Greetings all, This coming Monday, June 23 1.00-2.30 in the philosophy common room we have our own Katie Steele to talk about:
What sort of inference is 'Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE)'? Abstract: There has been some debate about the relationship between Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and Bayesian reasoning. Like a number of others, I regard van Fraassen's argument for the incompatibility of the two to be overly simplistic. To the extent that explanatory considerations are relevant to our credence in hypotheses, we should be able to express these explanatory considerations in Bayesian terms. The troubles start, however, when we understand IBE as recommending that the hypothesis providing the best explanation of the evidence be given the highest probability (or else the highest prior or likelihood). This may well hold under some conditions (e.g. for some sets of hypotheses) but it need not hold in general. The further question, then, is whether there is a weaker compatibilist position that still has some bite--whether there is at least the promise that explanatory considerations can contribute something substantive to the Bayesian's toolset. Dr. Kristie Miller Australian Research Council Post-doctoral Fellow School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and The Centre for Time The University of Sydney Sydney, Australia Room 411, A18 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: (work) 02 9036 9663 Ph: (mobile) 0432 275 286 http://homepage.mac.com/centre.for.time/KristieMiller/Kristie/Home%20Page.html _______________________________________________ SydPhil mailing list [email protected] List Info: http://lists.arts.usyd.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/sydphil NEW LIST ARCHIVE: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
