HPS
2682�������Theories of Confirmation������� Spring 2010
Phil 2690
This list contains far more material than we can cover in one term. When we have decided which topics we will cover, I will add more readings as needed.
| Introductory topics | |
| "A Little Survey of Induction" Source: 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. |
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| Warm Up Case Studies | |
| Evidence for the theory of evolution | "Lines
of Evidence: The Science of Evolution" http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/lines_01 |
| Evidence and string theory | Peter Woit, "Is String Theory Even Wrong?" American Scientist,
March-April, 2002. Richard Dawid, "Underdetermination and Theory Succession from the Perspective of String Theory." Philosophy of Science 73 No.3 (2006), pp. 298-322. |
| Principal Accounts of Induction | |
| Inductive Generalization | |
| Enumerative Induction | |
| Hempel's Satisfaction Criterion | |
| Mill's Methods | |
| Glymour's bootstrap | |
| Demonstrative Induction (Newtonian deduction from the phenomena) |
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| Hypothetical Induction | |
| Exclusionary accounts. Error statistical methods. | |
| Simplicity (Akaike, BIC) |
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| Abduction: Inference to the best explanation | |
| Inference to a common cause | Michel Janssen, "COI Stories: Explanation and Evidence in the History of Science," Perspectives on Science. 10 (2002): 457-522. |
| Reliabilism | |
| Probabilistic Induction | |
| A Bayes' primer | |
| Bayesian success stories | |
| Subjective Bayesianism (big topic) |
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| Objective Bayesianism (big topic) |
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| Probability disassembled | John D. Norton, "Probability Disassembled," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 58 (2007), pp. 141-171. |
| Extended Bayesianism (convex sets, interval valued probabilities, improper priors, Jeffrey's conditionalization) | |
| Arguing for Bayesianism | |
| Dutch book arguments | |
| Function theoretic representation theorems | |
| Decision theoretic representation theorems | |
| Loss functions | |
| Arguing against Bayesianism | |
| Not the universal theory | 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. John D. Norton, "Cosmic Confusions: Not Supporting versus Supporting Not-". Philosophy of Science. Forthcoming. John D. Norton, "Ignorance and Indifference." Philosophy of Science, 75 (2008), pp. 45-68. |
| Problem of old evidence | |
| Problems of Induction | |
| The Problem of induction (aka Hume's problem) |
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| Grue | |
| Underdetermination | |
| Hempel's Raven | |
| Observationally indistinguishable spacetimes | 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. |
| More Bayesian Topics | |
| Likelihoodism (Bayes without priors) |
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| Limit theorems | Hawthorne, James, "Inductive Logic", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/logic-inductive/>. |
| Measures of coherence (Bovens and Hartmann) |
Wheeler, Gregory and Scheines, Richard (2010) Causation, Association, and Confirmation. philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00005525/ |
| Measures of incremental support | |
| The conjunction fallacy (Linda the bank teller) |
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| Measures of explanatory power | Schupbach, Jonah N. (2010) Comparing Probabilistic Measures of
Explanatory Power. philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00005227 Schupbach, Jonah N. and Sprenger, Jan (2010) The Logic of Explanatory Power. philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00005521 |
| Gotcha's in Probability | |
| The exchange paradox | |
| The doomsday argument | |
| Sleeping beauty | |
| De Finetti's lottery | |
| Evidential Case Studies | |
| Evidence for evolution | Elliott Sober, Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science. Cambridge UP, 2008. |
| Newton's argument for universal gravitation | |
| The electron | 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. |
| ___Your suggestions? | |
| More | |
| Material Theory of Induction | |
| Ranking theory | Wolfgang Spohn (2009). A Survey of Ranking Theory. In Franz Huber & Christoph Schmidt-Petri (eds.), Degrees of Belief. Springer. |
| Hume's argument against miracles | John Earman, Hume's abject failure: the argument against miracles. |
| Confirmation theory and the learning theoretic paradigm |