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Acceptance, Values, and Inductive Risk

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Daniel Steel
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Abstract

The argument from inductive risk attempts to show that practical and ethical costs of errors should influence standards of evidence for accepting scientific claims. A common objection charges that this argument presupposes a behavioral theory of acceptance that is inappropriate for science. I respond by showing that the argument from inductive risk is supported by a nonbehavioral theory of acceptance developed by Cohen, which defines acceptance in terms of premising. Moreover, I argue that theories designed to explain how acceptance can be guided exclusively by epistemic values suffer from difficulties that do not afflict Cohen’s theory.

Type
General Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 5 , December 2013 , pp. 818 - 828
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This work was supported by the Intramural Research Grant Program at Michigan State University (08-IRGP-1448) during the 2009–10 academic year. I would also like to thank Kevin Elliott, David Willmes, and Heather Douglas for helpful comments and discussion.

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