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How Explanation Guides Confirmation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Nevin Climenhaga
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Abstract

Where E is the proposition that [If H and O were true, H would explain O], William Roche and Elliot Sober have argued that P(H | O&E) = P(H | O). In this article I argue that not only is this equality not generally true, it is false in the very kinds of cases that Roche and Sober focus on, involving frequency data. In fact, in such cases O raises the probability of H only given that there is an explanatory connection between them.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , April 2017 , pp. 359 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to Robert Audi, Daniel Immerman, Ted Poston, and two reviewers for Philosophy of Science for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References

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