Julian Reiss

This paper surveys and critically assesses existing theories of evidence with respect to four desiderata. A good theory of evidence should be both a theory of evidential support (i.e., be informative about what kinds of facts speak in favour of a hypothesis), and of warrant (i.e., be informative about how strongly a given set of facts speaks in favour of the hypothesis), it should apply to the non-ideal cases in which scientists typically find themselves, and it should be ‘descriptively adequate’, i.e., able to adequately represent typical episodes of evidentiary reasoning. The theories surveyed here—Bayesianism, hypotheticodeductivism,satisfaction theories, error statistics as well as Achinstein’s and Cartwright’s theories—are all found wanting in important respects. I finally argue that a deficiency all these theories have in common is a neglect or underplaying of the epistemic context in which the episode of evidentiary reasoning takes place.Este artículo describe y valora críticamente diversas teorías de la evidencia en relación a cuatro desiderata. Una buena teoría de la evidencia debería ser tanto una teoría sobre el apoyo evidencial [evidential support] (ser informativa sobre qué tipos de hechos hablan a favor de la hipótesis) como sobre la justificación [warrant]; debería aplicarse en las situaciones no ideales en las que normalmente se encuentran los científicos; y debería ser ‘descriptivamente adecuada’, esto es, capaz de representar correctamente episodios típicos de razonamiento evidencial. Las teorías aquí revisadas—bayesianismo, hipotético-deductivismo, teorías de la satisfacibilidad, la estadística del error, así como las propuestas de Achinstein y Cartwright—se consideran deficientes en aspectos básicos. Argumentaré que un defecto común en todas ellas es que olvidan, o minusvaloran, el contexto epistémico en el que el episodio de razonamiento evidencial tiene lugar.

Two approaches to evidential reasoning compete in the biomedical and social sciences: the experimental and the pragmatist. Whereas experimentalism has received considerable philosophical analysis and support since the times of Bacon and Mill, pragmatism about evidence has been neither articulated nor defended. The overall aim is to fill this gap and develop a theory that articulates the latter. The main ideas of the theory will be illustrated and supported by a case study on the smoking/lung cancer controversy in the 1950s

In this book, Reiss argues in favour of a tight fit between evidence, concept and purpose in our causal investigations in the sciences. There is no doubt that the sciences employ a vast array of techniques to address causal questions such as controlled experiments, randomized trials, statistical and econometric tools, causal modeling and thought experiments. But how do these different methods relate to each other and to the causal inquiry at hand? Reiss argues that there is no "gold standard" in settling causal issues against which other methods can be measured. Rather, the various methods of inference tend to be good only relative to certain interpretations of the word "cause", and each interpretation, in turn, helps to address some salient purpose (prediction, explanation or policy analysis) but not others. The main objective of this book is to explore the metaphysical and methodological consequences of this view in the context of numerous cases studies from the natural and social sciences