Hypothetico-Deductivism: Incomplete But Not Hopeless

Abstract

Alleged counter-examples deployed in Park (2004) [Erkenntnis  60: 229–240] against the account of selective hypothetico-deductive confirmation offered in Gemes (1998) [Erkenntnis  49: 1–20] are shown to be ineffective. Furthermore, the reservations expressed in Gemes (1998) [ibid] and (1993) [Philosophy of Science  62: 477–487] about hypothetico-deductivism (H-D) are retracted and replaced with the conclusion that H-D is a viable account of confirmation that captures much of the practice of working scientists. However, because it cannot capture cases of inference to the best explanation and cases of the observational confirmation of statistical hypotheses, it is concluded that H-D cannot supply a complete theory of confirmation.