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Negative priors and inferences from absence of evidence in cognitive and linguistic archaeology: Epistemically sound and scientifically strategic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2025

Aritz Irurtzun Open the ORCID record for Aritz Irurtzun [Opens in a new window]
Aritz Irurtzun*
Affiliation:
CNRS-IKER (UMR 5478), Bayonne, France. aritz.irurtzun@iker.cnrs.fr https://iker.cnrs.fr/z-aritz-irurtzun/
*
*Corresponding author.
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Abstract

The article provides an important warning but its general conclusions should be nuanced: (i) When there is no evidence for it, we should depart from the hypothesis that a species lacks a particular cognitive capacity, and (ii) inferences from absence of evidence can be epistemically sound and scientifically strategic in cognitive and linguistic archaeology.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 48 , 2025 , e11
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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