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375The Logic of Theory AssessmentJournal of Philosophical Logic 36 (5): 511-538. 2007.This paper starts by indicating the analysis of Hempel's conditions of adequacy for any relation of confirmation (Hempel, 1945) as presented in Huber (submitted). There I argue contra Carnap (1962, Section 87) that Hempel felt the need for two concepts of confirmation: one aiming at plausible theories and another aiming at informative theories. However, he also realized that these two concepts are conflicting, and he gave up the concept of confirmation aiming at informative theories. The main pa…Read more
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23Assessing Theories. The Problem of a Quantitative Theory of ConfirmationDissertation, University of Erfurt. 2004.
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659Belief Revision II: Ranking TheoryPhilosophy Compass 8 (7): 613-621. 2013.Belief revision theory studies how an ideal doxastic agent should revise her beliefs when she receives new information. In part I, I have first presented the AGM theory of belief revision. Then I have focused on the problem of iterated belief revisions. In part II, I will first present ranking theory (Spohn 1988). Then I will show how it solves the problem of iterated belief revisions. I will conclude by sketching two areas of future research.
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227Review of Vincent F. Hendricks, Mainstream and Formal Epistemology (Cambridge University Press 2006) (review)Philosophy in Review 26 (4): 257-259. 2006.NA
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329Reply to Crupi et al.’s ‘Confirmation by Uncertain Evidence’British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (2): 213-215. 2008.Crupi et al. propose a generalization of Bayesian confirmation theory that they claim to adequately deal with confirmation by uncertain evidence. Consider a series of points of time t0, . . . , ti, . . . , tn such that the agent’s subjective probability for an atomic proposition E changes from Pr0 at t0 to . . . to Pri at ti to . . . to Prn at tn. It is understood that the agent’s subjective probabilities change for E and no logically stronger proposition, and that the agent updates her subjective…Read more
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65How to Learn Concepts, Consequences, and ConditionalsAnalytica: an electronic, open-access journal for philosophy of science 1 (1): 20-36. 2015.In this brief note I show how to model conceptual change, logical learning, and revision of one's beliefs in response to conditional information such as indicative conditionals that do not express propositions.
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19Central pattern generators from the viewpoint of a behavioral physiologistBehavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (4): 553-554. 1980.
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527What Is the Point of Confirmation?Philosophy of Science 72 (5): 1146-1159. 2005.Philosophically, one of the most important questions in the enterprise termed confirmation theory is this: Why should one stick to well confirmed theories rather than to any other theories? This paper discusses the answers to this question one gets from absolute and incremental Bayesian confirmation theory. According to absolute confirmation, one should accept ''absolutely well confirmed'' theories, because absolute confirmation takes one to true theories. An examination of two popular measures …Read more
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266The Logic of Confirmation and Theory AssessmentIn L. Behounek & M. Bilkova (eds.), The Logica Yearbook, Filosofia. 2005.This paper discusses an almost sixty year old problem in the philosophy of science -- that of a logic of confirmation. We present a new analysis of Carl G. Hempel's conditions of adequacy (Hempel 1945), differing from the one Carnap gave in §87 of his Logical Foundations of Probability (1962). Hempel, it is argued, felt the need for two concepts of confirmation: one aiming at true theories and another aiming at informative theories. However, he also realized that these two concepts are conflicti…Read more
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527New foundations for counterfactualsSynthese 191 (10): 2167-2193. 2014.Philosophers typically rely on intuitions when providing a semantics for counterfactual conditionals. However, intuitions regarding counterfactual conditionals are notoriously shaky. The aim of this paper is to provide a principled account of the semantics of counterfactual conditionals. This principled account is provided by what I dub the Royal Rule, a deterministic analogue of the Principal Principle relating chance and credence. The Royal Rule says that an ideal doxastic agent’s initial grad…Read more
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160Formal Representations of BeliefStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.Epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. Belief is thus central to epistemology. It comes in a qualitative form, as when Sophia believes that Vienna is the capital of Austria, and a quantitative form, as when Sophia's degree of belief that Vienna is the capital of Austria is at least twice her degree of belief that tomorrow it will be sunny in Vienna. Formal epistemology, as opposed to mainstream epistemology (Hendricks 2006), is epistemology done in a formal way, that is, by…Read more
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523Assessing theories, Bayes styleSynthese 161 (1): 89-118. 2008.The problem addressed in this paper is “the main epistemic problem concerning science”, viz. “the explication of how we compare and evaluate theories [...] in the light of the available evidence” (van Fraassen, BC, 1983, Theory comparison and relevant Evidence. In J. Earman (Ed.), Testing scientific theories (pp. 27–42). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Sections 1– 3 contain the general plausibility-informativeness theory of theory assessment. In a nutshell, the message is (1) that t…Read more
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937Counterfactual Dependence and ArrowNoûs 47 (3): 453-466. 2012.We argue that a semantics for counterfactual conditionals in terms of comparative overall similarity faces a formal limitation due to Arrow’s impossibility theorem from social choice theory. According to Lewis’s account, the truth-conditions for counterfactual conditionals are given in terms of the comparative overall similarity between possible worlds, which is in turn determined by various aspects of similarity between possible worlds. We argue that a function from aspects of similarity to ove…Read more
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198Vincent F. Hendricks, Mainstream and Formal Epistemology Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 26 (4): 257-259. 2006.
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598Subjective Probabilities as Basis for Scientific Reasoning?British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (1): 101-116. 2005.Bayesianism is the position that scientific reasoning is probabilistic and that probabilities are adequately interpreted as an agent's actual subjective degrees of belief, measured by her betting behaviour. Confirmation is one important aspect of scientific reasoning. The thesis of this paper is the following: if scientific reasoning is at all probabilistic, the subjective interpretation has to be given up in order to get right confirmation—and thus scientific reasoning in general. The Bayesian …Read more
University Of Erfurt
Department Of Philosophy
Alumnus
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Probability |