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Experimental Practice and an Error Statistical Account of Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Deborah G. Mayo
Deborah G. Mayo*
Affiliation:
Virginia Tech
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, Virginia Tech, Major Williams Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061.
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Abstract

In seeking general accounts of evidence, confirmation, or inference, philosophers have looked to logical relationships between evidence and hypotheses. Such logics of evidential relationship, whether hypothetico-deductive, Bayesian, or instantiationist fail to capture or be relevant to scientific practice. They require information that scientists do not generally have (e.g., an exhaustive set of hypotheses), while lacking slots within which to include considerations to which scientists regularly appeal (e.g., error probabilities). Building on my co-symposiasts contributions, I suggest some directions in which a new and more adequate philosophy of evidence can move.

Type
Experiment and Conceptual Change
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Sep., 2000 , 2000 , pp. S193 - S207
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I gratefully acknowledge the cooperative efforts of my co-symposiasts, Peter Achinstein and James Woodward. Their willingness to exchange fruitful comments and questions on drafts of each others' papers, and to incorporate examples and ideas from each of our three papers in their own contributions, was a model of constructive progress and synergy.

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