Author: Peter Achinstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198032919
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
What is required for something to be evidence for a hypothesis? In this fascinating, elegantly written work, distinguished philosopher of science Peter Achinstein explores this question, rejecting typical philosophical and statistical theories of evidence. He claims these theories are much too weak to give scientists what they want--a good reason to believe--and, in some cases, they furnish concepts that mistakenly make all evidential claims a priori. Achinstein introduces four concepts of evidence, defines three of them by reference to "potential" evidence, and characterizes the latter using a novel epistemic interpretation of probability. The resulting theory is then applied to philosophical and historical issues. Solutions are provided to the "grue," "ravens," "lottery," and "old-evidence" paradoxes, and to a series of questions. These include whether explanations or predictions furnish more evidential weight, whether individual hypotheses or entire theoretical systems can receive evidential support, what counts as a scientific discovery, and what sort of evidence is required for it. The historical questions include whether Jean Perrin had non-circular evidence for the existence of molecules, what type of evidence J. J. Thomson offered for the existence of the electron, and whether, as is usually supposed, he really discovered the electron. Achinstein proposes answers in terms of the concepts of evidence introduced. As the premier book in the fabulous new series Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Science, this volume is essential for philosophers of science and historians of science, as well as for statisticians, scientists with philosophical interests, and anyone curious about scientific reasoning.
Author: H. L. Ho
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199228302
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
This book examines the legal and moral theory behind the law of evidence and proof, arguing that only by exploring the nature of responsibility in fact-finding can the role and purpose of much of the law be fully understood. Ho argues that the court must not only find the truth to do justice, it must do justice in finding the truth.
Author: Peter Achinstein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
This anthology presents work on major topics surrounding the concept of evidence as employed in the empirical sciences. Focusing on the "classificatory" concept of evidence rather than the quantitative "degree of confirmation," the selections include Carl G. Hempel's satisfaction definition, R.B. Braithwaite's hypothetic-deductive view, N.R. Hanson's account of retroduction, Nelson Goodman's entrenchment theory, probability definitions discussed by Rudolf Carnap and Wesley Salmon, Clark Glymour's bootstrap theory, and a view of Achinstein's that combines probability and explanation.
Author: Jeremy H. Howick
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444342665
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has become a required element of clinical practice, but it is critical for the healthcare community to understand the ongoing controversy surrounding EBM. Seeking to address questions raised by critics, The Philosophy of Evidence-based Medicine challenges the over dependency of EBM on randomized controlled trials. This book also explores EBM methodology and its relationship with other approaches used in medicine.
Author: William G. Lycan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192565265
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 173
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Book Description
In this book William G. Lycan offers an epistemology of philosophy itself, a partial method for philosophical inquiry. The epistemology features three ultimate sources of justified philosophical belief. First, common sense, in a carefully restricted sense of the term-the sorts of contingent propositions Moore defended against idealists and skeptics. Second, the deliverances of well confirmed science. Third and more fundamentally, intuitions about cases in a carefully specified sense of that term. The first half of On Evidence in Philosophy expounds a version of Moore's method and applies it to each of several issues. This version is shown to resist all the standard objections to Moore; most of them do not even apply. It is argued, in Chapters 5 and 6, that philosophical method is far less powerful than most have taken it to be. In particular, deductive argument can accomplish very little, and hardly ever is an opposing position refuted except by common sense or by science. The final two chapters defend the evidential status of intuitions and the Goodmanian method of reflective equilibrium; it is argued that philosophy always and everywhere depends on them. The method is then set within a more general explanatory-coherentist epistemology, which is shown to resist standard forms of skepticism. In sum, William G. Lycan advocates a picture of philosophy as a very wide explanatory reflective equilibrium incorporating common sense, science, and our firmest intuitions on any topic-and nothing more, not ever.
Author: Paul K. Moser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521423632
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Philosophers have sought to define knowledge since the time of Plato. This inquiry outlines a theory of rational belief by challenging prominent skeptical claims that we have no justified beliefs about the external world.
Author: William A. Dembski
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1441211799
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
There have always been challenges to belief in God as he is revealed in the Bible and each new year seems to add more questions to the doubter's arsenal. In Evidence for God, leading apologists provide compelling arguments that address the most pressing questions of the day about God, science, Jesus, the Bible, and more, including Is Intelligent Design really a credible explanation of the origins of our world? Did Jesus really exist? Is Jesus really the only way to God? What about those who have never heard the gospel? Is the Bible today what was originally written? What about recently publicized gospels that aren't in the Bible? and much more
Author: Joel Pust
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000525015
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 150
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Book Description
First published in 2000. Starting with Kripke's quotation on intuitive content being philosophic evidence, in this essay, the author aims to demonstrate how contemporary philosophy relies on intuitions as evidence, to explain what intuitions are and show why certain contemporary arguments against the use of intuitions as evidence fail.
Author: Robert J Fogelin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135028656
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 187
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Book Description
Originally published in 1967. This is an examination of warrant statements – statements which indicated something about the grounds on behalf of some further judgement, choice or action. The first part of the study is concerned with the role of warrant statements in theoretical discourse; while the second part concerns their role in practical discourse. Also examined are necessity, probability, knowing, seeing and the complex of terms which allow us to introduce an argumentative structure into discourse.
Author: Penelope Maddy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190618698
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
How do you know the world around you isn't just an elaborate dream, or the creation of an evil neuroscientist? If all you have to go on are various lights, sounds, smells, tastes and tickles, how can you know what the world is really like, or even whether there is a world beyond your own mind? Questions like these -- familiar from science fiction and dorm room debates -- lie at the core of venerable philosophical arguments for radical skepticism: the stark contention that we in fact know nothing at all about the world, that we have no more reason to believe any claim -- that there are trees, that we have hands -- than we have to disbelieve it. Like non-philosophers in their sober moments, philosophers, too, find this skeptical conclusion preposterous, but they're faced with those famous arguments: the Dream Argument, the Argument from Illusion, the Infinite Regress of Justification, the more recent Closure Argument. If these can't be met, they raise a serious challenge not just to philosophers, but to anyone responsible enough to expect her beliefs to square with her evidence. What Do Philosophers Do? takes up the skeptical arguments from this everyday point of view, and ultimately concludes that they don't undermine our ordinary beliefs or our ordinary ways of finding out about the world. In the process, Maddy examines and evaluates a range of philosophical methods -- common sense, scientific naturalism, ordinary language, conceptual analysis, therapeutic approaches -- as employed by such philosophers as Thomas Reid, G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and J. L. Austin. The result is a revealing portrait of what philosophers do, and perhaps a quiet suggestion for what they should do, for what they do best.
