44 found
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  1. The Logic of Reliable Inquiry.Kevin T. Kelly - 1996 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press USA. Edited by Kevin Kelly.
    This book is devoted to a different proposal--that the logical structure of the scientist's method should guarantee eventual arrival at the truth given the scientist's background assumptions.
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  2. A new solution to the puzzle of simplicity.Kevin T. Kelly - 2007 - Philosophy of Science 74 (5):561-573.
    Explaining the connection, if any, between simplicity and truth is among the deepest problems facing the philosophy of science, statistics, and machine learning. Say that an efficient truth finding method minimizes worst case costs en route to converging to the true answer to a theory choice problem. Let the costs considered include the number of times a false answer is selected, the number of times opinion is reversed, and the times at which the reversals occur. It is demonstrated that (1) (...)
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  3. Realism, rhetoric, and reliability.Kevin T. Kelly, Konstantin Genin & Hanti Lin - 2016 - Synthese 193 (4):1191-1223.
    Ockham’s razor is the characteristic scientific penchant for simpler, more testable, and more unified theories. Glymour’s early work on confirmation theory eloquently stressed the rhetorical plausibility of Ockham’s razor in scientific arguments. His subsequent, seminal research on causal discovery still concerns methods with a strong bias toward simpler causal models, and it also comes with a story about reliability—the methods are guaranteed to converge to true causal structure in the limit. However, there is a familiar gap between convergent reliability and (...)
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  4.  60
    (1 other version)Theory Choice, Theory Change, and Inductive Truth-Conduciveness.Konstantin Genin & Kevin T. Kelly - 2018 - Studia Logica:1-41.
    Synchronic norms of theory choice, a traditional concern in scientific methodology, restrict the theories one can choose in light of given information. Diachronic norms of theory change, as studied in belief revision, restrict how one should change one’s current beliefs in light of new information. Learning norms concern how best to arrive at true beliefs. In this paper, we undertake to forge some rigorous logical relations between the three topics. Concerning, we explicate inductive truth conduciveness in terms of optimally direct (...)
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  5. Learning theory and the philosophy of science.Kevin T. Kelly, Oliver Schulte & Cory Juhl - 1997 - Philosophy of Science 64 (2):245-267.
    This paper places formal learning theory in a broader philosophical context and provides a glimpse of what the philosophy of induction looks like from a learning-theoretic point of view. Formal learning theory is compared with other standard approaches to the philosophy of induction. Thereafter, we present some results and examples indicating its unique character and philosophical interest, with special attention to its unified perspective on inductive uncertainty and uncomputability.
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  6.  92
    Simplicity, Truth, and Probability.Kevin T. Kelly - unknown
    Simplicity has long been recognized as an apparent mark of truth in science, but it is difficult to explain why simplicity should be accorded such weight. This chapter examines some standard, statistical explanations of the role of simplicity in scientific method and argues that none of them explains, without circularity, how a reliance on simplicity could be conducive to finding true models or theories. The discussion then turns to a less familiar approach that does explain, in a sense, the elusive (...)
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  7. Justification as truth-finding efficiency: How ockham's razor works.Kevin T. Kelly - 2004 - Minds and Machines 14 (4):485-505.
    I propose that empirical procedures, like computational procedures, are justified in terms of truth-finding efficiency. I contrast the idea with more standard philosophies of science and illustrate it by deriving Ockham's razor from the aim of minimizing dramatic changes of opinion en route to the truth.
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  8. Iterated belief revision, reliability, and inductive amnesia.Kevin T. Kelly - 1999 - Erkenntnis 50 (1):11-58.
    Belief revision theory concerns methods for reformulating an agent's epistemic state when the agent's beliefs are refuted by new information. The usual guiding principle in the design of such methods is to preserve as much of the agent's epistemic state as possible when the state is revised. Learning theoretic research focuses, instead, on a learning method's reliability or ability to converge to true, informative beliefs over a wide range of possible environments. This paper bridges the two perspectives by assessing the (...)
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  9.  38
    How Simplicity Helps You Find the Truth Without Pointing at it.Kevin T. Kelly - unknown
  10. Convergence to the truth and nothing but the truth.Kevin T. Kelly & Clark Glymour - 1989 - Philosophy of Science 56 (2):185-220.
    One construal of convergent realism is that for each clear question, scientific inquiry eventually answers it. In this paper we adapt the techniques of formal learning theory to determine in a precise manner the circumstances under which this ideal is achievable. In particular, we define two criteria of convergence to the truth on the basis of evidence. The first, which we call EA convergence, demands that the theorist converge to the complete truth "all at once". The second, which we call (...)
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  11.  45
    Reliable Belief Revision.Kevin T. Kelly, Oliver Schulte & Vincent Hendricks - unknown
    Philosophical logicians proposing theories of rational belief revision have had little to say about whether their proposals assist or impede the agent's ability to reliably arrive at the truth as his beliefs change through time. On the other hand, reliability is the central concern of formal learning theory. In this paper we investigate the belief revision theory of Alchourron, Gardenfors and Makinson from a learning theoretic point of view.
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  12.  98
    The computable testability of theories making uncomputable predictions.Kevin T. Kelly & Oliver Schulte - 1995 - Erkenntnis 43 (1):29 - 66.
  13.  62
    Uncomputability: the problem of induction internalized.Kevin T. Kelly - unknown
    I show that a version of Ockham’s razor (a preference for simple answers) is advantageous in both domains when infallible inference is infeasible. A familiar response to the empirical problem..
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  14.  40
    Causal Conclusions that Flip Repeatedly and Their Justification.Kevin T. Kelly & Conor Mayo-Wilson - 2010 - Proceedings of the Twenty Sixth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence 26:277-286.
    Over the past two decades, several consistent procedures have been designed to infer causal conclusions from observational data. We prove that if the true causal network might be an arbitrary, linear Gaussian network or a discrete Bayes network, then every unambiguous causal conclusion produced by a consistent method from non-experimental data is subject to reversal as the sample size increases any finite number of times. That result, called the causal flipping theorem, extends prior results to the effect that causal discovery (...)
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  15. Inductive inference from theory Laden data.Kevin T. Kelly & Clark Glymour - 1992 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 21 (4):391 - 444.
    Kevin T. Kelly and Clark Glymour. Inductive Inference from Theory-Laden Data.
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  16.  70
    Reliability, Realism, and Relativism.Kevin T. Kelly, Cory Juhl & Clark Glymour - unknown
    Kevin T. Kelly, Cory Juhl and Clark Glymour. Reliability, Realism, and Relativism.
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  17. Learning Theory and Descriptive Set Theory.Kevin T. Kelly - unknown
    then essentially characterized the hypotheses that mechanical scientists can successfully decide in the limit in terms of arithmetic complexity. These ideas were developed still further by Peter Kugel [4]. In this paper, I extend this approach to obtain characterizations of identification in the limit, identification with bounded mind-changes, and identification in the short run, both for computers and for ideal agents with unbounded computational abilities. The characterization of identification with n mind-changes entails, as a corollary, an exact arithmetic characterization of (...)
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  18. The logic of discovery.Kevin T. Kelly - 1987 - Philosophy of Science 54 (3):435-452.
    There is renewed interest in the logic of discovery as well as in the position that there is no reason for philosophers to bother with it. This essay shows that the traditional, philosophical arguments for the latter position are bankrupt. Moreover, no interesting defense of the philosophical irrelevance or impossibility of the logic of discovery can be formulated or defended in isolation from computation-theoretic considerations.
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  19.  45
    Realism, Convergence, and Additivity.Cory Juhl & Kevin T. Kelly - 1994 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994:181 - 189.
    In this paper, we argue for the centrality of countable additivity to realist claims about the convergence of science to the truth. In particular, we show how classical sceptical arguments can be revived when countable additivity is dropped.
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  20.  60
    Reichenbach, induction, and discovery.Kevin T. Kelly - 1991 - Erkenntnis 35 (1-3):123 - 149.
    I have applied a fairly general, learning theoretic perspective to some questions raised by Reichenbach's positions on induction and discovery. This is appropriate in an examination of the significance of Reichenbach's work, since the learning-theoretic perspective is to some degree part of Reichenbach's reliabilist legacy. I have argued that Reichenbach's positivism and his infatuation with probabilities are both irrelevant to his views on induction, which are principally grounded in the notion of limiting reliability. I have suggested that limiting reliability is (...)
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  21.  96
    Thoroughly Modern Meno.Clark Glymour & Kevin T. Kelly - 1992 - In Clark Glymour & Kevin T. Kelly (eds.), Inference, Explanation, and Other Frustrations: Essays in the Philosophy of Science. University of California Press: Berkeley. pp. 3--22.
    Clark Glymour and Kevin T. Kelly. Thoroughly Modern Meno.
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  22.  62
    Theory discovery from data with mixed quantifiers.Kevin T. Kelly & Clark Glymour - 1990 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 19 (1):1 - 33.
    Convergent realists desire scientific methods that converge reliably to informative, true theories over a wide range of theoretical possibilities. Much attention has been paid to the problem of induction from quantifier-free data. In this paper, we employ the techniques of formal learning theory and model theory to explore the reliable inference of theories from data containing alternating quantifiers. We obtain a hierarchy of inductive problems depending on the quantifier prefix complexity of the formulas that constitute the data, and we provide (...)
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  23. A Computational Learning Semantics for Inductive Empirical Knowledge.Kevin T. Kelly - 2014 - In Alexandru Baltag & Sonja Smets (eds.), Johan van Benthem on Logic and Information Dynamics. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. pp. 289-337.
    This chapter presents a new semantics for inductive empirical knowledge. The epistemic agent is represented concretely as a learner who processes new inputs through time and who forms new beliefs from those inputs by means of a concrete, computable learning program. The agent’s belief state is represented hyper-intensionally as a set of time-indexed sentences. Knowledge is interpreted as avoidance of error in the limit and as having converged to true belief from the present time onward. Familiar topics are re-examined within (...)
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  24. Ockham Efficiency Theorem for Stochastic Empirical Methods.Kevin T. Kelly & Conor Mayo-Wilson - 2010 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 39 (6):679-712.
    Ockham’s razor is the principle that, all other things being equal, scientists ought to prefer simpler theories. In recent years, philosophers have argued that simpler theories make better predictions, possess theoretical virtues like explanatory power, and have other pragmatic virtues like computational tractability. However, such arguments fail to explain how and why a preference for simplicity can help one find true theories in scientific inquiry, unless one already assumes that the truth is simple. One new solution to that problem is (...)
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  25.  57
    Church's Thesis and Hume's Problem.Kevin T. Kelly & Oliver Schulte - unknown
    We argue that uncomputability and classical scepticism are both reflections of inductive underdetermination, so that Church's thesis and Hume's problem ought to receive equal emphasis in a balanced approach to the philosophy of induction. As an illustration of such an approach, we investigate how uncomputable the predictions of a hypothesis can be if the hypothesis is to be reliably investigated by a computable scientific method.
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  26.  42
    (1 other version)A Geo-logical Solution to the Lottery Paradox, with Applications to Nonmonotonic Logic.Kevin T. Kelly & Hanti Lin - unknown
    We defend a set of acceptance rules that avoids the lottery paradox, that is closed under classical entailment, and that accepts uncertain propositions without ad hoc restrictions. We show that the rules we recommend provide a semantics that validates exactly Adams’ conditional logic and are exactly the rules that preserve a natural, logical structure over probabilistic credal states that we call probalogic. To motivate probalogic, we first expand classical logic to geologic, which fills the entire unit cube, and then we (...)
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  27. Why Bayesian Confirmation Does Not Capture the Logic of Scientific Justification.Kevin T. Kelly & Clark Glymour - unknown
    Kevin T. Kelly and Clark Glymour. Why Bayesian Confirmation Does Not Capture the Logic of Scientific Justification.
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  28.  14
    Inference, Explanation, and Other Frustrations: Essays in the Philosophy of Science.Clark Glymour & Kevin T. Kelly (eds.) - 1992 - University of California Press: Berkeley.
  29.  73
    A Further Tribute to Paul McGuire.Kevin T. Kelly - 1979 - The Chesterton Review 5 (2):323-323.
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  30.  1
    (1 other version)Conscience: a study in seventeenth century English Protestant moral theology.Kevin T. Kelly - 1967 - London: G. Chapman.
  31.  22
    Clarity, generality, and efficiency in models of learning: Wringing the MOP.Kevin T. Kelly - 1986 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9 (4):657-658.
  32.  8
    From a Parish Base: Essays in Moral and Pastoral Theology.Kevin T. Kelly - 1999
    Written by a Roman Catholic theologian, these essays cover how pastoral ministry should be done in today's society, including how to handle church law and build a collaborative church as well as specific issues such as euthanasia and embryo research.
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  33.  90
    Formal Learning Theory and the Philosophy of Science.Kevin T. Kelly - 1988 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1988:413 - 423.
    Formal learning theory is an approach to the study of inductive inference that has been developed by computer scientists. In this paper, I discuss the relevance of formal learning theory to such standard topics in the philosophy of science as underdetermination, realism, scientific progress, methodology, bounded rationality, the problem of induction, the logic of discovery, the theory of knowledge, the philosophy of artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of psychology.
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  34.  44
    General Characteristics of Inductive Inference Over Arbitrary Sets of Data Representations.Kevin T. Kelly - unknown
    Kevin T. Kelly. General Characteristics of Inductive Inference Over Arbitrary Sets of Data Representations.
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  35.  20
    (1 other version)Getting to the Truth through Conceptual Revolutions.Kevin T. Kelly & Clark Glymour - 1990 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990:89 - 96.
    There is a popular view that the alleged meaning shifts resulting from scientific revolutions are somehow incompatible with the formulation of general norms for scientific inquiry. We construct methods that can be shown to be maximally reliable at getting to the truth when the truth changes in response to the state of the scientist or his society.
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  36.  24
    (1 other version)Moral theology for the twenty-first century: essays in celebration of Kevin Kelly.Kevin T. Kelly, Julie Clague, Bernard Hoose & Gerard Mannion (eds.) - 2008 - New York: T & T Clark.
    This book is a tribute to Kevin Kelly, who has been one of the most influential British theologians for a number of decades. On its own merits, however, it is groundbreaking collection of essays on key themes, issues and concepts in contemporary moral theology and Christian ethics. The focus is on perspectives to inform moral debate and discernment in the future. The main themes covered are shown in the list of contents below. Several of the of the contributors are from (...)
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  37.  21
    New directions in sexual ethics: moral theology and the challenge of AIDS.Kevin T. Kelly - 1998 - Washington: G. Champman.
    As a result of his visit to Uganda, on behalf of the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development, theologian Kevin Kelly made the discovery that poverty and marginalization create windows of opportunity for the transmission of AIDS. In this book, Kelly brings together the whole of his thinking and experience as a teacher, moral theologian, and parish priest to challenge the thinking of the Church on sex and sexuality as moral issues for our time.
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  38.  10
    New Directions in Moral Theology: The Challenge of Being Human.Kevin T. Kelly - 1992 - Burns & Oates.
    What does it mean to be a Christian in this day and age? How does this affect the way we relate to one another? In the face of so many different moral views, Kevin Kelly affirms the common ground behind them: the dignity of the human person. He looks at the relationship between experience and the development of morality, and highlights women's indispensable contribution. He also examines the place for morality in the Church's teaching.
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  39. The Automated Discovery of Universal Theories.Kevin T. Kelly - 1986 - Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh
    This thesis examines the prospects for mechanical procedures that can identify true, complete, universal, first-order logical theories on the basis of a complete enumeration of true atomic sentences. A sense of identification is defined that is more general than those which are usually studied in the learning theoretic and inductive inference literature. Some identification algorithms based on confirmation relations familiar in the philosophy of science are presented. Each of these algorithms is shown to identify all purely universal theories without function (...)
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  40.  13
    Theory Discovery and Hypothesis Language.Kevin T. Kelly - unknown
    This paper develops a framework in which to compare the discovery problems determined by a wide range of distinct hypothesis languages. Twelve theorems are presented which provide a comprehensive picture of the solvability of these problems according to four intuitively motivated criteria of scientific success.
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  41.  19
    Transcendental Deductions and Universal Architectures for Inductive Inferences.Kevin T. Kelly & Cory Juhl - 1998 - ProtoSociology 12:158-175.
  42.  32
    Version Spaces, Structural Descriptions and NP-Completeness.Kevin T. Kelly - unknown
    Kevin T. Kelly. Version Spaces, Structural Descriptions and NP-Completeness.
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  43.  8
    50 years receiving Vatican II: a personal odyssey.Kevin T. Kelly - 2012 - Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Columba Press.
    A priest's fifty years of stuggle to be faithful to the spirit of Vatican II, reminding us that the task of receiving Vatican II is far from complete.
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  44.  33
    Book Review: Living Together and Christian Ethics. [REVIEW]Kevin T. Kelly - 2003 - Studies in Christian Ethics 16 (2):119-123.
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