Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T22:04:24.909Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

External Validity: Is There Still a Problem?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Alexandre Marcellesi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I first propose to distinguish between two kinds of external validity inferences, predictive and explanatory. I then argue that we have a satisfactory answer to the question of the conditions under which predictive external validity inferences are good. If this claim is correct, then it has two immediate consequences: First, some external validity inferences are deductive, contrary to what is commonly assumed. Second, Steel’s requirement that an account of external validity inference break what he calls the ‘Extrapolator’s Circle’ is misplaced, at least when it comes to predictive external validity inferences.

Type
Social Sciences and Policy
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 5 , December 2015 , pp. 1308 - 1317
Copyright
Copyright © 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 wish to thank Nancy Cartwright for her comments on an earlier draft as well as audiences at the 2014 PSA conference in Chicago and at the UCSD Graduate Philosophy Colloquium.

References

Bareinboim, Elias, and Pearl, Judea. 2013. “A General Algorithm for Deciding Transportability of Experimental Results.” Journal of Causal Inference 1:107–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bateman, Ian, Munro, Alistair, Rhodes, Bruce, Starmer, Chris, and Sugden, Robert. 1997. “A Test of the Theory of Reference-Dependent Preferences.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112:479–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Donald. 1957. “Factors Relevant to the Validity of Experiments in Social Settings.” Psychological Bulletin 54:297–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy, and Hardie, Jeremy. 2012. Evidence-Based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing It Better. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Thomas, and Campbell, Donald. 1979. Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.Google Scholar
Guala, Francesco. 2005. The Methodology of Experimental Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, Knetsch, Jack, and Thaler, Richard. 1990. “Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem.” Journal of Political Economy 98:1325–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LaFollette, Hugh, and Shanks, Niall. 1995. “Two Models of Models in Biomedical Research.” Philosophical Quarterly 45:141–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackie, J. L. 1965. “Causes and Conditions.” American Philosophical Quarterly 2:245–64.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1843. A System of Logic. London: Parker.Google Scholar
Starmer, Chris. 2000. “Developments in Non-expected Utility Theory: The Hunt for a Descriptive Theory of Choice under Risk.” Journal of Economic Literature 38:332–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steel, Daniel. 2008. Across the Boundaries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar