According to the comparative Bayesian concept of confirmation, rationalized versions of creationism come out as empirically confirmed. From a scientific viewpoint, however, they are pseudo-explanations because with their help all kinds of experiences are explainable in an ex-post fashion, by way of ad-hoc fitting of an empirically empty theoretical framework to the given evidence. An alternative concept of confirmation that attempts to capture this intuition is the use novelty criterion of confirmation. Serious objections have been raised against this criterion. In (...) this paper I suggest solutions to these objections. Based on them, I develop an account of genuine confirmation that unifies the UN-criterion with a refined probabilistic confirmation concept that is explicated in terms of the confirmation of evidence-transcending content parts of the hypothesis. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that Bayesianism can provide a simple justification for hypothetico-deductive inference, long regarded as a cornerstone of the scientific method. Following up a remark of van Fraassen, we analyze a problem for the putative Bayesian justification of H-D inference in the case where what we learn from observation is logically stronger than what our theory implies. Firstly, we demonstrate that in such cases the simple Bayesian justification does not necessarily apply. Secondly, we identify a set of sufficient (...) conditions for the mismatch in logical strength to be justifiably ignored as a "harmless idealization''. Thirdly, we argue, based upon scientific examples, that the pattern of H-D inference of which there is a ready Bayesian justification is only rarely the pattern that one actually finds at work in science. Whatever the other virtues of Bayesianism, the idea that it yields a simple justification of a pervasive pattern of scientific inference appears to have been oversold. (shrink)

I focus on a key argument for global external world scepticism resting on the underdetermination thesis: the argument according to which we cannot know any proposition about our physical environment because sense evidence for it equally justifies some sceptical alternative (e.g. the Cartesian demon conjecture). I contend that the underdetermination argument can go through only if the controversial thesis that conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility is true. I also suggest a reason to doubt that (...) conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility, and thus to doubt the underdetermination argument. (shrink)

One way to show that text interpretation can be treated as a scientific problem is to show that the standards that are currently used in the natural sciences when dealing with problems not involving meaningful material can also be successfully employed in the case of text interpretation. These standards involve intersubjective intelligibility, testability with the use of evidence, rational argumentation, and making methodological decisions aiming at the attainment of truth, accuracy, simplicity and other epistemic values. In the case of text (...) interpretation—despite the fact that we deal with meaningful material—hypotheses can be formulated, consequences can be drawn by deduction, and these can be tested against empirical data. This claim is substantiated by the provision of an example of a scientific text. (shrink)

Derivational robustness may increase the degree to which various pieces of evidence indirectly confirm a robust result. There are two ways in which this increase may come about. First, if one can show that a result is robust, and that the various individual models used to derive it also have other confirmed results, these other results may indirectly confirm the robust result. Confirmation derives from the fact that data not known to bear on a result are shown to be relevant (...) when it is shown to be robust. Second, robustness may increase the degree to which the robust result is indirectly confirmed if it increases the weight with which existing evidence indirectly confirms it. This may happen when it strengthens the connection between the core and the robust result by showing that auxiliaries are not responsible for the result. (shrink)

This paper develops a semantical model - theoretic account of (logical) content complementing the syntactically specified account of content developed in "A New Theory of Content I", JPL 23: 596-620, 1994. Proofs of Completeness are given for both propositional and quantificational languages (without identity). Means for handling a quantificational language with identity are also explored. Finally, this new notion of content is compared, in respect of both logical properties and philosophical applications, to alternative partitions of the standard consequence class relation (...) proposed by Stelzner, Schurz and Wiengartner. (shrink)

We use recently developed approaches in argumentation theory in order to revamp the hypothetico-deductive model of confirmation, thus alleviating the well-known paradoxes the H-D account faces. More specifically, we introduce the concept of dialectic confirmation on the background of the so-called theory of dialectical structures (Betz 2010, 2012b). Dialectic confirmation generalises hypothetico-deductive confirmation and mitigates the raven paradox, the grue paradox, the tacking paradox, the paradox from conceptual difference, and the problem of surprising evidence.

Noam Chomsky supone, de forma equivocada, que en la ciencia hay contrastaciones cruciales. La confirmación de las hipótesis de una teoría x no nos habilita para desestimar la teoría z, incompatible con x. Se sugiere, como alternativa, un “principio de complementariedad en lingüística”, en virtud del cual podría aceptarse que alguna teoría lingüística zes científica si ésta caracteriza ciertos fenómenos lingüísticos aun cuando resulte incompatible con la de Chomsky.