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Damn the Consequences: Projective Evidence and the Heterogeneity of Scientific Confirmation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

P. Kyle Stanford
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Abstract

I contrast our own evidence for the hypothesis of organic fossil origins with that available in previous centuries, suggesting that the most powerful contemporary evidence consists in a form of projective support whose distinctive features are not well captured by familiar hypothetico-deductive, abductive, or even more recent and more technically sophisticated (e.g., Bayesian) accounts of scientific confirmation. I suggest that such accounts either misrepresent or ignore something important about the heterogeneous ways in which scientific hypotheses can be supported by evidence, and I go on to suggest that the search for any single such account may be misguided in any case.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 5 , December 2011 , pp. 887 - 899
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

It is a pleasure to acknowledge exceedingly useful discussions of this material with Jeff Barrett, Peter Lipton, Pen Maddy, Brian Skyrms, Bruce Glymour, Elliott Sober, Kevin Zollman, Gillian Barker, John Norton, Martin Thompson-Jones, Derek Turner, and others I have forgotten, as well as audiences at Oberlin, Pittsburgh's Center for History and Philosophy of Science, the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, the University of Konstanz, the University of California–San Diego, the 2009 Second Conference on Integrated History and Philosophy of Science at Notre Dame University, the 2009 conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association, the 2009 Unconceived Alternatives Symposium at the Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics and the Institute Vienna Circle, the 2010 Henle Conference, and the PSA 2010. This essay is dedicated to the memory of Peter Lipton, who always asked the right questions.

References

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