Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 3 (2):145-153 (2014)
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| Abstract |
William Roche and Elliott Sober argue that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant. This conclusion is surprising since it conflicts with a plausible assumption—the fact that a hypothesis best explains a given set of data is evidence that the hypothesis is true. We argue that Roche and Sober's screening-off argument fails to account for a key aspect of evidential strength: the weight of a body of evidence. The weight of a body of evidence affects the resiliency of probabilities in the light of new evidence. Thus, Roche and Sober are mistaken. Explanatoriness is evidentially relevant
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| Keywords | Elliott Sober confirmation explanationism evidence William Roche |
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| DOI | 10.1002/tht3.122 |
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References found in this work BETA
The Best Explanation: Criteria for Theory Choice.Paul R. Thagard - 1978 - Journal of Philosophy 75 (2):76-92.
The Plurality of Bayesian Measures of Confirmation and the Problem of Measure Sensitivity.Branden Fitelson - 1999 - Philosophy of Science 66 (3):378.
How Degrees of Belief Reflect Evidence.James M. Joyce - 2005 - Philosophical Perspectives 19 (1):153-179.
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Citations of this work BETA
Statistical Resentment, Or: What’s Wrong with Acting, Blaming, and Believing on the Basis of Statistics Alone.David Enoch & Levi Spectre - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):5687-5718.
Which Models of Scientific Explanation Are (In)Compatible with IBE?Yunus Prasetya - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
The Fate of Explanatory Reasoning in the Age of Big Data.Frank Cabrera - 2021 - Philosophy and Technology 34 (4):645-665.
The Ecological Rationality of Explanatory Reasoning.Igor Douven - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 79:1-14.
View all 23 citations / Add more citations
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