Non-Bayesian Accounts of Evidence: Howson’s Counterexample Countered

International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 30 (3):291-298 (2016)
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Abstract

There is a debate in Bayesian confirmation theory between subjective and non-subjective accounts of evidence. Colin Howson has provided a counterexample to our non-subjective account of evidence: the counterexample refers to a case in which there is strong evidence for a hypothesis, but the hypothesis is highly implausible. In this article, we contend that, by supposing that strong evidence for a hypothesis makes the hypothesis more believable, Howson conflates the distinction between confirmation and evidence. We demonstrate that Howson’s counterexample fails for a different pair of hypotheses.

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Mark L. Taper
Montana State University-Bozeman

Citations of this work

Likelihoodism and Guidance for Belief.Tamaz Tokhadze - 2022 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 53 (4):501-517.

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References found in this work

Scientific reasoning: the Bayesian approach.Peter Urbach & Colin Howson - 1993 - Chicago: Open Court. Edited by Peter Urbach.
Error and the growth of experimental knowledge.Deborah Mayo - 1996 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 15 (1):455-459.
Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge.Deborah Mayo - 1997 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (3):455-459.

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