Bayes and Bust: Simplicity as a Problem for a Probabilist’s Approach to Confirmation [Book Review]

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (3):399-424 (1995)
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Abstract

The central problem with Bayesian philosophy of science is that it cannot take account of the relevance of simplicity and unification to confirmation, induction, and scientific inference. The standard Bayesian folklore about factoring simplicity into the priors, and convergence theorems as a way of grounding their objectivity are some of the myths that Earman's book does not address adequately. 1Review of John Earman: Bayes or Bust?, Cambridge, MA. MIT Press, 1992, £33.75cloth.

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Malcolm Forster
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Citations of this work

When is parsimony a virtue.Michael Huemer - 2009 - Philosophical Quarterly 59 (235):216-236.
Bayesian Epistemology.William Talbott - 2006 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
A bayesian account of independent evidence with applications.Branden Fitelson - 2001 - Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2001 (3):S123-.

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References found in this work

Representing and Intervening.Ian Hacking - 1983 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35 (4):381-390.
Gambling with truth.Isaac Levi - 1967 - Cambridge,: MIT Press.
Explanatory unification.Philip Kitcher - 1981 - Philosophy of Science 48 (4):507-531.
Betting on Theories.Patrick Maher - 1993 - Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
Representing and Intervening.Ian Hacking - 1987 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 92 (2):279-279.

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