Switch to: Citations

References in:

Permissivism, Underdetermination, and Evidence

In Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 358–370 (2024)

Add references

You must login to add references.
  1. The Dangers of Pragmatic Virtue.Daniel Nolan - 2014 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (5-6):623-644.
    Many people want to hold that some theoretical virtues—simplicity, elegance, familiarity or others—are only pragmatic virtues. That is, these features do not give us any more reason to think a theory is true, or close to true, but they justify choosing one theoretical option over another because they are desirable for some other, practical purpose. Using pragmatic virtues in theory choice apparently brings with it a dilemma: if we are deciding what to accept on the basis of considerations that are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • (1 other version)Disagreement as Evidence: The Epistemology of Controversy. [REVIEW]David Christensen - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (5):754-767.
    How much should your confidence in your beliefs be shaken when you learn that others – perhaps ‘epistemic peers’ who seem as well-qualified as you are – hold beliefs contrary to yours? This article describes motivations that push different philosophers towards opposite answers to this question. It identifies a key theoretical principle that divides current writers on the epistemology of disagreement. It then examines arguments bearing on that principle, and on the wider issue. It ends by describing some outstanding questions (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   231 citations  
  • A Defense of the (Almost) Equal Weight View.Stewart Cohen - 2013 - In David Phiroze Christensen & Jennifer Lackey (eds.), The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 98-117.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   68 citations  
  • Evidence Can Be Permissive.Thomas Kelly - 2013 - In Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Blackwell. pp. 298.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   142 citations  
  • Immoderately rational.Sophie Horowitz - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (1):41-56.
    Believing rationally is epistemically valuable, or so we tend to think. It’s something we strive for in our own beliefs, and we criticize others for falling short of it. We theorize about rationality, in part, because we want to be rational. But why? I argue that how we answer this question depends on how permissive our theory of rationality is. Impermissive and extremely permissive views can give good answers; moderately permissive views cannot.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   92 citations  
  • Uniqueness revisited.Igor Douven - 2009 - American Philosophical Quarterly 46 (4):347 - 361.
    Various authors have recently argued that you cannot rationally stick to your belief in the face of known disagreement with an epistemic peer, that is, a person you take to have the same evidence and judgmental skills as you do. For, they claim, because there is but one rational response to any body of evidence, a disagreement with an epistemic peer indicates that at least one of you is not responding rationally to the evidence. Given that you take your peer (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   65 citations  
  • (1 other version)Permission to Believe: Why Permissivism Is True and What It Tells Us About Irrelevant Influences on Belief.Miriam Schoenfield - 2012 - Noûs 48 (2):193-218.
    In this paper, I begin by defending permissivism: the claim that, sometimes, there is more than one way to rationally respond to a given body of evidence. Then I argue that, if we accept permissivism, certain worries that arise as a result of learning that our beliefs were caused by the communities we grew up in, the schools we went to, or other irrelevant influences dissipate. The basic strategy is as follows: First, I try to pinpoint what makes irrelevant influences (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   232 citations  
  • State of the field: Transient underdetermination and values in science.Justin Biddle - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (1):124-133.
    This paper examines the state of the field of “science and values”—particularly regarding the implications of the thesis of transient underdetermination for the ideal of value-free science, or what I call the “ideal of epistemic purity.” I do this by discussing some of the main arguments in the literature, both for and against the ideal. I examine a preliminary argument from transient underdetermination against the ideal of epistemic purity, and I discuss two different formulations of an objection to this argument—an (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   68 citations  
  • Deciding to Believe.Carl Ginet - 2001 - In Matthias Steup (ed.), Knowledge, truth, and duty: essays on epistemic justification, responsibility, and virtue. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 63-76.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   90 citations  
  • Believing at Will.Pamela Hieronymi - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 35 (sup1):149-187.
    It has seemed to many philosophers—perhaps to most—that believing is not voluntary, that we cannot believe at will. It has seemed to many of these that this inability is not a merely contingent psychological limitation but rather is a deep fact about belief, perhaps a conceptual limitation. But it has been very difficult to say exactly why we cannot believe at will. I earlier offered an account of why we cannot believe at will. I argued that nothing could qualify both (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   69 citations  
  • (5 other versions)Two Dogmas of Empiricism.Willard V. O. Quine - 1951 - Philosophical Review 60 (1):20–43.
    Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truth which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1358 citations  
  • Voluntary Belief on a Reasonable Basis.Philip J. Nickel - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (2):312-334.
    A person presented with adequate but not conclusive evidence for a proposition is in a position voluntarily to acquire a belief in that proposition, or to suspend judgment about it. The availability of doxastic options in such cases grounds a moderate form of doxastic voluntarism not based on practical motives, and therefore distinct from pragmatism. In such cases, belief-acquisition or suspension of judgment meets standard conditions on willing: it can express stable character traits of the agent, it can be responsive (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   37 citations  
  • (1 other version)Disagreement as evidence: The epistemology of controversy.David Christensen - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (5):756-767.
    How much should your confidence in your beliefs be shaken when you learn that others – perhaps 'epistemic peers' who seem as well-qualified as you are – hold beliefs contrary to yours? This article describes motivations that push different philosophers towards opposite answers to this question. It identifies a key theoretical principle that divides current writers on the epistemology of disagreement. It then examines arguments bearing on that principle, and on the wider issue. It ends by describing some outstanding questions (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   235 citations  
  • Demystifying underdetermination.Larry Laudan - 1956 - In C. Wade Savage (ed.), Scientific Theories. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 267-97.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   116 citations  
  • (1 other version)Reasonable religious disagreements.Richard Feldman - 2010 - In Louise M. Antony (ed.), Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life. Oup Usa. pp. 194-214.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   300 citations  
  • Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge.William P. Alston - 1989 - Cornell University Press.
    Introduction As the title indicates, the chief focus of this book is epistemic justification. But just what is epistemic justification and what is its place ...
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   270 citations  
  • Science, truth, and democracy.Philip Kitcher - 2001 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Striving to boldly redirect the philosophy of science, this book by renowned philosopher Philip Kitcher examines the heated debate surrounding the role of science in shaping our lives. Kitcher explores the sharp divide between those who believe that the pursuit of scientific knowledge is always valuable and necessary--the purists--and those who believe that it invariably serves the interests of people in positions of power. In a daring turn, he rejects both perspectives, working out a more realistic image of the sciences--one (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   464 citations  
  • Reflective equilibrium and underdetermination in epistemology.Jared Bates - 2004 - Acta Analytica 19 (32):45-64.
    The basic aim of Alvin Goldman’s approach to epistemology, and the tradition it represents, is naturalistic; that is, epistemological theories in this tradition aim to identify the naturalistic, nonnormative criteria on which justified belief supervenes (Goldman, 1986; Markie, 1997). The basic method of Goldman’s epistemology, and the tradition it represents, is the reflective equilibrium test; that is, epistemological theories in this tradition are tested against our intuitions about cases of justified and unjustified belief (Goldman, 1986; Markie, 1997). I will argue (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Evidentialism.Richard Feldman & Earl Conee - 1985 - Philosophical Studies 48 (1):15 - 34.
    Evidentialism is a view about the conditions under which a person is epistemically justified in having a particular doxastic attitude toward a proposition. Evidentialism holds that the justified attitudes are determined entirely by the person's evidence. This is the traditional view of justification. It is now widely opposed. The essays included in this volume develop and defend the tradition.Evidentialism has many assets. In addition to providing an intuitively plausible account of epistemic justification, it helps to resolve the problem of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   549 citations  
  • (2 other versions)The epistemic significance of disagreement.Thomas Kelly - 2005 - In Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 1. Oxford University Press. pp. 167-196.
    Looking back on it, it seems almost incredible that so many equally educated, equally sincere compatriots and contemporaries, all drawing from the same limited stock of evidence, should have reached so many totally different conclusions---and always with complete certainty.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   328 citations  
  • (1 other version)Epistemic permissiveness.Roger White - 2005 - Philosophical Perspectives 19 (1):445–459.
    A rational person doesn’t believe just anything. There are limits on what it is rational to believe. How wide are these limits? That’s the main question that interests me here. But a secondary question immediately arises: What factors impose these limits? A first stab is to say that one’s evidence determines what it is epistemically permissible for one to believe. Many will claim that there are further, non-evidentiary factors relevant to the epistemic rationality of belief. I will be ignoring the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   327 citations  
  • (1 other version)Reflection and disagreement.Adam Elga - 2007 - Noûs 41 (3):478–502.
    How should you take into account the opinions of an advisor? When you completely defer to the advisor's judgment, then you should treat the advisor as a guru. Roughly, that means you should believe what you expect she would believe, if supplied with your extra evidence. When the advisor is your own future self, the resulting principle amounts to a version of the Reflection Principle---a version amended to handle cases of information loss. When you count an advisor as an epistemic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   582 citations  
  • (1 other version)Epistemology of disagreement: The good news.David Christensen - 2007 - Philosophical Review 116 (2):187-217.
    How should one react when one has a belief, but knows that other people—who have roughly the same evidence as one has, and seem roughly as likely to react to it correctly—disagree? This paper argues that the disagreement of other competent inquirers often requires one to be much less confident in one’s opinions than one would otherwise be.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   596 citations  
  • A Permissivist Defense of Pascal’s Wager.Elizabeth Grace Jackson - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (6):2315-2340.
    Epistemic permissivism is the thesis that the evidence can rationally permit more than one attitude toward a proposition. Pascal’s wager is the idea that one ought to believe in God for practical reasons, because of what one can gain if theism is true and what one has to lose if theism is false. In this paper, I argue that if epistemic permissivism is true, then the defender of Pascal’s wager has powerful responses to two prominent objections. First, I argue that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Could've Thought Otherwise.Jonathan Weisberg - 2020 - Philosophers' Imprint 20 (12).
    Evidence is univocal, not equivocal. Its implications don't depend on our beliefs or values, the evidence says what it says. But that doesn't mean there's no room for rational disagreement between people with the same evidence. Evaluating evidence is a lot like polling an electorate: getting an accurate reading requires a bit of luck, and even the best pollsters are bound to get slightly different results. So, even though evidence is univocal, rationality's requirements are not "unique." Understanding this resolves several (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • (1 other version)Evidential Symmetry and Mushy Credence.Roger White - 2009 - Oxford Studies in Epistemology 3:161-186.
    the symmetry of our evidential situation. If our confidence is best modeled by a standard probability function this means that we are to distribute our subjective probability or credence sharply and evenly over possibilities among which our evidence does not discriminate. Once thought to be the central principle of probabilistic reasoning by great..
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   153 citations  
  • (5 other versions)Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. V. O. Quine - 2011 - In Robert B. Talisse & Scott F. Aikin (eds.), The Pragmatism Reader: From Peirce Through the Present. Princeton University Press. pp. 202-220.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   922 citations  
  • Impermissive Bayesianism.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2013 - Erkenntnis 79 (Suppl 6):1185-1217.
    This paper examines the debate between permissive and impermissive forms of Bayesianism. It briefly discusses some considerations that might be offered by both sides of the debate, and then replies to some new arguments in favor of impermissivism offered by Roger White. First, it argues that White’s (Oxford studies in epistemology, vol 3. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 161–186, 2010) defense of Indifference Principles is unsuccessful. Second, it contends that White’s (Philos Perspect 19:445–459, 2005) arguments against permissive views do not (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   93 citations  
  • Evidence, Judgment, and Belief at Will.Blake Roeber - 2019 - Mind 128 (511):837-859.
    Doxastic involuntarists have paid insufficient attention to two debates in contemporary epistemology: the permissivism debate and the debate over norms of assertion and belief. In combination, these debates highlight a conception of belief on which, if you find yourself in what I will call an ‘equipollent case’ with respect to some proposition p, there will be no reason why you can’t believe p at will. While doxastic involuntarism is virtually epistemological orthodoxy, nothing in the entire stock of objections to belief (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  • Is Epistemic Permissivism Intuitive?Nathan Ballantyne - 2018 - American Philosophical Quarterly 55 (4):365-378.
    In recent debates over permissivism and uniqueness—two theses concerning the relationship between evidence and epistemic rationality—some philosophers have claimed that permissivism has an intuitive advantage over uniqueness. I examine the cases alleged to intuitively motivate permissivism and suggest they do not provide prima facie support for permissivism. I conclude by explaining how my discussion bears on whether permissivism can defeat skeptical arguments based on recognized peer disagreement and the historical contingency of our beliefs.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Permissive Metaepistemology.David Thorstad - 2019 - Mind 128 (511):907-926.
    Recent objections to epistemic permissivism have a metaepistemic flavor. Impermissivists argue that their view best accounts for connections between rationality, planning and deference. Impermissivism is also taken to best explain the value of rational belief and normative assessment. These objections pose a series of metaepistemic explanatory challenges for permissivism. In this paper, I illustrate how permissivists might meet their explanatory burdens by developing two permissivist metaepistemic views which fare well against the explanatory challenges.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Belief and Credence: Why the Attitude-Type Matters.Elizabeth Grace Jackson - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (9):2477-2496.
    In this paper, I argue that the relationship between belief and credence is a central question in epistemology. This is because the belief-credence relationship has significant implications for a number of current epistemological issues. I focus on five controversies: permissivism, disagreement, pragmatic encroachment, doxastic voluntarism, and the relationship between doxastic attitudes and prudential rationality. I argue that each debate is constrained in particular ways, depending on whether the relevant attitude is belief or credence. This means that epistemologists should pay attention (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   42 citations  
  • Permissivism and the Value of Rationality: A Challenge to the Uniqueness Thesis.Miriam Schoenfield - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (2):286-297.
    In recent years, permissivism—the claim that a body of evidence can rationalize more than one response—has enjoyed somewhat of a revival. But it is once again being threatened, this time by a host of new and interesting arguments that, at their core, are challenging the permissivist to explain why rationality matters. A version of the challenge that I am especially interested in is this: if permissivism is true, why should we expect the rational credences to be more accurate than the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   41 citations  
  • An Argument for Uniqueness About Evidential Support.Sinan Dogramaci & Sophie Horowitz - 2016 - Philosophical Issues 26 (1):130-147.
    White, Christensen, and Feldman have recently endorsed uniqueness, the thesis that given the same total evidence, two rational subjects cannot hold different views. Kelly, Schoenfield, and Meacham argue that White and others have at best only supported the weaker, merely intrapersonal view that, given the total evidence, there are no two views which a single rational agent could take. Here, we give a new argument for uniqueness, an argument with deliberate focus on the interpersonal element of the thesis. Our argument (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   62 citations  
  • Permissive Rationality and Sensitivity.Benjamin Anders Levinstein - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (2):342-370.
    Permissivism about rationality is the view that there is sometimes more than one rational response to a given body of evidence. In this paper I discuss the relationship between permissivism, deference to rationality, and peer disagreement. I begin by arguing that—contrary to popular opinion—permissivism supports at least a moderate version of conciliationism. I then formulate a worry for permissivism. I show that, given a plausible principle of rational deference, permissive rationality seems to become unstable and to collapse into unique rationality. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Another Argument Against Uniqueness.Thomas Raleigh - 2015 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (267):327-346.
    I present an argument against the thesis of Uniqueness and in favour of Permissivism. Counterexamples to Uniqueness are provided, based on ‘Safespot’ propositions – i.e. a proposition that is guaranteed to be true provided the subject adopts a certain attitude towards it. The argument relies on a plausible principle: (roughly stated) If S knows that her believing p would be a true belief, then it is rationally permitted for S to believe p. One motivation for denying this principle – viz. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • Epistemic Value and the Jamesian Goals.Sophie Horowitz - 2018 - In Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij & Jeff Dunn (eds.), Epistemic Consequentialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    William James famously tells us that there are two main goals for rational believers: believing truth and avoiding error. I argues that epistemic consequentialism—in particular its embodiment in epistemic utility theory—seems to be well positioned to explain how epistemic agents might permissibly weight these goals differently and adopt different credences as a result. After all, practical versions of consequentialism render it permissible for agents with different goals to act differently in the same situation. -/- Nevertheless, I argue that epistemic consequentialism (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Dynamic permissivism.Abelard Podgorski - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (7):1923-1939.
    There has been considerable philosophical debate in recent years over a thesis called epistemic permissivism. According to the permissivist, it is possible for two agents to have the exact same total body of evidence and yet differ in their belief attitudes towards some proposition, without either being irrational. However, I argue, not enough attention has been paid to the distinction between different ways in which permissivism might be true. In this paper, I present a taxonomy of forms of epistemic permissivism (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • Evidentialism and Epistemic Justification.Kevin McCain - 2014 - New York: Routledge.
    Evidentialism is a popular theory of epistemic justification, yet, as early proponents of the theory Earl Conee and Richard Feldman admit, there are many elements that must be developed before Evidentialism can provide a full account of epistemic justification, or well-founded belief. It is the aim of this book to provide the details that are lacking; here McCain moves past Evidentialism as a mere schema by putting forward and defending a full-fledged theory of epistemic justification. In this book McCain offers (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   102 citations  
  • The Uniqueness Thesis.Matthew Kopec & Michael G. Titelbaum - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (4):189-200.
    The Uniqueness Thesis holds, roughly speaking, that there is a unique rational response to any particular body of evidence. We first sketch some varieties of Uniqueness that appear in the literature. We then discuss some popular views that conflict with Uniqueness and others that require Uniqueness to be true. We then examine some arguments that have been presented in its favor and discuss why permissivists find them unconvincing. Last, we present some purported counterexamples that have been raised against Uniqueness and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   97 citations  
  • Uniqueness and Metaepistemology.Daniel Greco & Brian Hedden - 2016 - Journal of Philosophy 113 (8):365-395.
    We defend Uniqueness, the claim that given a body of total evidence, there is a uniquely rational doxastic state that it is rational for one to be in. Epistemic rationality doesn't give you any leeway in forming your beliefs. To this end, we bring in two metaepistemological pictures about the roles played by rational evaluations. Rational evaluative terms serve to guide our practices of deference to the opinions of others, and also to help us formulate contingency plans about what to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   81 citations  
  • Conciliationism without uniqueness.Matthew Lee - 2013 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 88 (1):161-188.
    I defend Conciliationism: rationality requires belief revision of epistemic peers who find themselves in disagreement and lack dispute-independent reason to suspect each other of error. (Kelly 2010) argues that Conciliationists are committed to the Uniqueness Thesis: a given body of evidence rationalizes a unique degree of confidence for a given proposition. (Ballantyne & Coffman 2012) cogently critique Kelly's argument and propose an improved version. I contend that their version of the argument is unsound, and I offer some friendly amendments. But (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Total Pragmatic Encroachment and Epistemic Permissiveness.Katherine Rubin - 2015 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (1):12-38.
    This article explores the relationship between pragmatic encroachment and epistemic permissiveness. If the suggestion that all epistemic notions are interest-relative is viable , then it seems that a certain species of epistemic permissivism must be viable as well. For, if all epistemic notions are interest relative then, sometimes, parties in paradigmatic cases of shared evidence can be maximally rational in forming competing basic doxastic attitudes towards the same proposition. However, I argue that this total pragmatic encroachment is not tenable, and, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • A Counterexample to the Uniqueness Thesis.Matthew Kopec - 2015 - Philosophia 43 (2):403-409.
    In this essay, I present a straightforward counterexample to the Uniqueness Thesis, which holds, roughly speaking, that there is a unique rational response to any particular body of evidence.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   36 citations  
  • Time-Slice Rationality.Brian Hedden - 2015 - Mind 124 (494):449-491.
    I advocate Time-Slice Rationality, the thesis that the relationship between two time-slices of the same person is not importantly different, for purposes of rational evaluation, from the relationship between time-slices of distinct persons. The locus of rationality, so to speak, is the time-slice rather than the temporally extended agent. This claim is motivated by consideration of puzzle cases for personal identity over time and by a very moderate form of internalism about rationality. Time-Slice Rationality conflicts with two proposed principles of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   77 citations  
  • (1 other version)Nominalism, Naturalism, Epistemic Relativism.Gideon Rosen - 2001 - Noûs 35 (s15):69 - 91.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   136 citations  
  • The aim and structure of physical theory.Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem - 1954 - Princeton,: Princeton University Press.
    This classic work in the philosophy of physical science is an incisive and readable account of the scientific method. Pierre Duhem was one of the great figures in French science, a devoted teacher, and a distinguished scholar of the history and philosophy of science. This book represents his most mature thought on a wide range of topics.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   558 citations  
  • Uniqueness, Evidence, and Rationality.Nathan Ballantyne & E. J. Coffman - 2011 - Philosophers' Imprint 11.
    Two theses figure centrally in work on the epistemology of disagreement: Equal Weight (‘EW’) and Uniqueness (‘U’). According to EW, you should give precisely as much weight to the attitude of a disagreeing epistemic peer as you give to your own attitude. U has it that, for any given proposition and total body of evidence, some doxastic attitude is the one the evidence makes rational (justifies) toward that proposition. Although EW has received considerable discussion, the case for U has not (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   48 citations  
  • On the Nature of Bayesian Convergence.James Hawthorne - 1994 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994:241 - 249.
    The objectivity of Bayesian induction relies on the ability of evidence to produce a convergence to agreement among agents who initially disagree about the plausibilities of hypotheses. I will describe three sorts of Bayesian convergence. The first reduces the objectivity of inductions about simple "occurrent events" to the objectivity of posterior probabilities for theoretical hypotheses. The second reveals that evidence will generally induce converge to agreement among agents on the posterior probabilities of theories only if the convergence is 0 or (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Must evidence underdetermine theory.John D. Norton - 2003 - The Challenge of the Social and the Pressure of Practice:17--44.
    According to the underdetermination thesis, all evidence necessarily underdetermines any scientific theory. Thus it is often argued that our agreement on the content of mature scientific theories must be due to social and other factors. Drawing on a long standing tradition of criticism, I shall argue that the underdetermination thesis is little more than speculation based on an impoverished account of induction. A more careful look at accounts of induction does not support an assured underdetermination or the holism usually associated (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   58 citations