Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T14:45:35.086Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A More Fulfilling (and Frustrating) Take on Reflexive Predictions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Matthew Kopec
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Even though social scientists continue to discuss the problems posed by self-fulfilling and self-frustrating predictions, philosophers of science have ignored the topic since the 1970s. Back then, the prevailing view was that the methodological problems posed by reflexive predictions are either minor or easily avoided. I believe that this consensus was premature, ultimately relying on an overly narrow understanding of the phenomenon. I present an improved way to understand reflexive predictions (framed in probabilistic terms) and show that, once such predictions are understood this way, the methodological problems they pose may turn out to be neither minor nor easily avoided.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 5 , December 2011 , pp. 1249 - 1259
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank John Basl, Malcolm Forster, Michael Goldsby, Casey Helgeson, and Joel Velasco for helpful comments and, especially, Dan Hausman, Elliott Sober, and Peter Vranas for discussions that helped me develop the project. I would also like to thank audiences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and at the 2010 meeting of the PSA in Montreal for helpful questions and comments.

References

Buck, Roger C. 1963. “Reflexive Predictions.” Philosophy of Science 30:359–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grunbaum, Adolf. 1963. “Comments on Professor Roger Buck's Paper ‘Reflexive Predictions.’” Philosophy of Science 30:370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merton, Robert K. 1948. “The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.” Antioch Review 8:193–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romanos, George D. 1973. “Reflexive Predictions.” Philosophy of Science 40:97–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, Herbert A. 1954. “Bandwagon and Underdog Effects and the Possibility of Election Predictions.” Public Opinion Quarterly 18:245–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, Elliott. 2009. “Absence of Evidence and Evidence of Absence: Evidential Transitivity in Connection with Fossils, Fishing, Fine-Tuning, and Firing Squads.” Philosophical Studies 143:63–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vetterling, Mary K. 1976. “More on Reflexive Predictions.” Philosophy of Science 43:278–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar