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A Philosopher's Guide to Empirical Success

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Malcolm R. Forster
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Abstract

The simple question, what is empirical success? turns out to have a surprisingly complicated answer. We need to distinguish between meritorious fit and ‘fudged fit’, which is akin to the distinction between prediction and accommodation. The final proposal is that empirical success emerges in a theory dependent way from the agreement of independent measurements of theoretically postulated quantities. Implications for realism and Bayesianism are discussed.

Type
Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 74 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2006 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers. Edited by Cristina Bicchieri and Jason Alexander , December 2007 , pp. 588 - 600
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

This paper was written when I was a visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh; I thank everyone for their support.

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