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Robustness, Discordance, and Relevance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jacob Stegenga
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Abstract

Robustness is a common platitude: hypotheses are better supported with evidence generated by multiple techniques that rely on different background assumptions. Robustness has been put to numerous epistemic tasks, including the demarcation of artifacts from real entities, countering the “experimenter's regress,” and resolving evidential discordance. Despite the frequency of appeals to robustness, the notion itself has received scant critique. Arguments based on robustness can give incorrect conclusions. More worrying is that although robustness may be valuable in ideal evidential circumstances (i.e., when evidence is concordant), often when a variety of evidence is available from multiple techniques, the evidence is discordant.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 76 , Issue 5 , December 2009 , pp. 650 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Numerous people have given valuable commentary on this paper, including Nancy Cartwright, Craig Callender, Matthew Brown, Marta Halina, Kareem Khalifa, Eric Martin, Tarun Menon, Boaz Miller, Brendan Ritchie, Samuel Schindler, Léna Soler, Eran Tal, and audiences at the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, the Philosophy of Science Association, and members of the University of California, San Diego Philosophy of Science Reading Group.

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