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Hypothetico-deductivism: the current state of play; the criterion of empirical significance: endgame

Hypothetico-deductivism: the current state of play; the criterion of empirical significance: endgame
Hypothetico-deductivism: the current state of play; the criterion of empirical significance: endgame
Any precise version of H-D needs to handle various problems, most notably, the problem of selective confirmation: Precise formulations of H-D should not have the consequence that where S confirms T, for any T', S confirms T&T'. It is the perceived failure of H-D to solve such problems that has lead John Earman to recently conclude that H-D is "very nearly a dead horse". This suggests the following state of play: H-D is an intuitively plausible idea that breaks down in the attempt to give it a precise formulation. Indeed I think that fairly captures the view among specialists in the field of confirmation theory. Here I argue that the truth about H-D is largely the reverse: H-D can be given a precise formulation that avoids the longstanding technical problems, however, it relies on a fundamentally unsound philosophical intuition. The bulk of this paper involves reviewing the problems affecting previous attempts at giving precise formulations of H-D and displaying some recent versions that can handle these problems. It then briefly explains why the basic intuition behind H-D is itself unsound, namely, because H-D involves a tacit assumption of inductive scepticism. Finally, the historical relation between H-D and the positivists' quest for a criterion of empirical significance will be reconsidered with the surprising result that having glossed H-D as fundamentally unsound it is concluded that a sound version of the criterion of empirical significance is now available. The demarcation criterion, the positivists' philosopher's stone that serves to separate claims with empirical significance from claims lacking empirical significance having finally been found, it is argued that we should regard empirical significance as just one among a variety of virtues and not follow the positivists in taking it to be a sin qua non for all meaningful statements.
0165-0106
1-20
Gemes, Ken
f087c5ea-9397-4dc3-96a0-a4889cfb840e
Gemes, Ken
f087c5ea-9397-4dc3-96a0-a4889cfb840e

Gemes, Ken (1998) Hypothetico-deductivism: the current state of play; the criterion of empirical significance: endgame. Erkenntnis, 49 (1), 1-20. (doi:10.1023/A:1005355126725).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Any precise version of H-D needs to handle various problems, most notably, the problem of selective confirmation: Precise formulations of H-D should not have the consequence that where S confirms T, for any T', S confirms T&T'. It is the perceived failure of H-D to solve such problems that has lead John Earman to recently conclude that H-D is "very nearly a dead horse". This suggests the following state of play: H-D is an intuitively plausible idea that breaks down in the attempt to give it a precise formulation. Indeed I think that fairly captures the view among specialists in the field of confirmation theory. Here I argue that the truth about H-D is largely the reverse: H-D can be given a precise formulation that avoids the longstanding technical problems, however, it relies on a fundamentally unsound philosophical intuition. The bulk of this paper involves reviewing the problems affecting previous attempts at giving precise formulations of H-D and displaying some recent versions that can handle these problems. It then briefly explains why the basic intuition behind H-D is itself unsound, namely, because H-D involves a tacit assumption of inductive scepticism. Finally, the historical relation between H-D and the positivists' quest for a criterion of empirical significance will be reconsidered with the surprising result that having glossed H-D as fundamentally unsound it is concluded that a sound version of the criterion of empirical significance is now available. The demarcation criterion, the positivists' philosopher's stone that serves to separate claims with empirical significance from claims lacking empirical significance having finally been found, it is argued that we should regard empirical significance as just one among a variety of virtues and not follow the positivists in taking it to be a sin qua non for all meaningful statements.

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Published date: July 1998
Organisations: Philosophy

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Local EPrints ID: 63699
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/63699
ISSN: 0165-0106
PURE UUID: 237d3b3d-265e-40d6-a108-54cecaed1f51

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Date deposited: 23 Oct 2008
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 11:41

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Author: Ken Gemes

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