Error statistics and Duhem's problem
Philosophy of Science 67 (3):410-420 (2000)
| Abstract | No one has a well developed solution to Duhem's problem, the problem of how experimental evidence warrants revision of our theories. Deborah Mayo proposes a solution to Duhem's problem in route to her more ambitious program of providing a philosophical account of inductive inference and experimental knowledge. This paper is a response to Mayo's Error Statistics (ES) program, paying particular attention to her response to Duhem's problem. It turns out that Mayo's purported solution to Duhem's problem is very significant to her project, for the epistemic license claimed by ES and the philosophical underpinnings to her account of experimental knowledge depend on this solution. By introducing the partition problem, I argue that ES fails to solve Duhem's problem and therefore fails to provide an adequate account of experimental knowledge | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,705 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesPhilip L. Quinn (1990). Duhem in Different Contexts: Comments on Brenner and Martin. Synthese 83 (3):357 - 362.
Sam S. Rakover (2003). Experimental Psychology and Duhem's Problem. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 33 (1):45–66.
Branden Fitelson & Andrew Waterman (2005). Bayesian Confirmation and Auxiliary Hypotheses Revisited: A Reply to Strevens. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (2):293-302.
Richard Jeffrey (1993). Take Back the Day! Jon Dorling's Bayesian Solution of the Duhem Problem. Philosophical Issues 3:197-207.
Anastasios A. Brenner (1990). Holism a Century Ago: The Elaboration of Duhem's Thesis. Synthese 83 (3):325 - 335.
Marcel Weber (2009). The Crux of Crucial Experiments: Duhem's Problems and Inference to the Best Explanation. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (1):19-49.
Michael Strevens (2001). The Bayesian Treatment of Auxiliary Hypotheses. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (3):515-537.
Karen Merikangas Darling (2003). Motivational Realism: The Natural Classification for Pierre Duhem. Philosophy of Science 70 (5):1125-1136.
Karen Merikangas Darling (2003). Motivational Realism: The Natural Classification for Pierre Duhem. Philosophy of Science 70 (5):1125-1136.
Deborah G. Mayo (1997). Duhem's Problem, the Bayesian Way, and Error Statistics, or "What's Belief Got to Do with It?". Philosophy of Science 64 (2):222-244.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads3 ( #202,056 of 549,198 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,397 of 549,198 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
