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Regarding the Raven Paradox

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Robert J. Levy
Robert J. Levy*
Affiliation:
Wittenberg University
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In this paper I take Hempel’s raven paradox as the claim that statements of the form ‘∼Ru v Bu’, ‘u is not a raven or u is black,’ confirm the hypothesis h ‘(x)(Rx → Bx)’, ‘All ravens are black.’ Although Hempel discusses this using a criterion of confirmation expressed wholly in terms of deductive logic (see 1965, pp. 35-9), it has become more common to articulate criteria of confirmation using concepts of probability and, in particular, to employ the positive relevance criterion of confirmation which says that, given background knowledge k, (i) e confirms h if and only if P(h/e.k)>P(h/k); (ii) e disconfirms h if and only if P(h/e.k)<P(h/k) and (iii) e is irrelevant to h if and only if P(h/e.k)=P(h/k).

Type
Part I. Confirmation and Scientific Laws
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1988 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1988 , 1988 , pp. 17 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1988

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