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  1. Confirmation, Coherence and the Strength of Arguments.Stephan Hartmann & Borut Trpin - 2023 - Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 45:1473-1479.
    Alongside science and law, argumentation is also of central importance in everyday life. But what characterizes a good argument? This question has occupied philosophers and psychologists for centuries. The theory of Bayesian argumentation is particularly suitable for clarifying it, because it allows us to take into account in a natural way the role of uncertainty, which is central to much argumentation. Moreover, it offers the possibility of measuring the strength of an argument in probabilistic terms. One way to do this, (...)
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  • Non-Measurability, Imprecise Credences, and Imprecise Chances.Yoaav Isaacs, Alan Hájek & John Hawthorne - 2021 - Mind 131 (523):892-916.
    – We offer a new motivation for imprecise probabilities. We argue that there are propositions to which precise probability cannot be assigned, but to which imprecise probability can be assigned. In such cases the alternative to imprecise probability is not precise probability, but no probability at all. And an imprecise probability is substantially better than no probability at all. Our argument is based on the mathematical phenomenon of non-measurable sets. Non-measurable propositions cannot receive precise probabilities, but there is a natural (...)
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  • Consensus versus Unanimity: Which Carries More Weight?Finnur Dellsén - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    Around 97% of climate scientists endorse anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the theory that human activities are partly responsible for recent increases in global average temperatures. Clearly, this widespread endorsement of AGW is a reason for non-experts to believe in AGW. But what is the epistemic significance of the fact that some climate scientists do not endorse AGW? This paper contrasts expert unanimity, in which virtually no expert disagrees with some theory, with expert consensus, in which some non-negligible proportion either rejects (...)
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  • Probability, Evidential Support, and the Logic of Conditionals.Vincenzo Crupi & Andrea Iacona - 2021 - Argumenta 6:211-222.
    Once upon a time, some thought that indicative conditionals could be effectively analyzed as material conditionals. Later on, an alternative theoretical construct has prevailed and received wide acceptance, namely, the conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. Partly following critical remarks recently ap- peared in the literature, we suggest that evidential support—rather than conditional probability alone—is key to understand indicative conditionals. There have been motivated concerns that a theory of evidential conditionals (unlike their more tra- ditional counterparts) cannot generate (...)
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  • Multiple Universes and Self-Locating Evidence.Yoaav Isaacs, John Hawthorne & Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2022 - Philosophical Review 131 (3):241-294.
    Is the fact that our universe contains fine-tuned life evidence that we live in a multiverse? Ian Hacking and Roger White influentially argue that it is not. We approach this question through a systematic framework for self-locating epistemology. As it turns out, leading approaches to self-locating evidence agree that the fact that our own universe contains fine-tuned life indeed confirms the existence of a multiverse. This convergence is no accident: we present two theorems showing that, in this setting, any updating (...)
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  • Fine‐tuning, weird sorts of atheism and evidential favouring.Tamaz Tokhadze - 2021 - Analytic Philosophy (3):1-12.
    This paper defends a novel sceptical response to the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God (FTA). According to this response, even if FTA can establish, what I call, the confirmation proposition: ‘fine-tuning confirms the God hypothesis’, there is no reason to think that a strengthening of FTA can establish the evidence-favouring proposition: ‘fine-tuning favours the God hypothesis over its competitors’. My argument is that, any criteria for the explanation of fine-tuning that permit us to take the God hypothesis seriously (...)
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  • Fragmentation and Old Evidence.Will Fleisher - 2023 - Episteme 20 (3):542-567.
    Bayesian confirmation theory is our best formal framework for describing inductive reasoning. The problem of old evidence is a particularly difficult one for confirmation theory, because it suggests that this framework fails to account for central and important cases of inductive reasoning and scientific inference. I show that we can appeal to the fragmentation of doxastic states to solve this problem for confirmation theory. This fragmentation solution is independently well-motivated because of the success of fragmentation in solving other problems. I (...)
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  • 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 (...)
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  • The Requirement of Total Evidence: A Reply to Epstein’s Critique.Martin Barrett & Elliott Sober - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (1):191-203.
    The requirement of total evidence is a mainstay of Bayesian epistemology. Peter Fisher Epstein argues that the requirement generates mistaken conclusions about several examples that he devises. Here we examine the example of Epstein’s that we find most interesting and argue that Epstein’s analysis of it is flawed.
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  • Bayesian Philosophy of Science.Jan Sprenger & Stephan Hartmann - 2019 - Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
    How should we reason in science? Jan Sprenger and Stephan Hartmann offer a refreshing take on classical topics in philosophy of science, using a single key concept to explain and to elucidate manifold aspects of scientific reasoning. They present good arguments and good inferences as being characterized by their effect on our rational degrees of belief. Refuting the view that there is no place for subjective attitudes in 'objective science', Sprenger and Hartmann explain the value of convincing evidence in terms (...)
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  • Conditional Probabilities.Kenny Easwaran - 2019 - In Richard Pettigrew & Jonathan Weisberg (eds.), The Open Handbook of Formal Epistemology. PhilPapers Foundation. pp. 131-198.
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  • Confirmation based on analogical inference: Bayes meets Jeffrey.Christian J. Feldbacher-Escamilla & Alexander Gebharter - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (2):174-194.
    Certain hypotheses cannot be directly confirmed for theoretical, practical, or moral reasons. For some of these hypotheses, however, there might be a workaround: confirmation based on analogical reasoning. In this paper we take up Dardashti, Hartmann, Thébault, and Winsberg’s (in press) idea of analyzing confirmation based on analogical inference Baysian style. We identify three types of confirmation by analogy and show that Dardashti et al.’s approach can cover two of them. We then highlight possible problems with their model as a (...)
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  • Plenty of room left for the Dogmatist.Thomas Raleigh - 2019 - Analysis 80 (1):66-76.
    Barnett provides an interesting new challenge for Dogmatist accounts of perceptual justification. The challenge is that such accounts, by accepting that a perceptual experience can provide a distinctive kind of boost to one’s credences, would lead to a form of diachronic irrationality in cases where one has already learnt in advance that one will have such an experience. I show that this challenge rests on a misleading feature of using the 0–1 interval to express probabilities and show that if we (...)
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  • A General Framework for Probabilistic Measures of Coherence.Michael Schippers & Jakob Koscholke - 2020 - Studia Logica 108 (3):395-424.
    Coherence is a property of propositions hanging together or dovetailing with each other. About two decades ago, formal epistemologists started to engage in the project of explicating the seemingly elusive concept of coherence by means of probability theory. Since then, a plethora of coherence measures have been discussed in the literature. In this paper, we propose a general framework for coherence measures that encompasses the different frameworks of deviation measures, overlap measures and mutual support measures of coherence. Above that we (...)
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  • (1 other version)Evidential Reasoning.Marcello Di Bello & Bart Verheij - 2011 - In G. Bongiovanni, Don Postema, A. Rotolo, G. Sartor, C. Valentini & D. Walton (eds.), Handbook in Legal Reasoning and Argumentation. Dordrecht, Netherland: Springer. pp. 447-493.
    The primary aim of this chapter is to explain the nature of evidential reasoning, the characteristic difficulties encountered, and the tools to address these difficulties. Our focus is on evidential reasoning in criminal cases. There is an extensive scholarly literature on these topics, and it is a secondary aim of the chapter to provide readers the means to find their way in historical and ongoing debates.
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  • Fading Foundations: Probability and the Regress Problem.Jeanne Peijnenburg - 2017 - Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Edited by Jeanne Peijnenburg.
    This Open Access book addresses the age-old problem of infinite regresses in epistemology. How can we ever come to know something if knowing requires having good reasons, and reasons can only be good if they are backed by good reasons in turn? The problem has puzzled philosophers ever since antiquity, giving rise to what is often called Agrippa's Trilemma. The current volume approaches the old problem in a provocative and thoroughly contemporary way. Taking seriously the idea that good reasons are (...)
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  • Trial by Statistics: Is a High Probability of Guilt Enough to Convict?Marcello Di Bello - 2019 - Mind 128 (512):1045-1084.
    Suppose one hundred prisoners are in a yard under the supervision of a guard, and at some point, ninety-nine of them collectively kill the guard. If, after the fact, a prisoner is picked at random and tried, the probability of his guilt is 99%. But despite the high probability, the statistical chances, by themselves, seem insufficient to justify a conviction. The question is why. Two arguments are offered. The first, decision-theoretic argument shows that a conviction solely based on the statistics (...)
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  • Evidence of Evidence as Higher Order Evidence.Anna-Maria A. Eder & Peter Brössel - 2019 - In Mattias Skipper & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen (eds.), Higher-Order Evidence: New Essays. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 62-83.
    In everyday life and in science we acquire evidence of evidence and based on this new evidence we often change our epistemic states. An assumption underlying such practice is that the following EEE Slogan is correct: 'evidence of evidence is evidence' (Feldman 2007, p. 208). We suggest that evidence of evidence is best understood as higher-order evidence about the epistemic state of agents. In order to model evidence of evidence we introduce a new powerful framework for modelling epistemic states, Dyadic (...)
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  • Confirmation and the generalized Nagel–Schaffner model of reduction: a Bayesian analysis.Marko Tešić - 2019 - Synthese 196 (3):1097-1129.
    In their 2010 paper, Dizadji-Bahmani, Frigg, and Hartmann argue that the generalized version of the Nagel–Schaffner model that they have developed is the right one for intertheoretic reduction, i.e. the kind of reduction that involves theories with largely overlapping domains of application. Drawing on the GNS, DFH presented a Bayesian analysis of the confirmatory relation between the reducing theory and the reduced theory and argued that, post-reduction, evidence confirming the reducing theory also confirms the reduced theory and evidence confirming the (...)
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  • Intertheoretic Reduction, Confirmation, and Montague’s Syntax-Semantics Relation.Kristina Liefke & Stephan Hartmann - 2018 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 27 (4):313-341.
    Intertheoretic relations are an important topic in the philosophy of science. However, since their classical discussion by Ernest Nagel, such relations have mostly been restricted to relations between pairs of theories in the natural sciences. This paper presents a case study of a new type of intertheoretic relation that is inspired by Montague’s analysis of the linguistic syntax-semantics relation. The paper develops a simple model of this relation. To motivate the adoption of our new model, we show that this model (...)
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  • What Is Bayesian Confirmation for?Darren Bradley - 2017 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 31 (3):229-241.
    Peter Brössel and Franz Huber in 2015 argued that the Bayesian concept of confirmation had no use. I will argue that it has both the uses they discussed—it can be used for making claims about how worthy of belief various hypotheses are, and it can be used to measure the epistemic value of experiments. Furthermore, it can be useful in explanations. More generally, I will argue that more coarse-grained concepts can be useful, even when we have more fine-grained concepts available.
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  • Information and Inaccuracy.William Roche & Tomoji Shogenji - 2018 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (2):577-604.
    This article proposes a new interpretation of mutual information. We examine three extant interpretations of MI by reduction in doubt, by reduction in uncertainty, and by divergence. We argue that the first two are inconsistent with the epistemic value of information assumed in many applications of MI: the greater is the amount of information we acquire, the better is our epistemic position, other things being equal. The third interpretation is consistent with EVI, but it is faced with the problem of (...)
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  • Bayesian Argumentation and the Value of Logical Validity.Benjamin Eva & Stephan Hartmann - unknown
    According to the Bayesian paradigm in the psychology of reasoning, the norms by which everyday human cognition is best evaluated are probabilistic rather than logical in character. Recently, the Bayesian paradigm has been applied to the domain of argumentation, where the fundamental norms are traditionally assumed to be logical. Here, we present a major generalisation of extant Bayesian approaches to argumentation that (i)utilizes a new class of Bayesian learning methods that are better suited to modelling dynamic and conditional inferences than (...)
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  • Hawking radiation and analogue experiments: A Bayesian analysis.Radin Dardashti, Stephan Hartmann, Karim P. Y. Thébault & Eric Winsberg - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 67:1-11.
    We present a Bayesian analysis of the epistemology of analogue experiments with particular reference to Hawking radiation. Provided such experiments can be externally validated via universality arguments, we prove that they are confirmatory in Bayesian terms. We then provide a formal model for the scaling behaviour of the confirmation measure for multiple distinct realisations of the analogue system and isolate a generic saturation feature. Finally, we demonstrate that different potential analogue realisations could provide different levels of confirmation. Our results thus (...)
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  • Promotion as contrastive increase in expected fit.Nathaniel Sharadin & Finnur Dellsén - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (5):1263-1290.
    What is required for an action to promote the satisfaction of a desire? We reject extant answers and propose an alternative. Our account differs from competing answers in two ways: first, it is contrastive, in that actions promote the satisfaction of desires only as contrasted with other possible actions. Second, it employs a notion of expected fit between desire and world, defined as the weighted sum of the fit between the desire and the world in all possible outcomes, where each (...)
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  • Confirmation, Increase in Probability, and the Likelihood Ratio Measure: a Reply to Glass and McCartney.William Roche - 2017 - Acta Analytica 32 (4):491-513.
    Bayesian confirmation theory is rife with confirmation measures. Zalabardo focuses on the probability difference measure, the probability ratio measure, the likelihood difference measure, and the likelihood ratio measure. He argues that the likelihood ratio measure is adequate, but each of the other three measures is not. He argues for this by setting out three adequacy conditions on confirmation measures and arguing in effect that all of them are met by the likelihood ratio measure but not by any of the other (...)
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  • A note on confirmation and Matthew properties.Roche William - 2014 - Logic and Philosophy of Science 12:91-101.
    There are numerous (Bayesian) confirmation measures in the literature. Festa provides a formal characterization of a certain class of such measures. He calls the members of this class “incremental measures”. Festa then introduces six rather interesting properties called “Matthew properties” and puts forward two theses, hereafter “T1” and “T2”, concerning which of the various extant incremental measures have which of the various Matthew properties. Festa’s discussion is potentially helpful with the problem of measure sensitivity. I argue, that, while Festa’s discussion (...)
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  • Bayesians sometimes cannot ignore even very implausible theories (even ones that have not yet been thought of).Branden Fitelson & Neil Thomason - 2008 - Australasian Journal of Logic 6:25-36.
    In applying Bayes’s theorem to the history of science, Bayesians sometimes assume – often without argument – that they can safely ignore very implausible theories. This assumption is false, both in that it can seriously distort the history of science as well as the mathematics and the applicability of Bayes’s theorem. There are intuitively very plausible counter-examples. In fact, one can ignore very implausible or unknown theories only if at least one of two conditions is satisfied: (i) one is certain (...)
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  • Is there a place in Bayesian confirmation theory for the Reverse Matthew Effect?William Roche - 2018 - Synthese 195 (4):1631-1648.
    Bayesian confirmation theory is rife with confirmation measures. Many of them differ from each other in important respects. It turns out, though, that all the standard confirmation measures in the literature run counter to the so-called “Reverse Matthew Effect” (“RME” for short). Suppose, to illustrate, that H1 and H2 are equally successful in predicting E in that p(E | H1)/p(E) = p(E | H2)/p(E) > 1. Suppose, further, that initially H1 is less probable than H2 in that p(H1) < p(H2). (...)
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  • Genuine Coherence as Mutual Confirmation Between Content Elements.Michael Schippers & Gerhard Schurz - 2017 - Studia Logica 105 (2):299-329.
    The concepts of coherence and confirmation are closely intertwined: according to a prominent proposal coherence is nothing but mutual confirmation. Accordingly, it should come as no surprise that both are confronted with similar problems. As regards Bayesian confirmation measures these are illustrated by the problem of tacking by conjunction. On the other hand, Bayesian coherence measures face the problem of belief individuation. In this paper we want to outline the benefit of an approach to coherence and confirmation based on content (...)
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  • Confirmation as partial entailment: A representation theorem in inductive logic.Vincenzo Crupi & Katya Tentori - 2013 - Journal of Applied Logic 11 (4):364-372.
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  • Unification and Confirmation.Ilkka Niiniluoto - 2016 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 31 (1):107-123.
    According to the traditional requirement, formulated by William Whewell in his account of the “consilience of inductions” in 1840, a scientific hypothesis should have unifying power in the sense that it explains and predicts several mutually independent phenomena. Variants of this notion of consilience or unification include deductive, inductive, and approximate systematization. Inference from surprising phenomena to their theoretical explanations was called abduction by Charles Peirce. As a unifying theory is independently testable by new kinds of phenomena, it should also (...)
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  • Bayesian Confirmation: A Means with No End.Peter Brössel & Franz Huber - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (4):737-749.
    Any theory of confirmation must answer the following question: what is the purpose of its conception of confirmation for scientific inquiry? In this article, we argue that no Bayesian conception of confirmation can be used for its primary intended purpose, which we take to be making a claim about how worthy of belief various hypotheses are. Then we consider a different use to which Bayesian confirmation might be put, namely, determining the epistemic value of experimental outcomes, and thus to decide (...)
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  • Foundations of a Probabilistic Theory of Causal Strength.Jan Sprenger - 2018 - Philosophical Review 127 (3):371-398.
    This paper develops axiomatic foundations for a probabilistic-interventionist theory of causal strength. Transferring methods from Bayesian confirmation theory, I proceed in three steps: I develop a framework for defining and comparing measures of causal strength; I argue that no single measure can satisfy all natural constraints; I prove two representation theorems for popular measures of causal strength: Pearl's causal effect measure and Eells' difference measure. In other words, I demonstrate these two measures can be derived from a set of plausible (...)
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  • Absence of evidence and evidence of absence: evidential transitivity in connection with fossils, fishing, fine-tuning, and firing squads.Elliott Sober - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 143 (1):63-90.
    “Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence” is a slogan that is popular among scientists and nonscientists alike. This article assesses its truth by using a probabilistic tool, the Law of Likelihood. Qualitative questions (“Is E evidence about H ?”) and quantitative questions (“How much evidence does E provide about H ?”) are both considered. The article discusses the example of fossil intermediates. If finding a fossil that is phenotypically intermediate between two extant species provides evidence that those species have (...)
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  • Hempel’s logic of confirmation.Franz Huber - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 139 (2):181-189.
    This paper presents a new analysis of C.G. Hempel’s conditions of adequacy for any relation of confirmation [Hempel C. G. (1945). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science. New York: The Free Press, pp. 3–51.], differing from the one Carnap gave in §87 of his [1962. Logical foundations of probability (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.]. Hempel, it is argued, felt the need for two concepts of confirmation: one aiming at true hypotheses and another (...)
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  • (1 other version)A Bayesian Account of Independent Evidence with Applications.Branden Fitelson - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (S3):S123-S140.
    A Bayesian account of independent evidential support is outlined. This account is partly inspired by the work of C. S. Peirce. I show that a large class of quantitative Bayesian measures of confirmation satisfy some basic desiderata suggested by Peirce for adequate accounts of independent evidence. I argue that, by considering further natural constraints on a probabilistic account of independent evidence, all but a very small class of Bayesian measures of confirmation can be ruled out. In closing, another application of (...)
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  • Sleeping Beauty Goes to the Lab: The Psychology of Self-Locating Evidence.Matteo Colombo, Jun Lai & Vincenzo Crupi - unknown - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 10 (1):173-185.
    Analyses of the Sleeping Beauty Problem are polarised between those advocating the “1/2 view” (“halfers”) and those endorsing the “1/3 view” (“thirders”). The disagreement concerns the evidential relevance of self-locating information. Unlike halfers, thirders regard self-locating information as evidentially relevant in the Sleeping Beauty Problem. In the present study, we systematically manipulate the kind of information available in different formulations of the Sleeping Beauty Problem. Our findings indicate that patterns of judgment on different formulations of the Sleeping Beauty Problem do (...)
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  • How Do Reasons Accrue?Shyam Nair - 2016 - In Errol Lord & Barry Maguire (eds.), Weighing Reasons. New York, NY: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 56–73.
    Reasons can interact in a variety of ways to determine what we ought to do or believe. And there can be cases where two reasons to do an act or have a belief are individually worse than a reason to not do that act or have that belief, but the reasons together are better than the reason to not do that act or have that belief. So the reasons together―which we can call the accrual of those reasons—can have a strength (...)
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  • Bootstrapping in General.Jonathan Weisberg - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (3):525-548.
    The bootstrapping problem poses a general challenge, afflicting even strongly internalist theories. Even if one must always know that one’s source is reliable to gain knowledge from it, bootstrapping is still possible. I survey some solutions internalists might offer and defend the one I find most plausible: that bootstrapping involves an abuse of inductive reasoning akin to generalizing from a small or biased sample. I also argue that this solution is equally available to the reliabilist. The moral is that the (...)
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  • A Novel Solution to the Problem of Old Evidence.Jan Sprenger - 2015 - Philosophy of Science 82 (3):383-401.
    One of the most troubling and persistent challenges for Bayesian Confirmation Theory is the Problem of Old Evidence. The problem arises for anyone who models scientific reasoning by means of Bayesian Conditionalization. This article addresses the problem as follows: First, I clarify the nature and varieties of the POE and analyze various solution proposals in the literature. Second, I present a novel solution that combines previous attempts while making weaker and more plausible assumptions. Third and last, I summarize my findings (...)
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  • Evidential Support, Transitivity, and Screening-Off.William Roche - 2015 - Review of Symbolic Logic 8 (4):785-806.
    Is evidential support transitive? The answer is negative when evidential support is understood as confirmation so that X evidentially supports Y if and only if p(Y | X) > p(Y). I call evidential support so understood “support” (for short) and set out three alternative ways of understanding evidential support: support-t (support plus a sufficiently high probability), support-t* (support plus a substantial degree of support), and support-tt* (support plus both a sufficiently high probability and a substantial degree of support). I also (...)
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  • Montague Reduction, Confirmation, and the Syntax-Semantics Relation.Stephan Hartmann & Kristina Liefke - manuscript
    Intertheoretic relations are an important topic in the philosophy of science. However, since their classical discussion by Ernest Nagel, such relations have mostly been restricted to relations between pairs of theories in the natural sciences. In this paper, we present a model of a new type of intertheoretic relation, called 'Montague Reduction', which is assumed in Montague's framework for the analysis and interpretation of natural language syntax. To motivate the adoption of our new model, we show that this model extends (...)
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  • Normativität und Bayesianismus.Stephan Hartmann & Ludwig Fahrbach - 2004 - In Bernward Gesang (ed.), Deskriptive oder normative Wissenschaftstheorie. ontos-Verlag. pp. 177-204.
    Das Thema dieses Bandes ist die Frage, ob die Wissenschaftstheorie eine normative Disziplin ist. Zunächst überrascht die Frage, denn für viele Wissenschaftstheoretiker ist die Antwort ein klares „Ja“; sie halten es für einen Allgemeinplatz, dass die Wissenschaftstheorie ein normatives Unternehmen ist. Bei genauerem Hinsehen stellt sich jedoch heraus, dass die Frage unterschiedliche Interpretationen zulässt, die einzeln diskutiert werden müssen. Dies geschieht im ersten Abschnitt. Im zweiten Abschnitt suchen wir nach möglichen Erklärungen dafür, warum die Wissenschaftstheorie bisher bei dem Projekt, eine (...)
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  • Inductive Logic.Vincenzo Crupi - 2015 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 44 (6):641-650.
    The current state of inductive logic is puzzling. Survey presentations are recurrently offered and a very rich and extensive handbook was entirely dedicated to the topic just a few years ago [23]. Among the contributions to this very volume, however, one finds forceful arguments to the effect that inductive logic is not needed and that the belief in its existence is itself a misguided illusion , while other distinguished observers have eventually come to see at least the label as “slightly (...)
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  • Independent Tests and the Log‐Likelihood‐Ratio Measure of Confirmation.Alexander R. Pruss - 2014 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 3 (2):124-135.
    I shall offer some very plausible assumptions for the measure of confirmation and show that they imply that E confirms H relative to background K to degree f/PK), where f is a strictly increasing function. An additional assumption about how measures of confirmation combine then makes f be proportional to a logarithm.
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  • Dwindling Confirmation.William Roche & Tomoji Shogenji - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (1):114-137.
    We show that as a chain of confirmation becomes longer, confirmation dwindles under screening-off. For example, if E confirms H1, H1 confirms H2, and H1 screens off E from H2, then the degree to which E confirms H2 is less than the degree to which E confirms H1. Although there are many measures of confirmation, our result holds on any measure that satisfies the Weak Law of Likelihood. We apply our result to testimony cases, relate it to the Data-Processing Inequality (...)
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  • Bayesian Measures of Confirmation from Scoring Rules.Steven J. van Enk - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (1):101-113.
    I show how scoring rules, interpreted as measuring the inaccuracy of a set of degrees of belief, may be exploited to construct confirmation measures as used in Bayesian confirmation theory. I construct two confirmation measures from two particular standard scoring rules. One of these measures is genuinely new, the second is trivially ordinally equivalent to the difference measure. These two measures are tested against three well-known measures of confirmation in a simple but illuminating case that contains in a natural way (...)
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  • (1 other version)Confirmation Theory.Patrick Maher - 2005 - In Donald M. Borchert (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd ed.
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  • Bayesian Fundamentalism or Enlightenment? On the explanatory status and theoretical contributions of Bayesian models of cognition.Matt Jones & Bradley C. Love - 2011 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (4):169-188.
    The prominence of Bayesian modeling of cognition has increased recently largely because of mathematical advances in specifying and deriving predictions from complex probabilistic models. Much of this research aims to demonstrate that cognitive behavior can be explained from rational principles alone, without recourse to psychological or neurological processes and representations. We note commonalities between this rational approach and other movements in psychology – namely, Behaviorism and evolutionary psychology – that set aside mechanistic explanations or make use of optimality assumptions. Through (...)
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