generally true, it is false in the very kinds of cases that Roche and Sober focus on, involving frequency data. In fact, in such cases O raises the probability of H only given that there is an explanatory connection between them.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  35. Inference to the Best Explanation Made Incoherent.Nevin Climenhaga - 2017 - Journal of Philosophy 114 (5):251-273.
    Defenders of Inference to the Best Explanation claim that explanatory factors should play an important role in empirical inference. They disagree, however, about how exactly to formulate this role. In particular, they disagree about whether to formulate IBE as an inference rule for full beliefs or for degrees of belief, as well as how a rule for degrees of belief should relate to Bayesianism. In this essay I advance a new argument against non-Bayesian versions of IBE. My argument focuses on (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   35 citations  
  36. Reactionary responses to the Bad Lot Objection.Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 61:32-40.
    As it is standardly conceived, Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) is a form of ampliative inference in which one infers a hypothesis because it provides a better potential explanation of one’s evidence than any other available, competing explanatory hypothesis. Bas van Fraassen famously objected to IBE thus formulated that we may have no reason to think that any of the available, competing explanatory hypotheses are true. While revisionary responses to the Bad Lot Objection concede that IBE needs to be (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  37. Ted Poston, Reason and Explanation: A Defense of Explanatory Coherentism. [REVIEW]Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Dialectica 71 (1):117-124.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  38. Abductively Robust Inference.Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Analysis 77 (1):20-29.
    Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) is widely criticized for being an unreliable form of ampliative inference – partly because the explanatory hypotheses we have considered at a given time may all be false, and partly because there is an asymmetry between the comparative judgment on which an IBE is based and the absolute verdict that IBE is meant to license. In this paper, I present a further reason to doubt the epistemic merits of IBE and argue that it motivates (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  39. Trout, J. D. , Wondrous Truths: The Improbable Triumph of Modern Science, New York: Oxford University Press, 264pp, ISBN 978-0199385072. [REVIEW]Nicholas Maxwell - 2017 - Acta Baltica Historiae Et Philosophiae Scientiarum 5 (2):108-115.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  40. In Defense of Weak Scientism: A Reply to Brown.Moti Mizrahi - 2017 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 6 (2):9-22.
    In “What’s So Bad about Scientism?” (Mizrahi 2017), I argue that Weak Scientism, the view that “Of all the knowledge we have, scientific knowledge is the best knowledge” (Mizrahi 2017, 354; emphasis in original) is a defensible position. That is to say, Weak Scientism “can be successfully defended against objections” (Mizrahi 2017, 354). In his response to Mizrahi (2017), Christopher Brown (2017) provides more objections against Weak Scientism, and thus another opportunity for me to show that Weak Scientism is a (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  41. What’s so bad about scientism?Moti Mizrahi - 2017 - Social Epistemology 31 (4):351-367.
    In their attempt to defend philosophy from accusations of uselessness made by prominent scientists, such as Stephen Hawking, some philosophers respond with the charge of ‘scientism.’ This charge makes endorsing a scientistic stance, a mistake by definition. For this reason, it begs the question against these critics of philosophy, or anyone who is inclined to endorse a scientistic stance, and turns the scientism debate into a verbal dispute. In this paper, I propose a different definition of scientism, and thus a (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  42. Presume It Not: True Causes in the Search for the Basis of Heredity.Aaron Novick & Raphael Scholl - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (1):axy001.
    Kyle Stanford has recently given substance to the problem of unconceived alternatives, which challenges the reliability of inference to the best explanation (IBE) in remote domains of nature. Conjoined with the view that IBE is the central inferential tool at our disposal in investigating these domains, the problem of unconceived alternatives leads to scientific anti-realism. We argue that, at least within the biological community, scientists are now and have long been aware of the dangers of IBE. We re-analyze the nineteenth-century (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  43. Explanation, confirmation, and Hempel's paradox.William Roche - 2017 - In Kevin McCain & Ted Poston (eds.), Best Explanations: New Essays on Inference to the Best Explanation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 219-241.
    Hempel’s Converse Consequence Condition (CCC), Entailment Condition (EC), and Special Consequence Condition (SCC) have some prima facie plausibility when taken individually. Hempel, though, shows that they have no plausibility when taken together, for together they entail that E confirms H for any propositions E and H. This is “Hempel’s paradox”. It turns out that Hempel’s argument would fail if one or more of CCC, EC, and SCC were modified in terms of explanation. This opens up the possibility that Hempel’s paradox (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44. Is Explanatoriness a Guide to Confirmation? A Reply to Climenhaga.William Roche & Elliott Sober - 2017 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 48 (4):581-590.
    We argued that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant in the following sense: Let H be a hypothesis, O an observation, and E the proposition that H would explain O if H and O were true. Then our claim is that Pr = Pr. We defended this screening-off thesis by discussing an example concerning smoking and cancer. Climenhaga argues that SOT is mistaken because it delivers the wrong verdict about a slightly different smoking-and-cancer case. He also considers a variant of SOT, called (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  45. On Probability and Cosmology: Inference Beyond Data?Martin Sahlen - 2017 - In Khalil Chamcham, John Barrow, Simon Saunders & Joe Silk (eds.), The Philosophy of Cosmology. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
    Modern scientific cosmology pushes the boundaries of knowledge and the knowable. This is prompting questions on the nature of scientific knowledge. A central issue is what defines a 'good' model. When addressing global properties of the Universe or its initial state this becomes a particularly pressing issue. How to assess the probability of the Universe as a whole is empirically ambiguous, since we can examine only part of a single realisation of the system under investigation: at some point, data will (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  46. Abduction by Philosophers: Reorienting Philosophical Methodology.James Andow - 2016 - Metaphilosophy 47 (3):353-370.
    A reorientation is needed in methodological debate about the role of intuitions in philosophy. Methodological debate has lost sight of the reason why it makes sense to focus on questions about intuitions when thinking about the methods or epistemology of philosophy. The problem is an approach to methodology that focuses almost exclusively on questions about some evidential role that intuitions may or may not play in philosophers’ arguments. A new approach is needed. Approaching methodological questions about the role of intuitions (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  47. Presuppositions as Cancellable Inferences.Fabrizio Macagno - 2016 - In Keith Allan, Alessandro Capone & Istvan Kecskes (eds.), Pragmemes and theories of language use. Springer International Publishing. pp. 45-68.
    The phenomenon of presupposition suspension can be analyzed in terms of explicatures and the corresponding non-presumptive interpretative reasoning underlying it. On the view presented in this paper, the polyphonic articulation of an utterance at different levels can be used to explain cases in which presuppositions are suspended. Presuppositional suspensions indicate that the presumptive reading does not hold and a different interpretation is needed. Utterances can display various types of polyphonic structures, accounting for the speaker’s and the hearer’s commitments. A speaker (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  48. Explanatory Indispensability and Deliberative Indispensability: Against Enoch's Analogy.Alex Worsnip - 2016 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 5 (4):226-235.
    In this note, I discuss David Enoch's influential deliberative indispensability argument for metanormative realism, and contend that the argument fails. In doing so, I uncover an important disanalogy between explanatory indispensability arguments and deliberative indispensability arguments, one that explains how we could accept the former without accepting the latter.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  49. Tvö viðhorf til vísindalegrar þekkingar -- eða eitt?Finnur Dellsén - 2015 - Ritið -- Tímarit Hugvísindastofnunar 15 (1):135-155.
    There are two main approaches to the epistemology of science. On the one hand, some hold that a scientific hypothesis is confirmed to the extent that the hypothesis explains the evidence better than alternative hypotheses concerning the same subject-matter. This idea is often referred to as Inference to the Best Explanation. On the other hand, some hold that a scientific hypothesis is confirmed to the extent that the hypothesis is probable given the evidence. This idea is often associated with Bayesianism (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  50. Explanatory Rivals and the Ultimate Argument.Finnur Dellsén - 2015 - Theoria 82 (3):217-237.
    Although many aspects of Inference to the Best Explanation have been extensively discussed, very little has so far been said about what it takes for a hypothesis to count as a rival explanatory hypothesis in the context of IBE. The primary aim of this article is to rectify this situation by arguing for a specific account of explanatory rivalry. On this account, explanatory rivals are complete explanations of a given explanandum. When explanatory rivals are conceived of in this way, I (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
1 — 50 / 70