In Defense of the Requirement of Total Evidence

Philosophy of Science 87 (1):179-190 (2020)
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Abstract

According to the Requirement of Total Evidence, when assessing the credibility of hypotheses, we should endeavor to take into account all of the relevant evidence at our disposal instead of just some proper part of that evidence. In "The Fine-Tuning Argument and the Requirement of Total Evidence," Peter Fisher Epstein offers two alleged counterexamples to this requirement. I show that, on at least one very natural interpretation of the requirement, his alleged counterexamples are not genuine. I close by explaining why this conclusion is important.

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Paul Draper
Purdue University

Citations of this work

Fine-Tuning Should Make Us More Confident that Other Universes Exist.Bradford Saad - 2024 - American Philosophical Quarterly 61 (1):29-44.
Harmony in a panpsychist world.Bradford Saad - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-24.
Disregarding evidence: Reasonable options for Newton and Rutherford?Peter Achinstein - 2023 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 97 (C):111-120.

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