Tuesday,
31 January 2006
Unification and Evidence
Malcolm Forster, Dept. of Philosophy, U. Wisconsin-Madison
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning
Abstract: There has been much discussion in the
literature about the connection between unification and explanation,
but less has been said about the connection between unification
and evidence. I will discuss a special kind of unification
that increases the predictive content of theories and models (Friedman
1981, 1983). This connects with many problems in the philosophy
of science, such as Cartwright's skepticism about the existence
of component causes, the importance of the variety of evidence in
confirmation, instrumentalism versus realism, falsificationism,
Bayesianism, inference to the best explanation, predictivism, prediction
versus accommodation, as well as the role of non-empirical virtues
in confirmation.
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