1. Predictivism for Pluralists.
- Author
-
Barnes, Eric Christian
- Subjects
PLURALISM ,PHILOSOPHY ,JUDGMENT (Psychology) ,THEORY of knowledge ,HUMANITIES - Abstract
Predictivism asserts that novel confirmations carry special probative weight. Epistemic pluralism asserts that the judgments of agents (about, e.g., the probabilities of theories) carry epistemic import. In this paper, I propose a new theory of predictivism that is tailored to pluralistic evaluators of theories. I replace the orthodox notion of use-novelty with a notion of endorsement-novelty, and argue that the intuition that predictivism is true has two roots. I provide a detailed Bayesian rendering of this theory and argue that pluralistic theory evaluation pervades scientific practice. I compare my account of predictivism with those of Maher and Worrall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
- Full Text
- View/download PDF