Download or read book Inference to the Best Explanation written by Peter Lipton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 1991 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "How do we go about weighing evidence, testing hypotheses and making inferences? According to the model of 'inference to the Best explanation', we work out what to inter from the evidence by thinking about what would actually explain that evidence, and we take the ability of a hypothesis to explain the evidence as a sign that the hypothesis is correct. In inference to the Best Explanation, Peter Lipton gives this important and influential idea the development and assessment it deserves." "The second edition has been substantially enlarged and reworked, with a new chapter on the relationship between explanation and Bayesianism, and an extension and defence of the account of contractive explanation. It also includes an expanded defence of the claims that our inferences really are guided by diverse explanatory considerations, and that this pattern of inference can take us towards the truth. This edition of Inference to the Best Explanation has also been updated throughout and incudes a new bibliography."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Best Explanations written by Kevin McCain and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty philosophers offer new essays examining the form of reasoning known as inference to the best explanation - widely used in science and in our everyday lives, yet still controversial. Best Explanations represents the state of the art when it comes to understanding, criticizing, and defending this form of reasoning.

Download or read book The Reliability of Inference to the Best Explanation written by Samuel Gahan Ruhmkorff and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Inference to the Best Explanation written by Peter Lipton and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2004 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inference to the Best Explanation is an unrivalled exposition of a theory of particular interest to students both of epistemology and the philosophy of science.

Download or read book Error and Inference written by Deborah G. Mayo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-26 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although both philosophers and scientists are interested in how to obtain reliable knowledge in the face of error, there is a gap between their perspectives that has been an obstacle to progress. By means of a series of exchanges between the editors and leaders from the philosophy of science, statistics and economics, this volume offers a cumulative introduction connecting problems of traditional philosophy of science to problems of inference in statistical and empirical modelling practice. Philosophers of science and scientific practitioners are challenged to reevaluate the assumptions of their own theories - philosophical or methodological. Practitioners may better appreciate the foundational issues around which their questions revolve and thereby become better 'applied philosophers'. Conversely, new avenues emerge for finally solving recalcitrant philosophical problems of induction, explanation and theory testing.

Download or read book Data Analysis in Inference to the Best Explanation written by Marc Wuyts and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Production of Knowledge written by Colin Elman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-19 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging discussion of factors that impede the cumulation of knowledge in the social sciences, including problems of transparency, replication, and reliability. Rather than focusing on individual studies or methods, this book examines how collective institutions and practices have (often unintended) impacts on the production of knowledge.

Download or read book Scientific Inference written by Harold Jeffreys and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1973-12-13 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Logic and scientific inference; Probability; Sampling; Errors; Physical magnitudes; Mensuration; Newtonian dynamics; Light and relativity; Miscellaneous questions; Statistical mechanics and quantum theory.

Download or read book Foundations of Inference in Natural Science written by J O Wisdom and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1952. This book is a critical survey of the views of scientific inference that have been developed since the end of World War I. It contains some detailed exposition of ideas – notably of Keynes – that were cryptically put forward, often quoted, but nowhere explained. Part I discusses and illustrates the method of hypothesis. Part II concerns induction. Part III considers aspects of the theory of probability that seem to bear on the problem of induction and Part IV outlines the shape of this problem and its solution take if transformed by the present approach.

Download or read book Uncertain Inference written by Henry Ely Kyburg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-08-06 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a clear exposition of the approaches to the problem of uncertain inference.

Download or read book The Structure of Scientific Inference written by Mary B. Hesse and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Measuring and Reasoning written by Fred L. Bookstein and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-28 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Measuring and Reasoning, Fred L. Bookstein examines the way ordinary arithmetic and numerical patterns are translated into scientific understanding, showing how the process relies on two carefully managed forms of argument: • Abduction: the generation of new hypotheses to accord with findings that were surprising on previous hypotheses, and • Consilience: the confirmation of numerical pattern claims by analogous findings at other levels of measurement. These profound principles include an understanding of the role of arithmetic and, more importantly, of how numerical patterns found in one study can relate to numbers found in others. More than 200 figures and diagrams illuminate the text. The book can be read with profit by any student of the empirical nature or social sciences and by anyone concerned with how scientists persuade those of us who are not scientists why we should credit the most important claims about scientific facts or theories.

Download or read book Inference to the Best Explanation is Coherent written by I. Douven and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Inference to the Best Explanation in Science written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Causal inference written by K. J. Rothman and published by Kenneth Rothman. This book was released on 1988 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Ampliative Inference and the Principle of Sufficient Reason written by Amanda Hicks and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twentieth century saw a surge in the development of logic, and in particular of methods that contribute to our understanding of deduction and validity. These contributions include developing a precise understanding of logical consequence, logical form, and deductive validity in tandem with - and arguably made possible by- an emphasis on extensional semantics rather than intensional semantics. These tools - extenional semantics, logical implication, logical form, and rules of deduction - are excellent resources for teasing out the information that is already contained in a set of propositions, which is the task of deductive inference. However, many inferences in the natural sciences are not adequately described by deduction. They do not simply tease out what is already contained in a set of propositions, but actually result in new information. For example, while C. S. Peirce offered a formal syllogism for abductive inference - that is inference that results in a hypothesis to be tested - and Peter Lipton has offered an account of inference to the best explanation, neither accounts for how we arrive at the conclusion that x would explain y if true. That is, the question of how hypotheses are generated or even deemed relevant to a problem under investigation could be fruitfully - though certainly not exhaustively - explored in terms of logical analysis, but only if we broaden our set of tools beyond those that have been developed in the context of deduction. To begin fashioning these tools I turn to the principle of sufficient reason as it is formulated in Leibniz's more mature works. In particular, I argue that a revised understanding of the principle of sufficient reason contributes to our understanding of the processes of generating hypotheses and modifying scientific theories in light of new information. Using episodes from the history of planetary science as case studies, I show that hypothesis generation and theory modification rely on a process of analysis in which we discover clusters of concepts that mutually constrain one another, thereby narrowing the field of plausible candidates of explanations and also giving rise to canonical foils that are natural candidates for q in Lipton's contrastive questions of the form why p rather than q? In the first three chapters I examine applications of the principle of sufficient reason to begin developing tools for the logical analysis of theory and hypothesis generation. I argue that some of the tools we ought to include are a) a contrastive account of the principle of sufficient reason, b) an understanding of logical terms that regards their intensional meaning as relational, and c) considering relations among propositions beyond truth functional, logical consequences. The last two chapters of the dissertation turn to the question of the justification of the principle of sufficient reason. In Chapter One I argue that Leibniz understood the intension of a term to involve relations over and above the genus-difference definition and focus on Leibniz's work on the universal characteristic in 1679. Moreover, I think it is correct and useful to view intensional meaning this way. This provides compelling reasons to accept the Grosholz-Yakira interpretation of Leibnizian analysis as determining the rational conditions of a concept's being the way it is rather than viewing analysis as restricted to unpacking what is already thought in a concept. I then examine how the intensional meaning of the term `planet' shifted in the Copernican Revolution as well as in the recent Pluto controversy and show that these shifts were the result of reconsidering how planets relate to other astronomical objects and concepts. In Chapter Two I argue that inference to the best explanation of the kind developed and defended by Peter Lipton and abductive inference as developed and defended by C. S. Peirce both rely on analysis as an early step of the inference; both determine the conditions of intelligibility of a particular phenomenon by taking into account the relations it bears to other objects in the domain. For example, prior to the discovery of Neptune, Uranus' orbit did not follow the predicted trajectories, and several hypotheses were advanced. Each hypothesis represented possible explanations of these discrepancies by considering Neptune in relation to other things such as a possible unknown planet pulling Neptune off its course. Lipton sketches an account of inference to the best explanation in terms of a foil or contrast to the problematic phenomenon; in the case of Neptune, the predicted orbit serves as a foil to Neptune's observed orbit. The question at hand is, why does Neptune have this particular, observed orbit rather than the predicted orbit? Leibniz's later formulation of the principle of sufficient reason, (that) in virtue of which no fact can be real or existent, no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise, assures us that this contrastive question can be answered. An alternative way of reading the principle of sufficient reason is that Lipton's contrastive questions always have answers. In Chapter Three I show that concepts, in virtue of being relational, form clusters in which they mutually constrain one another. Consider the fact that inaccurate observations of Uranus could have lead to inaccuracies in the tables predicting Uranus' position, leading in turn to discrepancies between Uranus' predicted and observed orbits, known as residuals. From these considerations it follows that, residuals, inaccurate planetary observations, and inaccurate planetary tables, form a cluster. These clusters are akin to number families in arithmetic; for example, given the operations of +/- and the numbers 5 and 7, the third number in the family is not unique since either 2 or 12 will result in a family of numbers, but it is nevertheless constrained by the givens. Similarly generating hypotheses exploits the fact that concepts form mutually constraining clusters, thereby narrowing the field of plausible candidates of explanation. I also show that in Newton's Principia contrastive foils are ordered so that depending on where one is in the inquiry certain foils are natural foils, and thereby help to provide structure to the inquiry as a whole. The second part of this dissertation grapples with ways of justifying the principle. In Chapter Four I argue that Michael Della Rocca's and Alexander Pruss's arguments, though compelling, ultimately ought to be rejected as inadequate to account for the contrastive sense of the principle of sufficient reason. My examination of their arguments show that the contrastive form of the principle of sufficient reason really is substantially different from the non-contrastive forms and that something significant has been lost in not heeding Leibniz's contrastive formulation. In the final chapter I provide justification for the principle of sufficient reason by showing that the realization that comets are supra-lunar contributed to a shift from thinking of the proper objects of systematic knowledge as eternal to including mutable phenomena. To illustrate this point, I examine Leibniz's attempts to justify the possibility of history as a systematic body of knowledge. In both cases we find that the possibility of the systematization of history depends on a subalternate maxim of the principle of sufficient reason. The justification for the principle, then, lies in this shift in the philosophy of science, where mutable and contingent truths are also recognized as having a basis in systematic knowledge. The result of this was an ecumenical view of the proper objects of knowledge as including both eternal and ephemeral truths that we still embrace today. This view has its roots in the Scientific Revolution and persists in contemporary science, in which the evolution of species, languages, and cultures are systematically investigated according to methods that rely on generating hypotheses and modifying theories in light of new discoveries. Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason, in effect, is an answer to the question, what does the world have to be like in order for both immutable and mutable phenomena to be systematically knowable?

Download or read book Inference and the Explanatory Virtues written by David H. Fielding and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: