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  1. The Intrinsic Probability of Grand Explanatory Theories.Ted Poston - 2020 - Faith and Philosophy 37 (4):401-420.
    This paper articulates a way to ground a relatively high prior probability for grand explanatory theories apart from an appeal to simplicity. I explore the possibility of enumerating the space of plausible grand theories of the universe by using the explanatory properties of possible views to limit the number of plausible theories. I motivate this alternative grounding by showing that Swinburne’s appeal to simplicity is problematic along several dimensions. I then argue that there are three plausible grand views—theism, atheism, and (...)
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  2.  99
    Explanatory reasoning and informativeness.Ted Poston & Kevin McCain - forthcoming - Canadian Journal of Philosophy:1-11.
    Bas van Fraassen has argued that explanatory reasoning does not provide confirmation for explanatory hypotheses because explanatory reasoning increases information and increasing information does not provide confirmation. We compare this argument with a skeptical argument that one should never add any beliefs because adding beliefs increases information and increasing information does not provide confirmation. We discuss the similarities between these two arguments and identify several problems with van Fraassen’s argument.
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  3. Coherence & Confirmation: The Epistemic Limitations of the Impossibility Theorems.Ted Poston - 2022 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 36 (1):83-111.
    It is a widespread intuition that the coherence of independent reports provides a powerful reason to believe that the reports are true. Formal results by Huemer, M. 1997. “Probability and Coherence Justification.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 35: 463–72, Olsson, E. 2002. “What is the Problem of Coherence and Truth?” Journal of Philosophy XCIX : 246–72, Olsson, E. 2005. Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification. Oxford University Press., Bovens, L., and S. Hartmann. 2003. Bayesian Epistemology. Oxford University Press, prove that, under (...)
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  4.  91
    Experience, plausibility, and evidence.Ted Poston - forthcoming - In Scott Stapleford, Kevin McCain & Matthias Steup (eds.), Evidentialism at 40: New Arguments, New Angles. Routledge.
    Evidentialism is one of the most sensible claims of recent philosophy. Yet it is often joined with other theses about the structure of justification and the nature of experience that are dubious. In this paper, I argue that experience is not a basic source of evidence. I contend that for an experience to justify a belief, it must be independently plausible that the experience is reliable based on background information. The paper develops an account of plausibility and examines cases, including (...)
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  5. Explanatory Coherence and the Impossibility of Confirmation by Coherence.Ted Poston - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (5):835-848.
    The coherence of independent reports provides a strong reason to believe that the reports are true. This plausible claim has come under attack from recent work in Bayesian epistemology. This work shows that, under certain probabilistic conditions, coherence cannot increase the probability of the target claim. These theorems are taken to demonstrate that epistemic coherentism is untenable. To date no one has investigated how these results bear on different conceptions of coherence. I investigate this situation using Thagard’s ECHO model of (...)
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  6. How do medical researchers make causal inferences?Olaf Dammann, Ted Poston & Paul Thagard - 2019 - In Kevin McCain (ed.), What is Scientific Knowledge?: An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology of Science. New York: Routledge.
    Bradford Hill (1965) highlighted nine aspects of the complex evidential situation a medical researcher faces when determining whether a causal relation exists between a disease and various conditions associated with it. These aspects are widely cited in the literature on epidemiological inference as justifying an inference to a causal claim, but the epistemological basis of the Hill aspects is not understood. We offer an explanatory coherentist interpretation, explicated by Thagard's ECHO model of explanatory coherence. The ECHO model captures the complexity (...)
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  7. Kelly James Clark and Raymond VanArragon , Evidence and Religious Belief, oxford University Press, 2011.Ted Poston - 2013 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5 (3):177-183.
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  8. Critical Notice: Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the demands of structural rationality. [REVIEW]Ted Poston - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (3):803-810.
    Alex Worsnip's recent book, Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality, provides a sustained, wide-ranging defence of dualism.
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