Error and Inference: Recent Exchanges on Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science

by Edited by Deborah G. Mayo , Aris Spanos

• ISBN13: 9780521880084
• ISBN10: 0521880084
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-10-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Although both philosophers and scientists are interested in how to obtain reliable knowledge in the face of error, there is a gap between their perspectives that has been an obstacle to progress. By means of a series of exchanges between the editors and leaders from philosophy of science, statistics, and economics, this volume offers a cumulative introduction connecting problems of traditional philosophy of science to problems of inference in statistical and empirical modelling practice. Philosophers of science and scientific practitioners are challenged to reevaluate the assumptions of their own theories philosophical or methodological. Practitioners may better appreciate the foundational issues around which their questions revolve and thereby become better 'applied philosophers'. Conversely, new avenues emerge for finally solving recalcitrant philosophical problems of induction, explanation, and theory testing.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Introduction and Background	p. 1
Central Goals, Themes, and Questions	p. 1
The Error-Statistical Philosophy	p. 15
Learning from Error, Severe Testing, and the Growth of Theoretical Knowledge	p. 28
The Life of Theory in the New Experimentalism	p. 58
Can Scientific Theories Be Warranted?	p. 58
Can Scientific Theories Be Warranted with Severity? Exchanges with Alan Chalmers	p. 73
Revisiting Critical Rationalism	p. 88
Critical Rationalism, Explanation, and Severe Tests	p. 88
Toward Progressive Critical Rationalism Exchanges with Alan Musgrave	p. 113
Theory Confirmation and Novel Evidence	p. 125
Error, Tests, and Theory Confirmation	p. 125
An Ad Hoc Save of a Theory of Adhocness? Exchanges with John Worrall	p. 155
Induction and Severe Testing	p. 170
Mill's Sins or Mayo's Errors?	p. 170
Sins of the Epistemic Probabilist Exchanges with Peter Achinstein	p. 189
Theory Testing in Economics and the Error-Statistical Perspective	p. 202
New Perspectives on (Some Old) Problems of Frequentist Statistics	p. 247
Frequentist Statistics as a Theory of Inductive Inference	p. 247
Objectivity and Conditionality in Frequentist Inference	p. 276
An Error in the Argument from Conditionality and Sufficiency to the Likelihood Principle	p. 305
On a New Philosophy of Frequentist Inference Exchanges with David Cox Deborah G. Mayo	p. 315
Causal Modeling, Explanation and Severe Testing	p. 331
Explanation and Truth	p. 331
Explanation and Testing Exchanges with Clark Glymour	p. 351
Graphical Causal Modeling and Error Statistics Exchanges with Clark Glymour	p. 364
Error and Legal Epistemology	p. 376
Anomaly of Affirmative Defenses	p. 376
Error and the Law Exchanges with Larry Laudan	p. 397
Index	p. 411
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