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19Lange, Marc. Natural Laws in Scientific Practice (review)Review of Metaphysics 56 (2): 435-436. 2002.
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1Evidence and JustificationIn Gregory J. Morgan (ed.), Philosophy of Science Matters: The Philosophy of Peter Achinstein, Oxford University Press. pp. 216. 2011.
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137Agency and objectivity in the search for the top qjjarkIn Peter Achinstein (ed.), Scientific Evidence: Philosophical Theories & Applications, The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2005.
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52Evidence claims depend on fallible assumptions. Three strategies for making true evidence claims in spite of this fallibility are strengthening the support for those assumptions, weakening conclusions, and using multiple independent tests to produce robust evidence. Reliability itself, understood in frequentist terms, does not explain the usefulness of all three strategies; robustness, in particular, sometimes functions in a way that is not well-characterized in terms of reliability. I argue tha…Read more
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234This paper examines probabilistic versions of the fine-tuning argument for design (FTA), with an emphasis on the interpretation of the probability statements involved in such arguments. Three categories of probability are considered: physical, epistemic, and logical. Of the three possibilities, I argue that only logical probability could possibly support a cogent probabilistic FTA. However, within that framework, the premises of the argument require a level of justification that has not been met…Read more
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55Golden events and statistics: What's wrong with Galison's image/logic distinction?Perspectives on Science 7 (2): 196-230. 1999.: Peter Galison has recently claimed that twentieth-century microphysics has been pursued by two distinct experimental traditions--the image tradition and the logic tradition--that have only recently merged into a hybrid tradition. According to Galison, the two traditions employ fundamentally different forms of experimental argument, with the logic tradition using statistical arguments, while the image tradition strives for non-statistical demonstrations based on compelling ("golden") single eve…Read more
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41This paper analyzes Deborah Mayo's error-statistical (ES) account of scientific evidence in order to clarify the kinds of "material postulates" it requires and to explain how those assumptions function. A secondary aim is to explain and illustrate the importance of the security of an inference. After finding that, on the most straightforward reading of the ES account, it does not succeed in its stated aims, two remedies are considered: either relativize evidence claims or introduce stronger assu…Read more
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62: Evidence claims depend on fallible assumptions. This paper discusses inferential robustness as a strategy for justifying evidence claims in spite of this fallibility. I argue that robustness can be understood as a means of establishing the partial security of evidence claims. An evidence claim is secure relative to an epistemic situation if it remains true in all scenarios that are epistemically possible relative to that epistemic situation.
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7Steven French and Décio Krause, Identity in Physics: A Historical, Philosophical, and Formal Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xv+422. ISBN 0-19-927824-5. £55.00 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 42 (1): 145. 2009.
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48Novelty, severity, and history in the testing of hypotheses: The case of the top quarkPhilosophy of Science 63 (3): 255. 1996.It is sometimes held that facts confirm a hypothesis only if they were not used in the construction of that hypothesis. This requirement of "use novelty" introduces a historical aspect into the assessment of evidence claims. I examine a methodological principle invoked by physicists in the experimental search for the top quark that bears a striking resemblance to this view. However, this principle is better understood, both historically and philosophically, in terms of the need to conduct a seve…Read more
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16Evidence and Method: Scientific Strategies of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell (review)Isis 105 (3): 672-673. 2014.
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6Allan Franklin, No Easy Answers: Science and the Pursuit of Knowledge. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. Pp. xii+258. $29.95 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 40 (3): 455. 2007.
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