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Data, Phenomena, and Reliability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jim Woodward
Jim Woodward*
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 101–40, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA; e-mail: jfw@hss.caltech.edu.
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Abstract

This paper explores how data serve as evidence for phenomena. In contrast to standard philosophical models which invite us to think of evidential relationships as logical relationships, I argue that evidential relationships in the context of data-to-phenomena reasoning are empirical relationships that depend on holding the right sort of pattern of counterfactual dependence between the data and the conclusions investigators reach on the phenomena themselves.

Type
Experiment and Conceptual Change
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Sep., 2000 , 2000 , pp. S163 - S179
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Thanks to my co-symposiasts Peter Achinstein and Deborah Mayo, and also to Chris Hitchcock, Allan Franklin, and Elliott Sober for very helpful comments.

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