Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T04:53:22.719Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Parsimony, Likelihood, and the Principle of the Common Cause

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Elliott Sober
Elliott Sober*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The likelihood justification of cladistic parsimony suggested in Sober (1984) is here shown to be incomplete. Even so, cladistic parsimony remains a counterexample to the principle of the common cause formulated by Reichenbach (1956) and Salmon (1975, 1979, 1984).

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 1987 , pp. 465 - 469
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I am grateful to Malcolm Forster, David Swofford, and, above all, to Ellery Eells for useful discussion. I also wish to thank the National Science Foundation and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Graduate School for financial support.

References

Reichenbach, H. (1956), The Direction of Time. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, W. (1975), “Theoretical Explanation”, in Korner, S. (ed.), Explanation. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 118–145.Google Scholar
Salmon, W. ( (1979), “Why Ask ‘Why?‘ An Inquiry Concerning Scientific Explanation”, in Salmon, W. (ed.), Hans Reichenbach: Logical Empiricist. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 403–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, W. (1984), Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1983), “Parsimony Methods: Philosophical Issues”, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 14: 335–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, E. (1984), “Common Cause Explanation”, Philosophy of Science 51: 212–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, E. (1985), “A Likelihood Justification of Parsimony”, Cladistics 1: 209–233.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sober, E. (1987), “Explanation and Causation: A Review of Wesley Salmon's Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Forthcoming.Google Scholar