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  1. Conditional Probability Is Not Countably Additive.Dmitri Gallow - manuscript
    I argue for a connection between two debates in the philosophy of probability. On the one hand, there is disagreement about conditional probability. Is it to be defined in terms of unconditional probability, or should we instead take conditional probability as the primitive notion? On the other hand, there is disagreement about how additive probability is. Is it merely finitely additive, or is it additionally countably additive? My thesis is that, if conditional probability is primitive, then it is not countably (...)
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  2. A Puzzle about Inferential Strength and Probability.Alexander Hughes - manuscript
    Inductive logic would be the logic of arguments that are not valid, but nevertheless justify belief in something like the way in which valid arguments would. Maybe we could describe it as the logic of “almost valid” arguments. There is a sort of transitivity to valid arguments. Valid arguments can be chained together to form arguments and such arguments are themselves valid. One wants to distinguish the “almost valid” arguments by noting that chains of “almost valid” arguments are weaker than (...)
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  3. The Physical Foundation of Quantum Theory.Mehran Shaghaghi - 2023 - Foundations of Physics 53 (1):1-36.
    The number of independent messages a physical system can carry is limited by the number of its adjustable properties. In particular, systems with only one adjustable property cannot carry more than a single message at a time. We demonstrate that this is true for the photons in the double-slit experiment, and that this is what leads to the fundamental limit on measuring the complementary aspect of the photons. Next, we illustrate that systems with a single adjustable property exhibit other quantum (...)
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  4. Risk, Precaution, and Causation.Masaki Ichinose - 2022 - Tetsugaku: International Journal of the Philosophical Association of Japan 6:22-53.
    This paper aims to scrutinize how the notion of risk should be understood and applied to possibly catastrophic cases. I begin with clarifying the standard usage of the notion of risk, particularly emphasizing the conceptual relation between risk and probability. Then, I investigate how to make decisions in the case of seemingly catastrophic disasters by contrasting the precautionary principle with the preventive (prevention) principle. Finally, I examine what kind of causal thinking tends to be actually adopted when we make decisions (...)
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  5. From Art to Information System.Miro Brada - 2021 - AGI Laboratory.
    This insight to art came from chess composition concentrating art in a very dense form. To identify and mathematically assess the uniqueness is the key applicable to other areas eg. computer programming. Maximization of uniqueness is minimization of entropy that coincides as well as goes beyond Information Theory (Shannon, 1948). The reusage of logic as a universal principle to minimize entropy, requires simplified architecture and abstraction. Any structures (e.g. plugins) duplicating or dividing functionality increase entropy and so unreliability (eg. British (...)
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  6. The liberation of nature and knowledge: a case study on Hans Reichenbach’s naturalism.László Kocsis & Adam Tamas Tuboly - 2021 - Synthese 199 (All Things Reichenbach):9751-9784.
    Our main goal in this paper is to present and scrutinize Reichenbach’s own naturalism in our contemporary context, with special attention to competing versions of the concept. By exploring the idea of Reichenbach’s naturalism, we will argue that he defended a liberating, therapeutic form of naturalism, meaning that he took scientific philosophy to be a possible cure for bad old habits and traditional ways of philosophy. For Reichenbach, naturalistic scientific philosophy was a well-established form of liberation. We do not intend (...)
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  7. Statistical Significance Testing in Economics.William Peden & Jan Sprenger - 2021 - In Conrad Heilmann & Julian Reiss (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Economics.
    The origins of testing scientific models with statistical techniques go back to 18th century mathematics. However, the modern theory of statistical testing was primarily developed through the work of Sir R.A. Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, and Egon Pearson in the inter-war period. Some of Fisher's papers on testing were published in economics journals (Fisher, 1923, 1935) and exerted a notable influence on the discipline. The development of econometrics and the rise of quantitative economic models in the mid-20th century made statistical significance (...)
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  8. Does luck exclude knowledge or certainty?Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2020 - Synthese 197 (6):2387-2397.
    A popular account of luck, with a firm basis in common sense, holds that a necessary condition for an event to be lucky, is that it was suitably improbable. It has recently been proposed that this improbability condition is best understood in epistemic terms. Two different versions of this proposal have been advanced. According to my own proposal :361–377, 2010), whether an event is lucky for some agent depends on whether the agent was in a position to know that the (...)
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  9. Rebooting the new evidence scholarship.John R. Welch - 2020 - International Journal of Evidence and Proof 24 (4):351-373.
    The new evidence scholarship addresses three distinct approaches: legal probabilism, Bayesian decision theory and relative plausibility theory. Each has major insights to offer, but none seems satisfactory as it stands. This paper proposes that relative plausibility theory be modified in two substantial ways. The first is by defining its key concept of plausibility, hitherto treated as primitive, by generalising the standard axioms of probability. The second is by complementing the descriptive component of the theory with a normative decision theory adapted (...)
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  10. Simulation Validation from a Bayesian Perspective.Claus Beisbart - 2019 - In Claus Beisbart & Nicole J. Saam (eds.), Computer Simulation Validation: Fundamental Concepts, Methodological Frameworks, and Philosophical Perspectives. Springer. pp. 173-201.
    Bayesian epistemologyEpistemology offers a powerful framework for characterizing scientific inference. Its basic idea is that rational belief comes in degrees that can be measured in terms of probabilities. The axioms of the probability calculus and a rule for updatingUpdating emerge as constraints on the formation of rational belief. Bayesian epistemologyEpistemology has led to useful explications of notions such asConfirmation confirmation. It thus is natural to ask whether Bayesian epistemologyEpistemology offers a useful framework for thinking about the inferences implicit in the (...)
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  11. Disjunction and distality: the hard problem for purely probabilistic causal theories of mental content.William Roche - 2019 - Synthese 198 (8):7197-7230.
    The disjunction problem and the distality problem each presents a challenge that any theory of mental content must address. Here we consider their bearing on purely probabilistic causal theories. In addition to considering these problems separately, we consider a third challenge—that a theory must solve both. We call this “the hard problem.” We consider 8 basic ppc theories along with 240 hybrids of them, and show that some can handle the disjunction problem and some can handle the distality problem, but (...)
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  12. Modus Darwin Reconsidered.Casey Helgeson - 2018 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (1):193-213.
    ABSTRACT ‘Modus Darwin’ is the name given by Elliott Sober to a form of argument that he attributes to Darwin in the Origin of Species, and to subsequent evolutionary biologists who have reasoned in the same way. In short, the argument form goes: similarity, ergo common ancestry. In this article, I review and critique Sober’s analysis of Darwin’s reasoning. I argue that modus Darwin has serious limitations that make the argument form unsuitable for supporting Darwin’s conclusions, and that Darwin did (...)
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  13. Connecting Applied and Theoretical Bayesian Epistemology: Data Relevance, Pragmatics, and the Legal Case of Sally Clark.Matthew J. Barker - 2017 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 34 (2):242-262.
    In this article applied and theoretical epistemologies benefit each other in a study of the British legal case of R. vs. Clark. Clark's first infant died at 11 weeks of age, in December 1996. About a year later, Clark had a second child. After that child died at eight weeks of age, Clark was tried for murdering both infants. Statisticians and philosophers have disputed how to apply Bayesian analyses to this case, and thereby arrived at different judgments about it. By (...)
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  14. Transforming the Self amidst the Challenges of Chance: William James on "Our Undisciplinables".Colin Koopman - 2016 - Diacritics 44 (4):40-65.
    William James’s moral and political thought was remarkably well adapted to its historical context, in particular to the emergence in the late nineteenth century of a generalized culture of uncertainty, contingency, and probability that called into question traditional conceptions of sovereign selfhood and autonomous freedom. Facing the solidification of numerous apparatus of chance, James developed a strenuous ethics rooted in a conception of freedom as self-transformation. That this ethics was attuned to the pressing problematics of his day is shown by (...)
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  15. Conclusions as Hedged Hypotheses.John R. Welch - 2016 - In Argumentation, Objectivity, and Bias. Windsor, CA: Windsor University Press.
    How can the objectivity of an argument’s conclusion be determined? To propose an answer, this paper builds on Betz’s view of premises as hedged hypotheses. If an argument’s premises are hedged, its conclusion must be hedged as well. But how? The paper first introduces a two-dimensional critical grid. The grid’s vertical dimension is inductive, reflecting the argument’s downward flow from premises to conclusion. It specifies the inductive probability of the conclusion given the premises. The grid’s horizontal dimension is epistemic, focusing (...)
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  16. Heaven Can't Wait: A Critique of Current Planetary Defence Policy.Joel Marks - 2015 - In Jai Galliott (ed.), Commercial Space Exploration: Ethics, Policy and Governance. pp. 71-90.
    It is now generally recognized that Earth is at risk of a devastating collision with an asteroid or a comet. Impressive strides in our understanding of this threat have been made in recent decades, and various efforts to deal with it have been undertaken. However, the pace of government action hasn’t kept up with the advance of our knowledge. Despite the daunting dimensions of planetary defense, one intrepid NGO has stepped up to the plate: The B612 Foundation has embarked on (...)
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  17. A Merton Model of Credit Risk with Jumps.Hoang Thi Phuong Thao & Quan-Hoang Vuong - 2015 - Journal of Statistics Applications and Probability Letters 2 (2):97-103.
    In this note, we consider a Merton model for default risk, where the firm’s value is driven by a Brownian motion and a compound Poisson process.
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  18. Parsimony and the Argument from Queerness.Justin Morton & Eric Sampson - 2014 - Res Philosophica 91 (4):609-627.
    In his recent book Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence, Jonas Olson attempts to revive the argument from queerness originally made famous by J.L. Mackie. In this paper, we do three things. First, we eliminate four untenable formulations of the argument. Second, we argue that the most plausible formulation is one that depends crucially upon considerations of parsimony. Finally, we evaluate this formulation of the argument. We conclude that it is unproblematic for proponents of moral non-naturalism—the target of the argument from (...)
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  19. Moral Strata: Another Approach to Reflective Equilibrium.John R. Welch - 2014 - Cham: Springer.
    This volume recreates the received notion of reflective equilibrium. It reconfigures reflective equilibrium as both a cognitive ideal and a method for approximating this ideal. The ideal of reflective equilibrium is restructured using the concept of discursive strata, which are formed by sentences and differentiated by function. Sentences that perform the same kind of linguistic function constitute a stratum. The book shows how moral discourse can be analyzed into phenomenal, instrumental, and teleological strata, and the ideal of reflective equilibrium reworked (...)
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  20. All Probabilistic Methods Assume a Subjective Definition of Probability.Mark Crovelli - 2012 - Libertarian Papers 4.
    In previous publications on probability, I have followed I.J. Good in arguing that probability must be defined subjectively if we accept that the world is causally deterministic. In this article I go significantly beyond this position, arguing that we are forced to accept a subjective definition of probability if we use any probabilistic methods at all. In other words, all probabilistic methods tacitly assume a subjective definition of probability.
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  21. Probability as a Measure of Information Added.Peter Milne - 2012 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 21 (2):163-188.
    Some propositions add more information to bodies of propositions than do others. We start with intuitive considerations on qualitative comparisons of information added . Central to these are considerations bearing on conjunctions and on negations. We find that we can discern two distinct, incompatible, notions of information added. From the comparative notions we pass to quantitative measurement of information added. In this we borrow heavily from the literature on quantitative representations of qualitative, comparative conditional probability. We look at two ways (...)
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  22. Dangerous “Spin”: the probability myth of evidence-based prescribing - a Merleau-Pontyian approach.Ron Morstyn - 2011 - Australasian Psychiatry 19 (4):295-300.
    Objective: The aim of this study was to examine logical positivist statistical probability statements used to support and justify “evidence-based” prescribing rules in psychiatry when viewed from the major philosophical theories of probability, and to propose “phenomenological probability” based on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of “phenomenological positivism” as a better clinical and ethical basis for psychiatric prescribing. -/- Conclusions: The logical positivist statistical probability statements which are currently used to support “evidence-based” prescribing rules in psychiatry have little clinical or ethical justification (...)
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  23. Randomness Through Computation: Some Answers, More Questions.Hector Zenil (ed.) - 2011 - World Scientific.
    The book is intended to explain the larger and intuitive concept of randomness by means of computation, particularly through algorithmic complexity and recursion theory. It also includes the transcriptions (by A. German) of two panel discussion on the topics: Is The Universe Random?, held at the University of Vermont in 2007; and What is Computation? (How) Does Nature Compute?, held at the University of Indiana Bloomington in 2008. The book is intended to the general public, undergraduate and graduate students in (...)
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  24. The Place of Probability in Science: In Honor of Ellery Eells (1953-2006).Ellery Eells & James H. Fetzer (eds.) - 2010 - Springer.
    To clarify and illuminate the place of probability in science Ellery Eells and James H. Fetzer have brought together some of the most distinguished philosophers ...
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  25. Probing the improbable: Methodological challenges for risks with low probabilities and high stakes.Toby Ord, Rafaela Hillerbrand & Anders Sandberg - 2010 - Journal of Risk Research 13:191-205.
    Some risks have extremely high stakes. For example, a worldwide pandemic or asteroid impact could potentially kill more than a billion people. Comfortingly, scientific calculations often put very low probabilities on the occurrence of such catastrophes. In this paper, we argue that there are important new methodological problems which arise when assessing global catastrophic risks and we focus on a problem regarding probability estimation. When an expert provides a calculation of the probability of an outcome, they are really providing the (...)
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  26. Response to Shaffer, Thagard, Strevens and Hanson.Gilbert Harman & Sanjeev Kulkarni - 2009 - Abstracta 5 (S3):47-56.
    Like Glenn Shafer, we are nostalgic for the time when “philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists interested in probability, induction, and scientific methodology talked with each other more than they do now”, [p.10]. 1 Shafer goes on to mention other relevant contemporary communities. He himself has been at the interface of many of these communities while at the same time making major contributions to them and this very symposium represents something of that desired discussion. We begin with a couple of general points (...)
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  27. The special status of mathematical probability: a historical sketch.Xavier De Scheemaekere & Ariane Szafarz - 2008 - Epistemologia 32 (1):91.
    The history of the mathematical probability includes two phases: 1) From Pascal and Fermat to Laplace, the theory gained in application fields; 2) In the first half of the 20th Century, two competing axiomatic systems were respectively proposed by von Mises in 1919 and Kolmogorov in 1933. This paper places this historical sketch in the context of the philosophical complexity of the probability concept and explains the resounding success of Kolmogorov’s theory through its ability to avoid direct interpretation. Indeed, unlike (...)
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  28. The metaphysical character of the criticisms raised against the use of probability for dealing with uncertainty in artificial intelligence.Carlotta Piscopo & Mauro Birattari - 2008 - Minds and Machines 18 (2):273-288.
    In artificial intelligence (AI), a number of criticisms were raised against the use of probability for dealing with uncertainty. All these criticisms, except what in this article we call the non-adequacy claim, have been eventually confuted. The non-adequacy claim is an exception because, unlike the other criticisms, it is exquisitely philosophical and, possibly for this reason, it was not discussed in the technical literature. A lack of clarity and understanding of this claim had a major impact on AI. Indeed, mostly (...)
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  29. Book review of Maria Carla Galavotti's "Philosophical Introduction to Probability". [REVIEW]Jan-Willem Romeijn - 2008 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39 (1):225-228.
  30. The prior probabilities of phylogenetic trees.Joel D. Velasco - 2008 - Biology and Philosophy 23 (4):455-473.
    Bayesian methods have become among the most popular methods in phylogenetics, but theoretical opposition to this methodology remains. After providing an introduction to Bayesian theory in this context, I attempt to tackle the problem mentioned most often in the literature: the “problem of the priors”—how to assign prior probabilities to tree hypotheses. I first argue that a recent objection—that an appropriate assignment of priors is impossible—is based on a misunderstanding of what ignorance and bias are. I then consider different methods (...)
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  31. La filosofía moral: el debate sobre el probabilismo en el Perú, siglos XVII y XVIII.Martel Paredes & Víctor Hugo - 2007 - Lima, Perú: Lluvia Editores.
  32. Probability and Evolution. Why the Probability Argument of Creationists is Wrong.Josef Schurz - 2007 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 38 (1):163-165.
    Evolution is a time process. It proceeds in steps of definite length. The probability of each step is relatively high, so self organization of complex systems will be possible in finite time. Prerequisite for such a process is a selection rule, which certainly exists in evolution. Therefore, it would be wrong to calculate the probability of the formation of a complex system solely on the basis of the number of its components and as a momentary event.
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  33. Sudden Infant Death or Murder? A Royal Confusion About Probabilities.Neven Sesardic - 2007 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (2):299-329.
    In this article I criticize the recommendations of some prominent statisticians about how to estimate and compare probabilities of the repeated sudden infant death and repeated murder. The issue has drawn considerable public attention in connection with several recent court cases in the UK. I try to show that when the three components of the Bayesian inference are carefully analyzed in this context, the advice of the statisticians turns out to be problematic in each of the steps.
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  34. Vagueness and Inductive Molding.J. R. Welch - 2007 - Synthese 154 (1):147-172.
    Vagueness is epistemic, according to some. Vagueness is ontological, according to others. This article deploys what I take to be a compromise position. Predicates are coined in specific contexts for specific purposes, but these limited practices do not automatically fix the extensions of predicates over the domain of all objects. The linguistic community using the predicate has rarely considered, much less decided, all questions that might arise about the predicate’s extension. To this extent, the ontological view is correct. But a (...)
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  35. Report from a Socratic Dialogue on the Concept of Risk.Erik Persson - 2005 - In Kristina Blennow (ed.), Uncertainty and Active Risk management in Agriculture and Forestry. Alnarp, Sweden: SLU. pp. 35-39.
    The term ’risk’ is used in a wide range of situations, but there is no real consensus of what it means. ‘Risk ‘is often stipulatively defined as “a probability for the occurrence of a negative event” or something similar. This formulation is however not very informative, and it fails to capture many of our intuitions about the concept or risk. One way of trying to find a common definition of a term within a group is to use a Socratic Dialogue (...)
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  36. Central Limit Theorem for Functional of Jump Markov Processes.Nguyen Van Huu, Quan-Hoang Vuong & Minh-Ngoc Tran - 2005 - Vietnam Journal of Mathematics 33 (4):443-461.
    Some conditions are given to ensure that for a jump homogeneous Markov process $\{X(t),t\ge 0\}$ the law of the integral functional of the process $T^{-1/2} \int^T_0\varphi(X(t))dt$ converges to the normal law $N(0,\sigma^2)$ as $T\to \infty$, where $\varphi$ is a mapping from the state space $E$ into $\bbfR$.
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  37. Book review: Denny, M. and S. Gaines (2000). Chance in biology - using probability to explore nature. [REVIEW]J. Bogaert - 2003 - Acta Biotheoretica 51 (1):55-57.
  38. Probabilistically, Explaining Things.Wesley C. Salmon - 2003 - In Kyburg Jr, E. Henry & Mariam Thalos (eds.), Probability is the Very Guide of Life: The Philosophical Uses of Chance. Open Court.
  39. Bayesian Networks in Philosophy.Stephan Hartmann & Luc Bovens - 2002 - In Benedikt Lowe, Wolfgang Malzkorn & Thoralf Räsch (eds.), Foundations of The Formal Sciences II. Applications of Mathematical Logic in Philosophy and Linguistics [Trends in Logic]. Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 39-46.
    There is a long philosophical tradition of addressing questions in philosophy of science and epistemology by means of the tools of Bayesian probability theory (see Earman (1992) and Howson and Urbach (1993)). In the late '70s, an axiomatic approach to conditional independence was developed within a Bayesian framework. This approach in conjunction with developments in graph theory are the two pillars of the theory of Bayesian Networks, which is a theory of probabilistic reasoning in artificial intelligence. The theory has been (...)
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  40. Instrumental Probability.Clark Glymour - 2001 - The Monist 84 (2):284-300.
    The claims of science and the claims of probability combine in two ways. In one, probability is part of the content of science, as in statistical mechanics and quantum theory and an enormous range of "models" developed in applied statistics. In the other, probability is the tool used to explain and to justify methods of inference from records of observations, as in every science from psychiatry to physics. These intimacies between science and probability are logical sports, for while we think (...)
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  41. A Probabilistic Theory of the Coherence of an Information Set.Stephan Hartmann & Luc Bovens - 2001 - In Beckermann Ansgar (ed.), Argument & Analysis: Proceedings of the 4th International Congress of the Society for Analytical Philosophy. Bielefeld.
    Bonjour (1985: 101 and 1999: 124) and other coherence theorists of justification before him (e.g. Ewing, 1934: 246) have complained that we do not have a satisfactory analysis of the notion of coherence. The problem with existing accounts of coherence is that they try to bring precision to our intuitive notion of coherence independently of the particular role that it is meant to play within the coherence theory of justification (e.g Lewis, 1946: 338). This is a mistake: it does not (...)
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  42. Causes as probability raisers of processes.Jonathan Schaffe - 2001 - Journal of Philosophy 98 (2):75-92.
    The leading accounts of the nature of causation divide into probability-raising and process-linkage views. On the probability-raising view, causation is rooted in the comparative probability of the effect with the cause versus without. On the process-linkage view, causation is rooted in the existence of a connecting line from cause to effect. I propose a third alternative which synthesizes these views while solving their problem cases. On this alternative, causation is rooted in the comparative probability of the connecting line to the (...)
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  43. Reasoning from uncertain premises: Effects of expertise and conversational context.Rosemary J. Stevenson & David E. Over - 2001 - Thinking and Reasoning 7 (4):367 – 390.
    Four experiments investigated uncertainty about a premise in a deductive argument as a function of the expertise of the speaker and of the conversational context. The procedure mimicked everyday reasoning in that participants were not told that the premises were to be treated as certain. The results showed that the perceived likelihood of a conclusion was greater when the major or the minor premise was uttered by an expert rather than a novice (Experiment 1). The results also showed that uncertainty (...)
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  44. Two Types of Moral Dilemma.John R. Welch - 2001 - In Matti Häyry & Tuija Takala (eds.), The Future of Value Inquiry. Rodopi.
    This chapter identifies two types of moral dilemma. The first type is described as ethical clash: whether affirmative action is just or unjust, for example, or whether withholding information from an inquisitive relative is honest or dishonest. In these cases the dilemma takes the form of conflict between an ethical predicate and its complement. The second type of moral dilemma is ethical overlap. Instead of a clash between a single predicate and its complement, here two or more predicates apply. Dilemmas (...)
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  45. Reasonable doubt and the presumption of innocence: The case of the bayesian juror.Piers Rawling - 1999 - Topoi 18 (2):117-126.
    There is a substantial literature on the Bayesian approach, and the application of Bayes'' theorem, to legal matters. However, I have found no discussion that explores fully the issue of how a Bayesian juror might be led from an initial "presumption of innocence" to the judgment (required for conviction in criminal cases) that the suspect is "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt". I shall argue here that a Bayesian juror, if she acts in accord with what the law prescribes, will virtually (...)
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  46. Singular Analogy and Quantitative Inductive Logics.John R. Welch - 1999 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 14 (2):207-247.
    The paper explores the handling of singular analogy in quantitative inductive logics. It concentrates on two analogical patterns coextensive with the traditional argument from analogy: perfect and imperfect analogy. Each is examined within Carnap’s λ-continuum, Carnap’s and Stegmüller’s λ-η continuum, Carnap’s Basic System, Hintikka’s α-λ continuum, and Hintikka’s and Niiniluoto’s K-dimensional system. Itis argued that these logics handle perfect analogies with ease, and that imperfect analogies, while unmanageable in some logics, are quite manageable in others. The paper concludes with a (...)
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  47. Contrastive, non-probabilistic statistical explanations.Bruce Glymour - 1998 - Philosophy of Science 65 (3):448-471.
    Standard models of statistical explanation face two intractable difficulties. In his 1984 Salmon argues that because statistical explanations are essentially probabilistic we can make sense of statistical explanation only by rejecting the intuition that scientific explanations are contrastive. Further, frequently the point of a statistical explanation is to identify the etiology of its explanandum, but on standard models probabilistic explanations often fail to do so. This paper offers an alternative conception of statistical explanations on which explanations of the frequency of (...)
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  48. Analogy in Ethics: Pragmatics and Semantics.John R. Welch - 1997 - In Paul Weingartner, Gerhard Schurz & Georg Dorn (eds.), The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy. Die Österreichische Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft. pp. Vol. II, 1016-1021.
    This chapter explores arguments from analogy containing ethical predicates like 'just', 'courageous', and 'honest'. The approach is Wittgensteinian in a double sense. The role of paradigm cases in ethical discourse is emphasized, first of all, and the inductive logics to be employed spring from Wittgenstein's remarks on probability (1922). Although these logics rely on a semantic concept of range, they yield results for the ethical problems treated here only if grounded in certain kinds of pragmatic consensus.
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  49. Probability perplexities.Robert Gilson - 1996 - World Futures 47 (4):311-317.
    A survey of the application of quantitative and qualitative aspects of probability theory to evolutionary theory, followed by a carefully reasoned discussion of some seemingly insuperable probability problems inhering in the evolution of innovant biological structures. Prominent among these is the question of how the impossibly high odds against spontaneous single‐step evolution can be reduced by the Darwinian concept of a gradual accumulation of tiny intermediate steps. A thoughtful examination uninhibited by Darwinian doctrines discloses some unexpected difficulties which appear to (...)
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  50. Probability: the Logic of the Law—a Response.David Hodgson - 1995 - Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 15 (1):51-68.
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