Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:48:59.686Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Explaining Confirmation Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Alison Wylie*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario

Extract

The contributions to Testing Scientific Theories are unified by an interest in responding to criticisms directed by Glymour against existing models of confirmation–-chiefly H-D and Bayesian schemas–-and in assessing and correcting the “bootstrap“ model of confirmation that he proposed as an alternative in Theory and Evidence (1980). As such, they provide a representative sample of objections to Glymour's model and of the wide range of new initiatives in thinking about scientific confirmation that it has influenced. The effect is a sense of engagement and focus, and of significant advance at least in articulation of the problems that require solution; as Earman observes, “it is … heartening to report that the various opposing camps learned from each other” (p. vi). In what follows I am concerned to assess what has been learned both critically, about Glymour's model, and constructively about the resources of the alternatives he challenges. My thesis is that while the theories emerging in this debate do deal with a wider range of scientific practice than before, their remaining limitations raise important questions about the ambitions and criteria of adequacy that have traditionally governed philosophical inquiry in this area.

Type
Critical Notice: Testing Scientific Theories John Earman (ed.)
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 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.)

References

REFERENCES

Christensen, D. (1983), “Glymour on Evidential Relevance”, Philosophy of Science 50: 471481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earman, J. (ed.) (1983), Testing Scientific Theories: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. X. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Glymour, C. (1980), Theory and Evidence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Glymour, C. (1983), “Discussion: Revisions of Bootstrap Testing”, Philosophy of Science 50: 626629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wylie, A. (1986), “Bootstrapping in Un-Natural Sciences: Archaeological Theory Testing”, in Fine, A. and Machamer, P. (eds.), Philosophy of Science Association 1985 volume 1. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 314322.Google Scholar
Zytkow, J. M. (1986), “Discussion: What Revisions does Bootstrap Testing Need?”, Philosophy of Science 53: 101109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar