Results for 'Efraim Shmueli'

4 found
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  1. Bayesian representation of a prolonged archaeological debate.Efraim Wallach - 2018 - Synthese 195 (1):401-431.
    This article examines the effect of material evidence upon historiographic hypotheses. Through a series of successive Bayesian conditionalizations, I analyze the extended competition among several hypotheses that offered different accounts of the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Palestine and in particular to the “emergence of Israel”. The model reconstructs, with low sensitivity to initial assumptions, the actual outcomes including a complete alteration of the scientific consensus. Several known issues of Bayesian confirmation, including the problem of (...)
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  2. Inference from Absence: The case of Archaeology.Efraim Wallach - 2019 - Palgrave Communications 5 (94):1-10.
    Inferences from the absence of evidence to something are common in ordinary speech, but when used in scientific argumentations are usually considered deficient or outright false. Yet, as demonstrated here with the help of various examples, archaeologists frequently use inferences and reasoning from absence, often allowing it a status on par with inferences from tangible evidence. This discrepancy has not been examined so far. The article analyses it drawing on philosophical discussions concerning the validity of inference from absence, using probabilistic (...)
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  3. Historiographic narratives and empirical evidence: a case study.Efraim Wallach - 2018 - Synthese 198 (1):801-821.
    Several scholars observed that narratives about the human past are evaluated comparatively. Few attempts have been made, however, to explore how such evaluations are actually done. Here I look at a lengthy “contest” among several historiographic narratives, all constructed to make sense of another one—the biblical story of the conquest of Canaan. I conclude that the preference of such narratives can be construed as a rational choice. In particular, an easily comprehensible and emotionally evocative narrative will give way to a (...)
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  4. Biases, Evidence and Inferences in the story of Ai.Efraim Wallach - manuscript
    This treatise covers the history, now more than 170 years long, of researches and debates concerning the biblical city of Ai. This archetypical chapter in the evolution of biblical archaeology and historiography was never presented in full. I use the historical data as a case study to explore a number of epistemological issues, such as the creation and revision of scientific knowledge, the formation and change of consensus, the Kuhnian model of paradigm shift, several models of discrimination between hypotheses about (...)
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