2020 is the year of the fortieth anniversary of Bas van Fraassen’s seminal book The Scientific Image. It is quite surprising, after such a long time, and considering how much the author’s proposal was debated during the last four decades, to find a new review of it on the March issue of Metascience. In “Concluding Unscientific Image”, Hans Halvorson claims that, in the work of the founder of constructive empiricism, not only is there a defense of an anti-realist perspective on (...) science—and, at the same time, a critique of scientific realism—, but also a revolt against the way of doing philosophy that, since Quine, seemed to be hegemonic in analytical philosophy. The present study focuses on Halvorson’s allegations about what maintaining the empirical adequacy of a theory would encompass—and that, according to him, van Fraassen has in mind—and aims at showing that, perhaps, they do not correspond to what van Fraassen actually defends in his book. (shrink)

I argue that Bayesians need two distinct notions of probability. We need the usual degree-of-belief notion that is central to the Bayesian account of rational decision. But Bayesians also need a separate notion of probability that represents the degree to which evidence supports hypotheses. Although degree-of-belief is well suited to the theory of rational decision, Bayesians have tried to apply it to the realm of hypothesis confirmation as well. This double duty leads to the problem of old evidence, a problem (...) that, we will see, is much more extensive than usually recognized. I will argue that degree-of-support is distinct from degree-of-belief, that it is not just a kind of counterfactual degree-of-belief, and that it supplements degree-of-belief in a way that resolves the problems of old evidence and provides a richer account of the logic of scientific inference and belief. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have recently been urged by Arthur Fine to collaborate with physicists and with other scientists in constructing scientific theories.2 What I am proposing is a collaboration at the other pole of scientific activity; the pole of experiment.I consider this effort to be part of a tendency within philosophy to naturalize epistemology. The banner of naturalistic epistemology has attracted such men as Quine and Goldman. I consider the effort as one small part of that program which involves not (...) only theoretical integration of at least portions of the two corpuses of knowledge, but the employment of methodologies which are common to them both.The theory of inductive logic today is in stasis. A number of highly ingenious and very sophisticated theories of inference vie for primacy. As in the case of many philosophical theses, no closure seems in sight. (shrink)

Both dilation and non-conglomerability have been alleged to conflict with a fundamental principle of Bayesian methodology that we call \textit{Good's Principle}: one should always delay making a terminal decision between alternative courses of action if given the opportunity to first learn, at zero cost, the outcome of an experiment relevant to the decision. In particular, both dilation and non-conglomerability have been alleged to permit or even mandate choosing to make a terminal decision in deliberate ignorance of relevant, cost-free information. Although (...) dilation and non-conglomerability share some similarities, some authors maintain that there are important differences between the two that warrant endorsing different normative positions regarding dilation and non-conglomerability. This article reassesses the grounds for treating dilation and non-conglomerability differently. Our analysis exploits a new and general characterization result for dilation to draw a closer connection between dilation and non-conglomerability. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to tie together a longstanding dispute between Henry Kyburg and Isaac Levi concerning statistical inferences. The debate, which centers around the example of Petersen the Swede, concerns Kyburg's and Levi's accounts of randomness and choosing reference classes. I argue that both Kyburg and Levi have missed the real significance of their dispute, that Levi's claim that Kyburg violates Confirmational Conditionalization is insufficient, and that Kyburg has failed to show that Levi's criteria for choosing reference class (...) are problematic. Rather, the significance of the Petersen case is to show that other aspects of their respective systems are defective: for Levi his account of credal judgments other than direct inference, and for Kyburg his explanation of how indexes are associated with a body of knowledge. (shrink)

The article responds to some of the points raised by B. van Fraassen concerning probability kinematics and direct inference within the framework of the approach to the revision of probability judgment proposed by Levi in The Enterprise of Knowledge. In particular, the critical importance of the question of direct inference is emphasized and explained.