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  1. The Independence Condition in the Variety-of-Evidence Thesis.François Claveau - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (1):94-118.
    The variety-of-evidence thesis has been criticized by Bovens and Hartmann. This article points to two limitations of their Bayesian model: the conceptualization of unreliable evidential sources as randomizing and the restriction to comparing full independence to full dependence. It is shown that the variety-of-evidence thesis is rehabilitated when unreliable sources are reconceptualized as systematically biased. However, it turns out that allowing for degrees of independence leads to a qualification of the variety-of-evidence thesis: as Bovens and Hartmann claimed, more independence does (...)
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  • Bayesian Networks and the Problem of Unreliable Instruments.Luc Bovens & Stephan Hartmann - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (1):29-72.
    We appeal to the theory of Bayesian Networks to model different strategies for obtaining confirmation for a hypothesis from experimental test results provided by less than fully reliable instruments. In particular, we consider (i) repeated measurements of a single test consequence of the hypothesis, (ii) measurements of multiple test consequences of the hypothesis, (iii) theoretical support for the reliability of the instrument, and (iv) calibration procedures. We evaluate these strategies on their relative merits under idealized conditions and show some surprising (...)
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  • Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference.Judea Pearl - 1988 - Morgan Kaufmann.
    The book can also be used as an excellent text for graduate-level courses in AI, operations research, or applied probability.
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  • Scientific reasoning: the Bayesian approach.Peter Urbach & Colin Howson - 1993 - Chicago: Open Court. Edited by Peter Urbach.
    Scientific reasoning is—and ought to be—conducted in accordance with the axioms of probability. This Bayesian view—so called because of the central role it accords to a theorem first proved by Thomas Bayes in the late eighteenth ...
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  • Bayesian Epistemology.Luc Bovens & Stephan Hartmann - 2003 - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edited by Stephan Hartmann.
    Probabilistic models have much to offer to philosophy. We continually receive information from a variety of sources: from our senses, from witnesses, from scientific instruments. When considering whether we should believe this information, we assess whether the sources are independent, how reliable they are, and how plausible and coherent the information is. Bovens and Hartmann provide a systematic Bayesian account of these features of reasoning. Simple Bayesian Networks allow us to model alternative assumptions about the nature of the information sources. (...)
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  • Robustness and Independent Evidence.Jacob Stegenga & Tarun Menon - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (3):414-435.
    Robustness arguments hold that hypotheses are more likely to be true when they are confirmed by diverse kinds of evidence. Robustness arguments require the confirming evidence to be independent. We identify two kinds of independence appealed to in robustness arguments: ontic independence —when the multiple lines of evidence depend on different materials, assumptions, or theories—and probabilistic independence. Many assume that OI is sufficient for a robustness argument to be warranted. However, we argue that, as typically construed, OI is not a (...)
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  • Coherence and Confirmation through Causation.Gregory Wheeler & Richard Scheines - 2013 - Mind 122 (485):135-170.
    Coherentism maintains that coherent beliefs are more likely to be true than incoherent beliefs, and that coherent evidence provides more confirmation of a hypothesis when the evidence is made coherent by the explanation provided by that hypothesis. Although probabilistic models of credence ought to be well-suited to justifying such claims, negative results from Bayesian epistemology have suggested otherwise. In this essay we argue that the connection between coherence and confirmation should be understood as a relation mediated by the causal relationships (...)
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  • Evidential Diversity and the Triangulation of Phenomena.Jaakko Kuorikoski & Caterina Marchionni - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (2):227-247.
    The article argues for the epistemic rationale of triangulation, namely, the use of multiple and independent sources of evidence. It claims that triangulation is to be understood as causal reasoning from data to phenomenon, and it rationalizes its epistemic value in terms of controlling for likely errors and biases of particular data-generating procedures. This perspective is employed to address objections against triangulation concerning the fallibility and scope of the inference, as well as problems of independence, incomparability, and discordance of evidence. (...)
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  • Bayes or Bust?: A Critical Examination of Bayesian Confirmation Theory.John Earman - 1992 - MIT Press.
    There is currently no viable alternative to the Bayesian analysis of scientific inference, yet the available versions of Bayesianism fail to do justice to several aspects of the testing and confirmation of scientific hypotheses. Bayes or Bust? provides the first balanced treatment of the complex set of issues involved in this nagging conundrum in the philosophy of science. Both Bayesians and anti-Bayesians will find a wealth of new insights on topics ranging from Bayes’s original paper to contemporary formal learning theory.In (...)
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  • Causation, Association, and Confirmation.Gregory Wheeler & Richard Scheines - 2010 - In Stephan Hartmann, Marcel Weber, Wenceslao Gonzalez, Dennis Dieks & Thomas Uebe (eds.), Explanation, Prediction, and Confirmation: New Trends and Old Ones Reconsidered. Springer. pp. 37--51.
    Many philosophers of science have argued that a set of evidence that is "coherent" confirms a hypothesis which explains such coherence. In this paper, we examine the relationships between probabilistic models of all three of these concepts: coherence, confirmation, and explanation. For coherence, we consider Shogenji's measure of association (deviation from independence). For confirmation, we consider several measures in the literature, and for explanation, we turn to Causal Bayes Nets and resort to causal structure and its constraint on probability. All (...)
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