Explanatory Stabilization in Situations of Evidential Uncertainty
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10705161 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Samuel Schindler (0000-0002-5656-9840, Aarhus University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 92 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 204-222 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8248 • E-ISSN: 1539-767X |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/psa.2024.26 |
| OpenAlex | W4404084365 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 53 |
In this article I issue a challenge to what I call the Independence Thesis of Theory Assessment (ITTA). According to ITTA, the evidence for (or against) a theory must be assessed independently from the theory explaining the evidence. I argue that ITTA is undermined by cases of evidential uncertainty, in which scientists have been guided by the explanatory power of their theories in the assessment of the evidence. Instead, I argue, these cases speak in favor of a model of theory assessment in which explanatory power may indeed contribute to the stabilization of the evidential basis
Decision theory · Economics · Epistemology · Explanatory power · Independence (probability theory) · Positive economics · Statistics · Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science
Theoretical Virtues in Science
Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge
Laws and Symmetry
Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal
I.—studies in the Logic of Confirmation (I.)
Putting explanation back into “inference to the best explanation”
What can recent replication failures tell us about the theoretical commitments of psychology
Selectivity And Discord
Hume's Problem
The Essential Tension
On the pragmatic and epistemic virtues of inference to the best explanation
Locating IBE in the Bayesian framework
Van Fraassen's critique of inference to the best explanation
Novelty, coherence, and Mendeleev’s periodic table
Douglas on values
Theory-laden experimentation
Epistemic Values and the Argument from Inductive Risk
How Explanatory Reasoning Justifies Pursuit
A Second Look at the Logic of Explanatory Power (with Two Novel Representation Theorems)
On a Bayesian Analysis of the Virtue of Unification
Against Probabilistic Measures of Explanatory Quality
The Logic of Explanatory Power
A Bayesian Account of the Virtue of Unification
The Inference to the Best Explanation
Because without Cause
The Crux of Crucial Experiments
The Bayesian Treatment of Auxiliary Hypotheses
Bayesianism and Inference to the Best Explanation
Confirmation, Heuristics, and Explanatory Reasoning
How to Learn from Theory-Dependent Evidence; or Commutativity and Holism
How to Tell When Simpler, More Unified, or Less Ad Hoc Theories will Provide More Accurate Predictions
Model, Theory, and Evidence in the Discovery of the DNA Structure
Commutativity or Holism? A Dilemma for Conditionalizers
When a Crisis Becomes an Opportunity
Probability and the Explanatory Virtues
Explanationist Aid for the Theory of Inductive Logic
A problem in theory
The Reception of Mendeleev's Periodic Law in America and Britain
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |