Can scientific evidence outstretch what scientists have mentally entertained, or could ever entertain? This article focuses on the plausibility and consequences of an affirmative answer in a special case. Specifically, it discusses how we may treat automated scientific data-gathering systems—especially AI systems used to make predictions or to generate novel theories—from the point of view of confirmation theory. It uses AlphaFold2 as a case study.

That one person's modus ponens is another's modus tollens is the bane of philosophy because it strips many philosophical arguments of their persuasive force. The problem is that philosophical arguments become mere pantomemes: arguments that are reasonable to resist simply by denying the conclusion. Appeals to proof, intuition, evidence, and truth fail to alleviate the problem. Two broad strategies, however, do help in certain circumstances: an appeal to normal informal standards of what is reasonable (nisowir) and argument by interpretation. The (...) method of explication features prominently in both strategies, and the paper extends this method to apply to nisowir, introducing the concept of canonical explication. The paper illustrates the two strategies with examples of arguments from formal epistemology and suggests that an appeal to nisowir might help to defend against philosophical scepticism by shifting the burden of proof to the sceptic. (shrink)

Russo and Williamson put forward the following thesis: in order to establish a causal claim in medicine, one normally needs to establish both that the putative cause and putative effect are appropriately correlated and that there is some underlying mechanism that can account for this correlation. I argue that, although the Russo-Williamson thesis conflicts with the tenets of present-day evidence-based medicine, it offers a better causal epistemology than that provided by present-day EBM because it better explains two key aspects of (...) causal discovery. First, the thesis better explains the role of clinical studies in establishing causal claims. Second, it yields a better account of extrapolation. (shrink)

This paper presents a new argument for the Principle of Indifference. This argument can be thought of in two ways: as a pragmatic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold if one is to minimise worst-case expected loss, or as an epistemic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold in order to minimise worst-case expected inaccuracy. The question arises as to which interpretation is preferable. I show that the epistemic argument contradicts Evidentialism and suggest that the relative plausibility (...) of Evidentialism provides grounds to prefer the pragmatic interpretation. If this is right, it extends to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for the Principle of Indifference, and also to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for other norms of Bayesian epistemology. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Two compelling principles, the Reasonable Range Principle and the Preservation of Irrelevant Evidence Principle, are necessary conditions that any response to peer disagreements ought to abide by. The Reasonable Range Principle maintains that a resolution to a peer disagreement should not fall outside the range of views expressed by the peers in their dispute, whereas the Preservation of Irrelevant Evidence Principle maintains that a resolution strategy should be able to preserve unanimous judgments of evidential irrelevance among the peers. No standard (...) Bayesian resolution strategy satisfies the PIE Principle, however, and we give a loss aversion argument in support of PIE and against Bayes. The theory of imprecise probability allows one to satisfy both principles, and we introduce the notion of a set-based credal judgment to frame and address a range of subtle issues that arise in peer disagreements. (shrink)

People often act in ways that appear incompatible with their sincere assertions. But how might we explain such cases? On the shifting view, subjects’ degrees of belief may be highly sensitive to changes in context. This paper articulates and refines this view, after defending it against recent criticisms. It details two mechanisms by which degrees of beliefs may shift.

Stanford’s argument against scientific realism focuses on theories, just as many earlier arguments from inconceivability have. However, there are possible arguments against scientific realism involving unconceived (or inconceivable) entities of different types: observations, models, predictions, explanations, methods, instruments, experiments, and values. This paper charts such arguments. In combination, they present the strongest challenge yet to scientific realism.

This thesis analyses the use of 'Evidence-Based' methodologies of evidence assessment and intervention and policy design from medicine, and their use in sport and exercise science. It argues that problems exist with the application of Evidence-Based methodologies in sports science, meaning that the quality of evidence used to inform decision-making is lower than is often assumed. This thesis also offers realistic solutions to these problems, broadly arguing for the importance of taking evidence from mechanistic studies seriously, in addition to evidence (...) from RCTs. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the problem of ranking available drugs in guideline development to support clinicians in their work. Based on a pragmatic approach to the notion of evidence and a hierarchical view on different kinds of evidence this chapter introduces a decision aid, HiDAD, which draws on the multi criteria decision making literature. This decision aid implements the wide-spread intuition that there are different kinds of evidence with varying degrees of importance by relying on a strict ordinal ordering of kinds (...) of evidence. In order to construct a ranking every pair of drugs is first compared separately on all kinds of evidence. Next, these quantitative comparisons are then aggregated into an overall comparison between drugs based on all the available evidence in a way which avoids that evidence of less importance is trumped by evidence of the higher levels. Finally, these overall comparisons are used to determine the final ranking of drugs which then informs the process of guideline writing. Properties, modifications and applicability of the decision aid HiDAD are discussed and assessed. (shrink)

A major problem posed by cases of self-deception concerns the inconsistent behavior of the self-deceived subject (SDS). How can this be accounted for, in terms of propositional attitudes and other mental states? In this paper, we argue that key problems with two recent putative solutions, due to Mele and Archer, are avoided by “the shifting view” that has been advanced elsewhere in order to explain cases where professed beliefs conflict with actions. We show that self-deceived agents may possess highly unstable (...) degrees of belief concerning the matters about which they are self-deceived. (shrink)

When do we agree? The answer might once have seemed simple and obvious; we agree that p when we each believe that p. But from a formal epistemological perspective, where degrees of belief are more fundamental than beliefs, this answer is unsatisfactory. On the one hand, there is reason to suppose that it is false; degrees of belief about p might differ when beliefs simpliciter on p do not. On the other hand, even if it is true, it is too (...) vague; for what it is to believe simpliciter ought to be explained in terms of degrees of belief. This paper presents several possible notions of agreement, and corresponding notions of disagreement. It indicates how the findings are fruitful for the epistemology of disagreement, with special reference to the notion of epistemic peerhood. (shrink)

We investigate an approach for drawing logical inference from inconsistent premisses. The main idea in this approach is that the inconsistencies in the premisses should be interpreted as uncertainty of the information. We propose a mechanism, based on Kinght’s [14] study of inconsistency, for revising an inconsistent set of premisses to a minimally uncertain, probabilistically consistent one. We will then generalise the probabilistic entailment relation introduced in [15] for propositional languages to the first order case to draw logical inference from (...) a probabilistic set of premisses. We will show how this combination can allow us to limit the effect of uncertainty introduced by inconsistent premisses to only the reasoning on the part of the premise set that is relevant to the inconsistency. (shrink)

The epistemic theory of causality is analogous to epistemic theories of probability. Most proponents of epistemic probability would argue that one's degrees of belief should be calibrated to chances, insofar as one has evidence of chances. The question arises as to whether causal beliefs should satisfy an analogous calibration norm. In this paper, I formulate a particular version of a norm requiring calibration to chances and argue that this norm is the most fundamental evidential norm for epistemic probability. I then (...) develop an analogous calibration norm for epistemic causality, argue that it is the *only* evidential norm required for epistemic causality, and show how an epistemic account of causality that incorporates this norm can be used to analyse objective causal relationships. (shrink)

When a proposition is established, it can be taken as evidence for other propositions. Can the Bayesian theory of rational belief and action provide an account of establishing? I argue that it can, but only if the Bayesian is willing to endorse objective constraints on both probabilities and utilities, and willing to deny that it is rationally permissible to defer wholesale to expert opinion. I develop a new account of deference that accommodates this latter requirement.

This paper presents a new argument for the Principle of Indifference. This argument can be thought of in two ways: as a pragmatic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold if one is to minimise worst-case expected loss, or as an epistemic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold in order to minimise worst-case expected inaccuracy. The question arises as to which interpretation is preferable. I show that the epistemic argument contradicts Evidentialism and suggest that the relative plausibility (...) of Evidentialism provides grounds to prefer the pragmatic interpretation. If this is right, it extends to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for the Principle of Indifference, and also to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for other norms of Bayesian epistemology. (shrink)

There is a growing interest in the foundations as well as the application of imprecise probability in contemporary epistemology. This dissertation is concerned with the application. In particular, the research presented concerns ways in which imprecise probability, i.e. sets of probability measures, may helpfully address certain philosophical problems pertaining to rational belief. The issues I consider are disagreement among epistemic peers, complete ignorance, and inductive reasoning with imprecise priors. For each of these topics, it is assumed that belief can be (...) modeled with imprecise probability, and thus there is a non-classical solution to be given to each problem. I argue that this is the case for peer disagreement and complete ignorance. However, I discovered that the approach has its shortcomings, too, specifically in regard to inductive reasoning with imprecise priors. Nevertheless, the dissertation ultimately illustrates that imprecise probability as a model of rational belief has a lot of promise, but one should be aware of its limitations also. (shrink)

Cognitive theorists routinely disagree about the evidence supporting claims in cognitive science. Here, we first argue that some disagreements about evidence in cognitive science are about the evidence available to be drawn upon by cognitive theorists. Then, we show that one’s explanation of why this first kind of disagreement obtains will cohere with one’s theory of evidence. We argue that the best explanation for why cognitive theorists disagree in this way is because their evidence is what they rationally grant. Finally, (...) we explain why our view does not lead to a pernicious kind of relativism in cognitive science. (shrink)