HPS 2682 Phil 2690 |
Theories of Confirmation | Spring 2017 |
This list contains far more material than we can cover in one term. When we have decided which topics we will cover, I will select more readings as needed. They will appear in the Schedule. The particular papers listed below are preliminary selections and will be adjusted when we have selected the topics to be studied.
This list was assembled prior to the seminar as a prompt to help us
find readings. It is superseded by the schedule
page, which has the readings actually studied.
John D. Norton, " A Little Survey of Induction," in P. Achinstein, ed., Scientific Evidence: Philosophical Theories and Applications. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1905. pp. 9-34.
Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Second Edition. Federal Judicial Center
Climate change: How do we know? NASA Website
Cook et al. "Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming" Environmental Research Letters, Volume 11, Number 4
Climate Change, Evidence & Causes: An overview from the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences
IPCC 2014 Technical Summary Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Enumerative Induction
Hempel's Satisfaction Criterion
Mill's Methods
Glymour's Bootstrap
Demonstrative Induction (Newtonian Deduction from the phenomena)
John D. Norton, "A Survey of Inductive Generalization."
Deborah G. Mayo, "Evidence as Passing Severe Tests: Highly Probable versus Highly Probed Hypotheses," in, P. Achinstein, ed., Scientific Evidence: Philosophical Theories and Applications. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, pp. 94-127.
Gilbert Harman, “The Inference to the Best Explanation” Phil Review 74 (1965): 88-95.
Paul Thagard, “The Best Explanation: Criteria for Theory Choice” J Phil 75 (1978): 76-92.
Michel Janssen, "COI Stories: Explanation and Evidence in the History of Science." Perspectives on Science, 10(2002): 457-522.
Malcolm Forster and Elliott Sober, "How to Tell when Simpler, More Unified, or Less Ad Hoc Theories will Provide More Accurate Predictions," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 45 (1994), pp. 1-35.
Stephan Hartmann & Jan Sprenger, "Bayesian Epistemology." In Duncan Pritchard & Sven Bernecker (eds.), Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Routledge.
Richard Jeffrey, Subjective Probability: The Real Thing. Ch. 1.
John D. Norton, "Probability Disassembled," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 58 (2007), pp. 141-171.
Dorling on the Duhem Problem in Ch. 2 Testing Scientific Theories, Richard Jeffrey, Subjective Probability: The Real Thing.
Jonah N. Schupbach and Jan Sprenger, "The Logic of Explanatory Power," Philosophy of Science, 78, No. 1 (January 2011), pp. 105-127.
Wayne Myrvold, “A Bayesian Account of the Virtue of Unification,”
Philosophy of Science 70 (April 2003), pp. 399–423.
Clark Glymour, "Probability and the Explanatory Virtues," Brit. J. Phil.
Sci. 2014.
Wayne Myrvold, "On the Evidential Import of Unification," Philosophy
of Science, 84 (2017), pp. 92-114.
Colin Howson, "Theories of Probability" British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 1-32.
1. The Material Theory of Induction Stated and Illustrated.
2. What Powers Induction Inference?
From John D. Norton,The Material Theory of Induction (draft)
3. Replicability of Experiment.
4. Analogy.
6. Simplicity as a Surrogate.
7. Simplicity in Model Selection.
8. Inference to the Best Explanation.
From John D. Norton,The Material Theory of Induction (draft)
L. J. Savage, Foundations of Statistics. Ch 1-3.
James Joyce, "A Nonpragmatic Vindication of Probabilism," Philosophy of Science, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 575-603
Greg Gandenberger, “Why I Am Not a Likelihoodist.” Philosophers’ Imprint 16, 7 (2016): 1-22
Brandon Fitelson "The Plurality of Bayesian Measures of Confirmation and the Problem of Measure Sensitivity," Philosophy of Science. 66 (1999), pp. 362-378.
"Ignorance and Indifference." Philosophy of Science, 75 (2008), pp.
45-68.
"Cosmic Confusions: Not Supporting versus Supporting Not-". Philosophy of
Science. 77 (2010), pp. 501-23.
Yann Benetreau-Dupin, "The Bayesian Who Knew Too Much" Synthese 192, no. 5 (2015), pp. 1527–1542.
Seamus Bradley, Imprecise Probabilities. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Glenn Shafer, A Mathematical Theory of Evidence, Ch. 1 "Introduction."
Glenn Shafer, "Probability Judgments in Artificial Intelligence," pp.
127-34 in L. N. Kanal and J. F. Lemmer eds, Uncertainty in Artificial
Intelligence. Elsevier Science, 1986.
Isaac Levi's "On Indeterminate Probabilities," Journal of Philosophy
(1974)
James Joyce's "A Defense of Imprecise Credences in Inference and Decision
Making" Philosophical Perspectives (2010)
Joseph Halpern's, Reasoning About Uncertainty (2003)
Lee Elkin, "The Many Faces of Confirmation in Imprecise Probability Theory." Manuscript.
Roger White "Evidential
Symmetry and Mushy Credence," (2010)
Seamus Bradley and Katie Steele "Uncertainty,
Learning, and the “Problem” of Dilation" Erkenntnis (2014)
John D. Norton, "When the Sum of Our Expectations Fails Us: The Exchange Paradox." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 78 (1998), pp.34-58.
Yann Benetreau-Dupin, "Blurring Out Cosmic Puzzles," Philosophy of Science 82, no. 5 (2015): 879–891.
Elga, Adam (2000): "Self-locating belief and the Sleeping Beauty problem"
Michael Titelbaum, "The
Relevance of Self-Locating Beliefs"
Ofra Magidor, "The Myth of the De Se" Philosophical Perspectives,
29 (2015)
Elliott Sober, Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science. Cambridge UP, 2008.
John D. Norton, "The Determination of Theory by Evidence: The Case for Quantum Discontinuity 1900-1915," Synthese, 97 (1993), 1-31.
John D. Norton, "How We Know About Electrons," pp. 67- 97 in R. Nola and H. Sankey, eds., After Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend; Recent Issues in Theories of Scientific Method. Dordrecht Kluwer.
John D. Norton, “Challenges to Bayesian Confirmation Theory,” Prepared for Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay and Malcolm Forster (eds.), Philosophy of Statistics: Vol. 7 Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Elsevier.
11. Infinite Lottery Machines
12. Indeterministic Physical Systems.
13. Nonmeasurable Outcomes.
From John D. Norton,The Material Theory of Induction (draft)
John D. Norton, "A Demonstration of the Incompleteness of Calculi of
Inductive Inference," Manuscript.
"The Ideal of the Completeness of Calculi of Inductive Inference: An
Introductory Guide to its Failure," Manuscript.
John D. Norton, "The Formal Equivalence of Grue and Green and How It Undoes the New Riddle of Induction." Synthese, (2006) 150: 185-207.
Stathis Psillos, ‘Underdetermination’, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd
Edition, Gale MacMillan Reference, 2005
Larry Laudan and Jarrett Leplin, "Empirical Equivalence and
Underdetermination," Journal of Philosophy, 88 (1991), pp. 449-72.
John D. Norton, "Observationally Indistinguishable Spacetimes: A Challenge for Any Inductivist." In G. Morgan, ed., Philosophy of Science Matters: The Philosophy of Peter Achinstein. Oxford University Press.
Wolfgang Spohn (2009). A Survey of Ranking Theory. In Franz Huber & Christoph Schmidt-Petri (eds.), Degrees of Belief. Springer.
Clark Glymour. Theory and Evidence, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Ch. 3. Why I am not a Bayesian.
James Joyce, The Probative Value of Old Evidence