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  1. Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment.Michael A. Bishop & J. D. Trout - 2004 - New York: OUP USA. Edited by J. D. Trout.
    Bishop and Trout here present a unique and provocative new approach to epistemology. Their approach aims to liberate epistemology from the scholastic debates of standard analytic epistemology, and treat it as a branch of the philosophy of science. The approach is novel in its use of cost-benefit analysis to guide people facing real reasoning problems and in its framework for resolving normative disputes in psychology. Based on empirical data, Bishop and Trout show how people can improve their reasoning by relying (...)
  2. Scientific explanation and the sense of understanding.J. D. Trout - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (2):212-233.
    Scientists and laypeople alike use the sense of understanding that an explanation conveys as a cue to good or correct explanation. Although the occurrence of this sense or feeling of understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good explanation, it does drive judgments of the plausibility and, ultimately, the acceptability, of an explanation. This paper presents evidence that the sense of understanding is in part the routine consequence of two well-documented biases in cognitive psychology: overconfidence and hindsight. In light of (...)
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  3. The psychology of scientific explanation.J. D. Trout - 2007 - Philosophy Compass 2 (3):564–591.
    Philosophers agree that scientific explanations aim to produce understanding, and that good ones succeed in this aim. But few seriously consider what understanding is, or what the cues are when we have it. If it is a psychological state or process, describing its specific nature is the job of psychological theorizing. This article examines the role of understanding in scientific explanation. It warns that the seductive, phenomenological sense of understanding is often, but mistakenly, viewed as a cue of genuine understanding. (...)
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  4. The Philosophy of Science.Richard Boyd, Philip Gasper & J. D. Trout (eds.) - 1991 - MIT Press.
    The more than 40 readings in this anthology cover the most important developments of the past six decades, charting the rise and decline of logical positivism ...
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  5.  23
    Measuring the Intentional World: Realism, Naturalism, and Quantitative Methods in the Behavioral Sciences.J. D. Trout - 1998 - New York, US: OUP Usa.
    Scientific realism has been advanced as an interpretation of the natural sciences but never the behavioral sciences. This book introduces a novel version of scientific realism, Measured Realism, that characterizes the kind of theoretical progress in the social and psychological sciences that is uneven but indisputable. It proposes a theory of measurement, Population-Guided Estimation, that connects natural, psychological, and social scientific inquiry. Presenting quantitative methods in the behavioral sciences as at once successful and regulated by the world, the book will (...)
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  6.  37
    (1 other version)Wondrous Truths: The Improbable Triumph of Modern Science.J. D. Trout - 2016 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.
    A fresh, daring, and genuine alternative to the traditional story of scientific progress Explaining the world around us, and the life within it, is one of the most uniquely human drives, and the most celebrated activity of science. Good explanations are what provide accurate causal accounts of the things we wonder at, but explanation's earthly origins haven't grounded it: we have used it to account for the grandest and most wondrous mysteries in the natural world. Explanations give us a sense (...)
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  7. Paying the Price for a Theory of Explanation: De Regt’s Discussion of Trout.J. D. Trout - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (1):198-208.
  8.  88
    Paternalism and cognitive bias.J. D. Trout - 2004 - Law and Philosophy 24 (4):393-434.
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  9. 50 Years of Successful Predictive Modeling Should Be Enough: Lessons for Philosophy of Science.Michael A. Bishop & J. D. Trout - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (S3):S197-S208.
    Our aim in this paper is to bring the woefully neglected literature on predictive modeling to bear on some central questions in the philosophy of science. The lesson of this literature is straightforward: For a very wide range of prediction problems, statistical prediction rules (SPRs), often rules that are very easy to implement, make predictions than are as reliable as, and typically more reliable than, human experts. We will argue that the success of SPRs forces us to reconsider our views (...)
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  10. The Pathologies of Standard Analytic Epistemology.Michael Bishop & J. D. Trout - 2005 - Noûs 39 (4):696-714.
    Standard Analytic Epistemology (SAE) names a contingently clustered class of methods and theses that have dominated English-speaking epistemology for about the past half-century. The major contemporary theories of SAE include versions of foundationalism, coherentism, reliabilism, and contextualism. While proponents of SAE don’t agree about how to define naturalized epistemology, most agree that a thoroughgoing naturalism in epistemology can’t work. For the purposes of this paper, we will suppose that a naturalistic theory of epistemology takes as its core, as its starting-point, (...)
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  11.  23
    Contemporary Materialism: A Reader.Paul K. Moser & J. D. Trout (eds.) - 1995 - New York: Routledge.
    Contemporary Materialism brings together the best recent work on materialism from many of our leading contemporary philosophers. This is the first comprehensive reader on the subject. The majority of philosophers and scientists today hold the view that all phenomena are physical, as a result materialism or 'physicalism' is now the dominant ontology in a wide range of fields. Surprisingly no single book, until now, has collected the key investigations into materialism, to reflect the impact it has had on current thinking (...)
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  12.  17
    Measuring the Intentional World.J. D. Trout - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (4):576-578.
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  13.  20
    The biological basis of speech: What to infer from talking to the animals.J. D. Trout - 2001 - Psychological Review 108 (3):523-549.
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  14. Robustness and integrative survival in significance testing: The world's contribution to rationality.J. D. Trout - 1993 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (1):1-15.
    Significance testing is the primary method for establishing causal relationships in psychology. Meehl [1978, 1990a, 1990b] and Faust [1984] argue that significance tests and their interpretation are subject to actuarial and psychological biases, making continued adherence to these practices irrational, and even partially responsible for the slow progress of the ‘soft’ areas of psychology. I contend that familiar standards of testing and literature review, along with recently developed meta-analytic techniques, are able to correct the proposed actuarial and psychological biases. In (...)
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  15.  46
    Theory-conjunction and mercenary reliance.J. D. Trout - 1992 - Philosophy of Science 59 (2):231-245.
    Scientific realists contend that theory-conjunction presents a problem for empiricist conceptions of scientific knowledge and practice. Van Fraassen (1980) has offered a competing account of theory-conjunction which I argue fails to capture the mercenary character of epistemic dependence in science. Representative cases of theory-conjunction developed in the present paper show that mercenary reliance implies a "principle of epistemic symmetry" which only a realist can consistently accommodate. Finally, because the practice in question involves the conjunction of theories, a version of realism (...)
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  16. Strategic Reliabilism: A Naturalistic Approach to Epistemology.Michael A. Bishop & J. D. Trout - 2008 - Philosophy Compass 3 (5):1049-1065.
    Strategic Reliabilism is a framework that yields relative epistemic evaluations of belief-producing cognitive processes. It is a theory of cognitive excellence, or more colloquially, a theory of reasoning excellence (where 'reasoning' is understood very broadly as any sort of cognitive process for coming to judgments or beliefs). First introduced in our book, Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment (henceforth EPHJ), the basic idea behind SR is that epistemically excellent reasoning is efficient reasoning that leads in a robustly reliable fashion (...)
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  17.  26
    A Realistic Look Backward.J. D. Trout - 1994 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 25 (1):37-64.
  18.  29
    Truth and Objectivity.J. D. Trout - 1993 - Philosophical Review 102 (1):126.
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  19.  6
    The Troubles with Standard Analytic Epistemology.J. D. Trout & Michael A. Bishop - 2004 - In Michael A. Bishop & J. D. Trout (eds.), Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. New York: OUP USA.
    This chapter compares the authors' naturalistic approach to epistemology to that of SAE. It is argued that the theories of SAE are structurally analogous to the naturalistic approach — they have at their core a descriptive theory, and from that descriptive theory, proponents of SAE draw normative, epistemological prescriptions. The prospects for the theories of SAE overcoming the is-ought gap are not good. The chapter also argues for the superiority of Strategic Reliabilism over any extant theory of Standard Analytic Epistemology.
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  20. Democracy and scientific expertise: illusions of political and epistemic inclusion.J. D. Trout - 2013 - Synthese 190 (7):1267-1291.
    Realizing the ideal of democracy requires political inclusion for citizens. A legitimate democracy must give citizens the opportunity to express their attitudes about the relative attractions of different policies, and access to political mechanisms through which they can be counted and heard. Actual governance often aims not at accurate belief, but at nonepistemic factors like achieving and maintaining institutional stability, creating the feeling of government legitimacy among citizens, or managing access to influence on policy decision-making. I examine the traditional relationship (...)
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  21. The Theory of Knowledge (M. Welbourne).P. Moser, D. H. Mulder & J. D. Trout - 1999 - Philosophical Books 40:116-117.
     
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  22. Philosophical messages in the medium of spoken language.Robert E. Remez & J. D. Trout - 2009 - In Matthew Nudds & Casey O'Callaghan (eds.), Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
     
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  23. Luck in science.J. D. Trout - 2019 - In Ian M. Church & Robert J. Hartman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Luck. New York: Routledge.
     
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  24.  58
    Physicalism, supervenience, and dependence.Paul K. Moser & J. D. Trout - 1995 - In Elias E. Savellos & Ümit D. Yalçin (eds.), Supervenience: New Essays. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 187--217.
  25. Understanding and Fluency.J. D. Trout - 2017 - In Stephen Robert Grimm (ed.), Making Sense of the World: New Essays on the Philosophy of Understanding. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
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  26. A restriction maybe, but is it paternalism? Cognitive bias and choosing governmental decision aids.J. D. Trout - manuscript
  27.  12
    The Psychology of Discounting: A Policy of Balancing Biases.J. D. Trout - 2007 - Public Affairs Quarterly 21 (2):201-220.
  28. Measured realism and statistical inference: An explanation for the fast progress of "hard" psychology.J. D. Trout - 1999 - Philosophy of Science 66 (3):272.
    The use of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) in psychology has been under sustained attack, despite its reliable use in the notably successful, so-called "hard" areas of psychology, such as perception and cognition. I argue that, in contrast to merely methodological analyses of hypothesis testing (in terms of "test severity," or other confirmation-theoretic notions), only a patently metaphysical position can adequately capture the uneven but undeniable successes of theories in "hard psychology." I contend that Measured Realism satisfies this description, and (...)
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  29.  60
    (Review) What is Feminist Epistemology?Paul K. Moser & J. D. Trout - 1995 - Informal Logic 17 (1).
  30. Belief attribution in science: Folk psychology under theoretical stress.J. D. Trout - 1991 - Synthese 87 (June):379-400.
    Some eliminativists have predicted that a developed neuroscience will eradicate the principles and theoretical kinds (belief, desire, etc.) implicit in our ordinary practices of mental state attribution. Prevailing defenses of common-sense psychology infer its basic integrity from its familiarity and instrumental success in everyday social commerce. Such common-sense defenses charge that eliminativist arguments are self-defeating in their folk psychological appeal to the belief that eliminativism is true. I argue that eliminativism is untouched by this simple charge of inconsistency, and introduce (...)
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  31.  52
    Beauty and Revolution in Science.J. D. Trout - 1998 - Philosophical Review 107 (2):320.
    The role of aesthetic factors in science is often mentioned, but seldom discussed in a sustained and systematic way. This thoughtful book is James McAllister’s attempt to do so. McAllister’s treatment engages a broad range of issues, relating aesthetic criteria to such diverse issues as the history of astronomy and twentieth-century physics, theoretical ruptures, and architecture. Its core goals are two. One goal is to show that there is a role for aesthetic considerations in theory choice that is compatible with (...)
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  32.  25
    Diverse tests on an independent world.J. D. Trout - 1995 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 26 (3):407-429.
  33.  60
    Forced to be Right.J. D. Trout - 2014 - Journal of Medical Ethics 40 (5):303-304.
    In “Forced to be Free”, Neil Levy surveys the raft of documented decision-making biases that humans are heir to, and advances several bold proposals designed to enhance the patient's judgment. Gratefully, Levy is moved by the psychological research on judgment and decision-making that documents people's inaccuracy when identifying courses of action will best promote their subjective well-being. But Levy is quick to favour the patient's present preferences, to ensure they get “final say” about their treatment. I urge the opposite inclination, (...)
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  34.  75
    Metaphysics, method, and the mouth: Philosophical lessons of speech perception.J. D. Trout - 2001 - Philosophical Psychology 14 (3):261-291.
    This paper advances a novel argument that speech perception is a complex system best understood nonindividualistically and therefore that individualism fails as a general philosophical program for understanding cognition. The argument proceeds in four steps. First, I describe a "replaceability strategy", commonly deployed by individualists, in which one imagines replacing an object with an appropriate surrogate. This strategy conveys the appearance that relata can be substituted without changing the laws that hold within the domain. Second, I advance a "counterfactual test" (...)
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  35. Ontological Progress in Science.Richard M. Burian & J. D. Trout - 1995 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (2):177 - 201.
    In the grand tradition, philosophical ontology was considered logically and epistemologically prior to scientific ontology. Like many contemporary philosophers of science, we consider this to be a mistake. There is two-way traffic between philosophical and scientific ontologies; the more we learn about what there actually is, the more we learn about what can be and what must be, and vice versa. But that is not the present topic; here we focus on the ontology or ontologies of science, not traditional philosophical (...)
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  36.  16
    Epistemology for (Real) People.Michael Bishop & J. D. Trout - 2016 - In Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee & David Coady (eds.), A Companion to Applied Philosophy. Malden, MA: Wiley. pp. 103–119.
    A person making normative judgments can do so from the perspective of a Judge or a Coach. If you're a Judge, you seek to assign responsibility. If you're a Coach, you seek to improve an agent's performance. While there is a place for being sometimes a Judge and sometimes a Coach, no one should always be a Judge. It is a small and mean person who only wags a finger and never lends a hand. The same is true for a (...)
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  37.  14
    Confirmation, Paradoxes of.J. D. Trout - 2000 - In W. Newton-Smith (ed.), A companion to the philosophy of science. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. pp. 53–55.
    The confirmation of scientific hypotheses has a quantitative and qualitative aspect. No empirical hypothesis can be confirmed conclusively, so philosophers of science have used the theory of probability to elucidate the quantitative component, which determines a degree of confirmation ‐ that is, the extent to which the hypothesis is supported by the evidence (see probability and evidence and confirmation). By contrast, the qualitative feature of confirmation concerns the prior question of the nature of the relation between the hypothesis and the (...)
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  38.  12
    Measurement.J. D. Trout - 2000 - In W. Newton-Smith (ed.), A companion to the philosophy of science. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. pp. 265–276.
    Measurement ‐ a central epistemic activity in science ‐ relates a number and a quantity in an effort to estimate the magnitude of that quantity. A quantity is typically a property of a physical configuration, such as length or weight, and determines a function that applies to a domain or class of objects. At this high level of abstraction, the description of the purpose and relation of measurement is metaphysically neutral, leaving open the question of whether the domain is observable (...)
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  39.  10
    First page preview.Michael A. Bishop & J. D. Trout - 2006 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 20 (2).
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  40. Recensioni-The Theory of Knowledge. A Thematic Introduction.P. K. Moser, D. H. Mulder, J. D. Trout & N. Vassallo - 2000 - Epistemologia 23 (1):171-173.
     
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  41.  42
    Austere Realism and the Worldly Assumptions of Inferential Statistics.J. D. Trout - 1994 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994:190 - 199.
    Inferential statistical tests-such as analysis of variance, t-tests, chi-square and Wilcoxin signed ranks-now constitute a principal class of methods for the testing of scientific hypotheses. In this paper I will consider the role of one statistical concept (statistical power) and two statistical principles or assumptions (homogeneity of variance and the independence of random error), in the reliable application of selected statistical methods. I defend a tacit but widely-deployed naturalistic principle of explanation (E): Philosophers should not treat as inexplicable or basic (...)
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  42.  8
    All Talked Out: Naturalism and the Future of Philosophy.J. D. Trout - 2017 - New York, NY, United States of America: Oup Usa.
    All Talked Out is an exercise in applied philosophy. It is a study of what the examination of knowledge, explanation, and well-being would look like if freed from the peculiar tools and outlook of modern philosophy and handed over to scientists - or scientifically-trained philosophers - who had a reflective aim.
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  43.  7
    Conclusion.J. D. Trout & Michael A. Bishop - 2004 - In Michael A. Bishop & J. D. Trout (eds.), Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. New York: OUP USA.
    This chapter presents some concluding thoughts. It identifies three challenges that remain in the construction of a naturalistic epistemology. First, an effective epistemology needs to continue to discover handy new heuristics that help us reason reliably about significant matters. Second, we need to identify with more effectiveness what is involved in human well-being. A third project essential to the development of a prescriptive, reason-guiding epistemology is social epistemology.
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  44.  8
    Diagnostic Prediction and Prognosis.J. D. Trout & Michael A. Bishop - 2013 - In K. W. M. Fulford, Martin Davies, Richard Gipps, George Graham, John Sadler, Giovanni Stanghellini & Tim Thornton (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy and psychiatry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Psychiatric diagnosis and prognosis is fraught with important philosophical and conceptual problems. This chapter focuses on some epistemological issues and moral issues that arise in contemporary psychiatric practice. It examines various clinical and actuarial techniques for psychiatric diagnosis, ordered very loosely in terms of how "structured" or "automated" they are. The chapter makes the case for assessing psychiatric treatments with controlled experiments, raises several epistemological dangers that arise from relying on uncontrolled investigations, and considers some of the unique methodological and (...)
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  45.  8
    Extracting Epistemic Lessons from Ameliorative Psychology.J. D. Trout & Michael A. Bishop - 2004 - In Michael A. Bishop & J. D. Trout (eds.), Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. New York: OUP USA.
    This chapter introduces the three central features of the epistemological framework that guides the prescriptions of Ameliorative Psychology. It is argued that this framework offers a new way to think about applied epistemology. In particular, it suggests that there are four and only four ways for people to improve their reasoning.
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  46.  6
    Introduction.J. D. Trout & Michael A. Bishop - 2004 - In Michael A. Bishop & J. D. Trout (eds.), Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. New York: OUP USA.
    This introductory chapter presents an overview of the subsequent chapters in this book which will discuss topics such as epistemological theory, Statistical Prediction Rules, Strategic Reliabilism, and Standard Analytic Epistemology.
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  47.  4
    Laying Our Cards on the Table.J. D. Trout & Michael A. Bishop - 2004 - In Michael A. Bishop & J. D. Trout (eds.), Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. New York: OUP USA.
    This chapter begins by giving two reasons as to why epistemology is important: epistemology guides reasoning, and people don't fully appreciate the risks and dangers of poor reasoning the importance of epistemology. It then introduces the basic motives and methods of the epistemology developed in the book. Topics covered include the standard analytic approach to epistemology, the philosophy of science approach to epistemology, the theories generated by the two approaches, and whether scientific investigation into normative epistemology possible.
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  48.  5
    Putting Epistemology into Practice: Normative Disputes in Psychology.J. D. Trout & Michael A. Bishop - 2004 - In Michael A. Bishop & J. D. Trout (eds.), Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. New York: OUP USA.
    This chapter uses Strategic Reliabilism to resolve two debates about whether certain experimental findings demonstrate deep and systematic failures of human reasoning. It illustrates one of the main benefits of the current approach to epistemology: it can be used to adjudicate disputes that arise in psychology that are, at bottom, normative epistemological disputes about the nature of good reasoning.
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  49.  6
    Putting Epistemology into Practice: Positive Advice.J. D. Trout & Michael A. Bishop - 2004 - In Michael A. Bishop & J. D. Trout (eds.), Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. New York: OUP USA.
    This chapter attempts to consolidate some of the lessons of Ameliorative Psychology with some handy heuristics and illustrative injunctions. It explores the empirical research that shows how to enhance the accuracy of diagnostic reasoning, reduce overconfidence, avoid the regression fallacy, improve policy assessments, and restrain the unbridled story-telling surrounding rare or unusual events. For problems tractable to voluntary reasoning strategies, the simple strategies recommended in the chapter can improve reasoning at low cost and high fidelity.
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  50.  11
    Section III: reductionism and the unity of science.J. D. Trout - 1991 - In Richard Boyd, Philip Gasper & J. D. Trout (eds.), The Philosophy of Science. MIT Press. pp. 387.
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