Hostname: page-component-6d856f89d9-nr6nt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T07:34:03.905Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Logical Foundations of Evidential Support

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Branden Fitelson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Carnap's inductive logic (or confirmation) project is revisited from an “increase in firmness” (or probabilistic relevance) point of view. It is argued that Carnap's main desiderata can be satisfied in this setting, without the need for a theory of “logical probability.” The emphasis here will be on explaining how Carnap's epistemological desiderata for inductive logic will need to be modified in this new setting. The key move is to abandon Carnap's goal of bridging confirmation and credence, in favor of bridging confirmation and evidential support.

Type
Confirmation and Inductive Logic
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 73 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers. Edited by Miriam Solomon , December 2006 , pp. 500 - 512
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 audiences at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Michigan; the University of Oklahoma; and the PSA 2004 symposium at which the paper on which this article was based was presented for useful comments and discussion (there are too many members of these audiences who have made valuable suggestions to name each one individually).

References

Carnap, R. (1962), Logical Foundations of Probability. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fitelson, B. (2001), Studies in Bayesian Confirmation Theory. PhD Dissertation, University of Wisconsin–Madison, http://fitelson.org/thesis.pdf.Google Scholar
Fitelson, B. (2005), “Inductive Logic,” in S. Sarkar and J. Pfeiffer (eds.), An Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Science. New York: Routledge, forthcoming, http://fitelson.org/il.pdf.Google Scholar
Fitelson, B. (2007), “Likelihoodism, Bayesianism, and Relational Confirmation,” Synthese, http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-006-9134-9.Google Scholar
Gaifman, H. (1988), “A Theory of Higher Order Probabilities,” in Skyrms, B. and Harper, William L. (eds.), Causation, Chance, and Credence. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.Google Scholar
Good, I. J. (1960), “Weight of Evidence, Corroboration, Explanatory Power, Information and the Utility of Experiments,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 22:319–331.Google Scholar
Hájek, A. (2003), “What Conditional Probability Could Not Be,” Synthese 137:273–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halpern, J. Y. (1999), “A Counterexample to Theorems of Cox and Fine,” Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 10:67–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawthorne, J. (2004), Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kemeny, J., and Oppenheim, P. (1952), “Degrees of Factual Support,” Philosophy of Science 19:307–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolmogorov, A. N. (1933), Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung. Berlin: Springer; English translation (1950), Foundations of the Theory of Probability. New York: Chelsea.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maher, P. (2001), “Probabilities for Multiple Properties: The Models of Hesse and Carnap and Kemeny,” Erkenntnis 55:183–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michalos, A. (1971), The Popper-Carnap Controversy. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milne, P. (1996), “log[p(h|eb)/p(h|b)] Is the One True Measure of Confirmation,” Philosophy of Science 63:21–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Royall, R. (1997), Statistical Evidence: A Likelihood Paradigm. New York: Chapman & Hall/CRC.Google Scholar