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On Bayesian Measures of Evidential Support: Theoretical and Empirical Issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Vincenzo Crupi ,
Katya Tentori  and
Michel Gonzalez
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Abstract

Epistemologists and philosophers of science have often attempted to express formally the impact of a piece of evidence on the credibility of a hypothesis. In this paper we will focus on the Bayesian approach to evidential support. We will propose a new formal treatment of the notion of degree of confirmation and we will argue that it overcomes some limitations of the currently available approaches on two grounds: (i) a theoretical analysis of the confirmation relation seen as an extension of logical deduction and (ii) an empirical comparison of competing measures in an experimental inquiry concerning inductive reasoning in a probabilistic setting.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 74 , Issue 2 , April 2007 , pp. 229 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

We thank Roberto Festa, Branden Fitelson, Theo Kuipers, Daniel Osherson, and two anonymous referees for comments on previous versions of this paper. Research was supported by PRIN 2005 grant Le dinamiche della conoscenza nella società dell'informazione and by a grant from the SMC/Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Trento e Rovereto.

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