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Scientific Evidence
Scientific evidence is evidence that serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis, although scientists also use evidence in other ways, such as when applying theories to practical problems. "Discussions about empirical evidence have tended to focus on epistemological questions regarding its role in theory testing ... even though empirical evidence also plays important and philosophically interesting roles in other areas including scientific discovery, the development of experimental tools and techniques, and the application of scientific theories to practical problems." Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence and interpretable in accordance with scientific methods. Standards for scientific evidence vary according to the field of inquiry, but the strength of scientific evidence is generally based on the results of statistical analysis and the strength of scientific controls. Principles of inference A person's assumptions or beliefs about ...
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Evidence
Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies beliefs or what makes it rational to hold a certain doxastic attitude. For example, a perceptual experience of a tree may act as evidence that justifies the belief that there is a tree. In this role, evidence is usually understood as a private mental state. Important topics in this field include the questions of what the nature of these mental states is, for example, whether they have to be propositional, and whether misleading mental states can still qualify as evidence. In phenomenology, evidence is understood in a similar sense. Here, however, it is limited to intuitive knowledge that provides immediate access to truth and is therefore indubitable. In this role, it is supposed to provide ultimate justifications for b ...
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Aumann's Agreement Theorem
Aumann's agreement theorem was stated and proved by Robert Aumann in a paper titled "Agreeing to Disagree", which introduced the set theoretic description of common knowledge. The theorem concerns agents who share a common prior and update their probabilistic beliefs by Bayes' rule. It states that if the probabilistic beliefs of such agents, regarding a fixed event, are common knowledge then these probabilities must coincide. Thus, agents cannot agree to disagree, that is have common knowledge of a disagreement over the posterior probability of a given event. The Theorem The model used in Aumann to prove the theorem consists of a finite set of states S with a prior probability p, which is common to all agents. Agent a's knowledge is given by a partition \Pi_a of S. The posterior probability of agent a, denoted p_a is the conditional probability of p given \Pi_a. Fix an event E and let X be the event that for each a, p_a(E)=x_a. The theorem claims that if the event C(X) that X ...
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Grue (philosophy)
The new riddle of induction was presented by Nelson Goodman in ''Fact, Fiction, and Forecast'' as a successor to Hume's original problem. It presents the logical predicates grue and bleen which are unusual due to their time-dependence. Many have tried to solve the new riddle on those terms, but Hilary Putnam and others have argued such time-dependency depends on the language adopted, and in some languages it is equally true for natural-sounding predicates such as "green". For Goodman they illustrate the problem of projectible predicates and ultimately, which empirical generalizations are law-like and which are not. Goodman's construction and use of ''grue'' and ''bleen'' illustrates how philosophers use simple examples in conceptual analysis. Grue and bleen Goodman defined "grue" relative to an arbitrary but fixed time ''t'':Historically, Goodman used ''"V-E day"'' and ''"a certain time t"'' in ''A Query on Confirmation'' (p. 383) and ''Fact, fiction, and forecast'' (3rd ...
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Nelson Goodman
Henry Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906 – 25 November 1998) was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism, and aesthetics. Life and career Goodman was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, the son of Sarah Elizabeth (née Woodbury) and Henry Lewis Goodman. He was of Jewish origins. He graduated from Harvard University, AB, '' magna cum laude'' (1928). During the 1930s, he ran an art gallery in Boston, Massachusetts, while studying for a Harvard PhD in philosophy, which he completed in 1941. His experience as an art dealer helps explain his later turn towards aesthetics, where he became better known than in logic and analytic philosophy. During World War II, he served as a psychologist in the US Army. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania, 1946–1964, where his students included Noam Chomsky, Sydney Morgenbesser, Stephen Stich, and Hilary Putnam. He was a research fellow at the Harvard Center for ...
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Norwood Russell Hanson
Norwood Russell Hanson (August 17, 1924 – April 18, 1967) was an American philosopher of science. Hanson was a pioneer in advancing the argument that observation is theory-laden — that observation language and theory language are deeply interwoven — and that historical and contemporary comprehension are similarly deeply interwoven. His single most central intellectual concern was the comprehension and development of a logic of discovery. Work Hanson's best-known work is ''Patterns of Discovery'' (1958), in which he argues that what we see and perceive is not what our senses receive, but is instead filtered sensory information, where the filter is our existing preconceptions – a concept later called a 'thematic framework.' He cited optical illusions such as the famous old Parisienne woman (''Patterns of Discovery'', p. 11), which can be seen in different ways. Hanson drew a distinction between 'seeing as' and 'seeing that' which became a key idea in evolving theori ...
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Carl Hempel
Carl Gustav "Peter" Hempel (January 8, 1905 – November 9, 1997) was a German writer, philosopher, logician, and epistemologist. He was a major figure in logical empiricism, a 20th-century movement in the philosophy of science. He is especially well known for his articulation of the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, which was considered the "standard model" of scientific explanation during the 1950s and 1960s. He is also known for the raven paradox (also known as "Hempel's paradox"). Education Hempel studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the University of Göttingen and subsequently at the University of Berlin and the Heidelberg University. In Göttingen, he encountered David Hilbert and was impressed by his program attempting to base all mathematics on solid logical foundations derived from a limited number of axioms. After moving to Berlin, Hempel participated in a congress on scientific philosophy in 1929 where he met Rudolf Carnap and bec ...
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Peter Achinstein
Peter Achinstein (born June 30, 1935) is an American philosopher of science at Johns Hopkins University. Biography Achinstein is the son of Betty (née Comras) and economist Asher Achinstein. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard with a dissertation on Carnap's theory of probability. It was the German philosopher Carl G. Hempel, in a visit to Harvard in 1953–4 (replacing W.V. Quine who was on leave), who motivated him to pursue philosophy of science. Upon getting a Harvard Traveling Fellowship, Achinstein spent a year in Oxford in 1959 working under the guidance of P. F. Strawson. In Oxford he attended seminars and lectures delivered by Gilbert Ryle, A.J. Ayer, and J.L. Austin. Achinstein specializes in philosophy of science with strong interests in the history of science. Achinstein has taught for many years at Johns Hopkins University, where he is currently Professor of Philosophy. In Spring 2009, Achinstein began teaching at Yeshiva University as the Jay and ...
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Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. He is considered "one of the giants among twentieth-century philosophers." Biography Carnap's father had risen from being a poor ribbon-weaver to be the owner of a ribbon-making factory. His mother came from an academic family; her father was an educational reformer and her oldest brother was the archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld. As a ten-year-old, Carnap accompanied Wilhelm Dörpfeld on an expedition to Greece. Carnap was raised in a profoundly religious Protestant family, but later became an atheist. He began his formal education at the Barmen Gymnasium and the Gymnasium in Jena. From 1910 to 1914, he attended the University of Jena, intending to write a thesis in physics. He also intently studied Immanuel Kant's '' Critique of Pu ...
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Deborah Mayo
Deborah G. Mayo is an American philosopher of science and author. She is a professor emerita in the Department of Philosophy at Virginia Tech and holds a visiting appointment at the Center for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science of the London School of Economics. Biography Mayo graduated from Clark University with a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics in 1974. She received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979, thesis title "Philosophy of Statistics". Mayo was a professor of philosophy at Virginia Tech from 1979 to 2016. She taught undergraduate and graduate courses, including introductory and advanced logic (meta-theory of logic and modal logic), the scientific method and philosophy of science. She also held academic positions and taught classes in the Department of Economics at Virginia Tech, and the Center for the Study of Science and Society. Her most recent research focuses on developing an account of experimental inference in science based ...
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Philosophy Of Science Association
The Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) is an international academic organization founded in 1933 that promotes research, teaching, and free discussion of issues in the philosophy of science from diverse standpoints. The PSA engages in activities such as the publishing of periodicals, essays and monographs in the field of the philosophy of science; holding biennial conferences; awarding of prizes for distinguished work in the field; supporting early-career scholars; and sponsoring in public engagement events. History of the Association The PSA was founded in 1933 and incorporated in Michigan 1975. The administrative offices of the PSA have been located at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County since 2013. Starting 2021, the PSA office will be located in the University of Cincinnati College of Arts and Sciences. ''Philosophy of Science'' ''Philosophy of Science'', the official journal of the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA), has been published continuously sinc ...
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Philosophy Of Science (journal)
''Philosophy of Science'' is dedicated to the furthering of studies and free discussion from diverse standpoints in the philosophy of science. It is a peer-reviewed academic journal. Official affiliations In January 1934 ''Philosophy of Science'' announced itself as the chief external expression of the Philosophy of Science Association, which seems to have been the expectation of its founder, William Malisoff. The journal is currently the official journal of the Association, which Philipp Frank and C. West Churchman formally constituted in December 1947. Publication history Malisoff, who was independently wealthy, seems to have financed the launch of ''Philosophy of Science''. Correspondingly he became its first editor. In the first issue he sought papers ranging from studies on "the analysis of meaning, definition, symbolism," in scientific theories to those on "the nature and formulation of theoretical principles" and "in the function and significance of science within vario ...
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Statistical Inference
Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying distribution of probability.Upton, G., Cook, I. (2008) ''Oxford Dictionary of Statistics'', OUP. . Inferential statistical analysis infers properties of a population, for example by testing hypotheses and deriving estimates. It is assumed that the observed data set is sampled from a larger population. Inferential statistics can be contrasted with descriptive statistics. Descriptive statistics is solely concerned with properties of the observed data, and it does not rest on the assumption that the data come from a larger population. In machine learning, the term ''inference'' is sometimes used instead to mean "make a prediction, by evaluating an already trained model"; in this context inferring properties of the model is referred to as ''training'' or ''learning'' (rather than ''inference''), and using a model for prediction is referred to as ''inference'' (instead of ''prediction' ...
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