Inference to the best explanation: does it track truth?
In the form of inference known as inference to the best explanation there are various ways to characterise what is meant by the best explanation. This paper considers a number of such characterisations including several based on confirmation measures and several based on coherence measures. The goal...
| Published in: | Synthese Vol. 185; no. 3; pp. 411 - 428 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Springer Nature
Apr2012
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=74713355&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 74713355 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Apr2012 vid: 185 iid: 3 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 74713355 10.1007/s11229-010-9829-9 ppf: 411 ppct: 17 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 269KB tig: atl: Inference to the best explanation: does it track truth? aug: au: Glass, David affil: School of Computing and Mathematics, University of Ulster, Newtownabbey BT37 0QB UK su: Explanation Probability theory Hypothesis Coherence (Philosophy) Computer simulation sug: subj: Explanation Probability theory Hypothesis Coherence (Philosophy) Computer simulation keyword: Bayesianism Coherence Confirmation Truth Uncertainty ab: In the form of inference known as inference to the best explanation there are various ways to characterise what is meant by the best explanation. This paper considers a number of such characterisations including several based on confirmation measures and several based on coherence measures. The goal is to find a measure which adequately captures what is meant by 'best' and which also yields the truth with a high degree of probability. Computer simulations are used to show that the overlap coherence measure achieves this goal, enabling the true explanation to be identified almost as often as an approach which simply selects the most probable explanation. Further advantages to this approach are also considered in the case where there is uncertainty in the prior probability distribution. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2012. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2012 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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