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Evidence
Edited by Christopher Michael Cloos (University of California, Santa Barbara)
About this topic
| Summary | The notion of evidence features importantly in epistemology and philosophy of science. There are three primary questions that a theory of evidence must address. The constitution question asks: What is the nature of evidence? A major divide in answers to the constitution question is between those who think that all evidence is propositional and those who think that some evidence is non-propositional. The possession question asks: When does someone possess a piece of information as evidence? Restrictive views of evidence possession hold that one has as evidence only information that one is consciously entertaining. More inclusive views of evidence possession hold that one’s evidence includes non-occurrent information, such as stored memories. Lastly, a theory of evidence must address the positive support question. In philosophy of science and formal epistemology the positive support question is: When is a hypothesis confirmed by evidence? In contemporary epistemology the positive support question is: When is a belief justified by evidence? |
| Introductions | Encyclopedia entries on evidence include DiFate 2007 and Kelly 2006. Additional overviews of evidence include Conee & Feldman 2008 and Kelly 2008. |
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Related
Subcategories
Evidence and Knowledge (478)
Evidentialism* (396)
Perceptual Evidence* (192)
Epistemic Permissivism* (116)
Evidence-Based Medicine* (72)
Evidence and Proof in Law* (465)
Evidence, Misc (391)
History/traditions: Evidence
- Husserl: Evidence (39)
Contents
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- On the Accuracy and Aptness of Suspension.Sven Bernecker & Luis Rosa - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.This paper challenges Sosa’s account of the epistemic propriety of suspension of judgment. We take the reader on a test drive through some common problem cases in epistemology, to see how the account of suspension deals with them. Section 1 outlines Sosa’s account of accurate and apt suspension. Sections 2 and 3 focus on the skeptical scenario to argue that Sosa makes it too easy for suspension to be accurate and apt. Section 4 applies Sosa’s account of accurate and apt (...)Remove from this listExport citation
Bookmark - Reconsidering Normative Defeat.Nate Lauffer - forthcoming - Synthese.According to the Doctrine of Normative Defeat (‘the DND’), you may lose justification to believe that p if you fail to possess negatively relevant evidence that you ought to possess. This paper presents an objection to the DND as it’s standardly developed: it carries with it an absurd implication regarding how one’s knowledge can be restored once one’s associated epistemic justification is presumed to be normatively defeated. I defend the force of this objection before closing with a note about what (...)
- Dark Matter: Explanatory Unification and Historical Continuity.Simon Allzén - manuscriptIn recent years, the hope to confirm the existence of dark matter by experimentally detecting it has diminished significantly. After more than 30 years of experimental searches, many of the most promising candidates have since been ruled out, leaving the epistemic and scientific condition of dark matter in a state of suspension. In efforts to improve the epistemic justification for the dark-matter hypothesis, physicists have turned to philosophical arguments and historical narratives. In this paper, I explicate two such strategies -- (...)
- The zetetic significance of unpossessed evidence.Michele Palmira - forthcoming - In Aaron Creller & Jonathan Matheson, Inquiry: Philosophical Perspectives. Routledge.The presence of easily accessible yet unpossessed evidence seems to matter epistemically. In this chapter I offer an inquiry-theoretic explanation of this datum. I argue that agents in the target cases fail to be competent inquirers and gather the relevant easily accessible evidence. This offers a deflationary explanation of the initial datum. I then show how to inflate this explanation to vindicate the thought that unpossessed evidence has defeating power over the justificatory status of one’s beliefs. The inflationary explanation rests (...)
- The No-Defeater Clause.Simon Graf - 2025 - Episteme:1-25.Rational or epistemically justified beliefs are often said to be defeasible. That is, beliefs that have some otherwise justification conferring property can lose their epistemic status because they are defeated by some evidence possessed by the believer or due to some external facts about the believer’s epistemic environment. Accordingly, many have argued that we need to add a so-called no defeater clause to any theory of epistemic justification. In this paper, I will survey various possible evidentialist as well as responsibilitst (...)
- Error Statistics Using the Akaike and Bayesian Information Criteria.Henrique Cheng & Beckett Sterner - forthcoming - Erkenntnis.Many biologists, especially in ecology and evolution, analyze their data by estimating fits to a set of candidate models and selecting the best model according to the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) or the Bayesian Information Criteria (BIC). When the candidate models represent alternative hypotheses, biologists may want to limit the chance of a false positive to a specified level. Existing model selection methodology, however, allows for only indirect control over error rates by setting a threshold for the difference in AIC (...)
- On the Synthesis of Historical Linguistics and Cognate Disciplines.Frank Cabrera - 2025 - In Aviezer Tucker & David Cernín, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Big History: The Philosophy of the Historical Sciences. Bloomsbury Academic.The empirical and theoretical resources of different disciplines are often combined to shed light on questions that concern the deep history of humanity, such as the geographic origin of people groups, patterns of migration, and the diffusion of culture. In this article, I discuss three ways in which other disciplines, such as biology and archaeology, are integrated with historical linguistics to enhance our understanding of the past. First, other disciplines provide background knowledge that helps to constrain and assess competing historical (...)Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Permissivism About Religious Belief.Elizabeth Jackson - manuscriptIn this chapter, I argue that theistic belief is permissive belief. This is not a universal claim about persons or normative domains, but the claim that, for many common bodies of evidence, epistemic rationality is permissive about whether God exists. Marks of a permissive belief are rational disagreement over time, rational disagreement over persons, and powerful evidence on both sides. I argue that theistic belief fits all these criteria. I also show how considerations from divine hiddenness support permissivism about theism. (...)
- Resistance to Evidence, by Mona Simion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. xiv + 214. (Review). [REVIEW]Carolina Flores - forthcoming - Mind.
- One-factor versus two-factor theory of delusion: Replies to Sullivan-Bissett and Noordhof.Chenwei Nie - 2024 - Neuroethics 18 (1):1-5.I would like to thank Sullivan-Bissett and Noordhof for their stimulating comments on my 2023 paper in Neuroethics. In this reply, I will (1) articulate some deeper disagreements that may underpin our disagreement on the nature of delusion, (2) clarify their misrepresentation of my previous arguments as a defence of the two-factor theory in particular, and (3) finally conduct a comparison between the Maherian one-factor theory and the two-factor theory, showing that the two-factor theory is better supported by evidence.
- Explaining Phenomenal Explanationism: A Précis of Appearance & Explanation.McCain Kevin & Luca Moretti - 2024 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 3:article number 85.
- Automatic Conformity to Hermeneutic Charity.Morteza Shahram - manuscriptExistential reason belief is a tacit premise in reasoning in any instance of substantial decision making where sentential reason alone cannot indicate the rational choice. The outcome of the decisions that implicate such existential reasons are to essentially constitute either utility or knowledge of some sort or both. The binding underwrites some aspect of mental content that is by design charitably interpretable.---Knowledge or utility if reason consist of desire and belief.
- Higher‐order evidence and the duty to double‐check.Michele Palmira - 2024 - Noûs 58 (3):799-824.The paper proposes an account of the rational response to higher‐order evidence whose key claim is that whenever we acquire such evidence we ought to engage in the inquiring activity of double‐checking. Combined with a principle that establishes a connection between rational inquiry and rational belief retention, the account offers a novel explanation of the alleged impermissibility of retaining one's belief in the face of higher‐order evidence. It is argued that this explanation is superior to the main competitor view which (...)
- Center indifference and skepticism.David Builes - 2024 - Noûs 58 (3):778-798.Many philosophers have been attracted to a restricted version of the principle of indifference in the case of self‐locating belief. Roughly speaking, this principle states that, within any given possible world, one should be indifferent between different hypotheses concerning who one is within that possible world, so long as those hypotheses are compatible with one's evidence. My first goal is to defend a more precise version of this principle. After responding to several existing criticisms of such a principle, I argue (...)
- Verschwörungstheorien und skeptische Hypothesen: immun gegen Gegenbelege?Romy Jaster & Geert Keil - 2024 - Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 78 (3):408-431.Verschwörungstheorien (VTn) sind in der erkenntnistheoretischen Literatur wiederholt mit skeptischen Hypothesen verglichen worden: Beide entzögen sich der empirischen Überprüfung, indem sie sich gegen Gegenbelege immunisierten. Im Falle von VTn bestehe die Immunisierung darin, dass vermeintliche Gegenbelege ungeprüft auf Vertuschungs- oder Täuschungshandlungen der Verschwörer zurückgeführt würden. Eine genauere Rekonstruktion der Täuschungsthese und ein genauerer Blick auf die Immunisierungsthese fördern aber eine Reihe von Disanalogien zutage: Im Unterschied zu skeptischen Hypothesen behaupten VTn das eigene Szenario als real und schreiben die Täuschung nur (...)
- Classification, Disease and Evidence: New Essays in the Philosophy of Medicine.Philippe Huneman, Gérard Lambert & Marc Silberstein (eds.) - 2015 - Dordrecht: Imprint: Springer.This anthology of essays presents a sample of studies from recent philosophy of medicine addressing issues which attempt to answer very general (interdependent) questions: (a) what is a disease and what is health? (b) How do we (causally) explain diseases? (c) And how do we distinguish diseases, id est define classes of diseases and recognize that an instance X of disease belongs to a given class B? (d) How do we assess and choose cure/ therapy? The book is divided into (...)
- Explanationism, Circularity and Non-Evaluative Grounding.Miloud Belkoniene - 2024 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 101 (1):28-46.The present article examines two important challenges raised by Steup for explanationist accounts of evidential fit. The first challenge targets the notion of available explanation which is key to any explanationist account of evidential fit. According to Steup, any plausible construal of the notion of available explanation already presupposes the notion of evidential fit. In response to that challenge, an alternative conception of what it takes for an explanation to be available to a subject is offered and shown to be (...)
- From Science to Christianity: Hypothesis Testing, Theory, Model, Experiment and Practice.Robert W. P. Luk - manuscriptThis manuscript is about how to start from relying on science to be more certain about Christianity. This is because science is so pervasive in our everyday life that we expect that it works almost every time. However, when it comes to Christianity, we need to have faith because most of the time God does not appear to respond to us. Therefore, we feel uncertain about beliefs in Christianity. Instead of being uncertain, this manuscript tries to find a way so (...)
- Inquiry beyond knowledge.Bob Beddor - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 109 (1):330-356.Why engage in inquiry? According to many philosophers, the goal of inquiring into some question is to come to know its answer. While this view holds considerable appeal, this paper argues that it stands in tension with another highly attractive thesis: knowledge does not require absolute certainty. Forced to choose between these two theses, I argue that we should reject the idea that inquiry aims at knowledge. I go on to develop an alternative view, according to which inquiry aims at (...)
- Hume and the Unity of Reasons.Eva Schmidt - 2024 - In Scott Stapleford & Verena Wagner, Hume and contemporary epistemology. New York, NY: Routledge.Current debates about reasons and reasoning often draw comparisons between epistemic and practical reasons and reasoning and presuppose substantial unity between the practical and epistemic domains. This stance seems to conflict with a stark Humean contrast between the two domains: With respect to practical reasons and reasoning, Hume highlights the role of impressions, especially the passions, in motivating and rationalizing action, while apparently downplaying the potential relevance of beliefs, reason, or reasons. With respect to epistemic reasons and theoretical reasoning, he (...)
- Permissivist Evidentialism.Elizabeth Jackson - forthcoming - In Scott Stapleford, Kevin McCain & Matthias Steup, Evidentialism at 40: New Arguments, New Angles. Routledge.Many evidentialists are impermissivists. But there’s no in-principle reason for this. In this paper, I examine and motivate permissivist evidentialism. Not only are permissivism and evidentialism compatible but there are unique benefits that arise for this combination of views. In particular, permissivist evidentialism respects the importance of evidence while capturing its limitations and provides a plausible and attractive explanation of the relationship between the epistemic and non-epistemic. Permissivist evidentialism is thus an attractive option in logical space that hasn’t received enough (...)
- Introspection and evidence.Alex Byrne - 2023 - In Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn, The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 318-28.$237.43 from Amazon (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation Bookmark
- Bayesian norms and non-ideal agents.Julia Staffel - 2023 - In Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn, The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence. New York, NY: Routledge.
- Rethinking Evidence-Based Management.Erik Weber, Ann Wyverkens & Bert Leuridan - 2024 - Philosophy of Management 23 (1):59-84.Evidence-based management (EBMgt) is a relatively recent approach to management, developed by Denise Rousseau in a series of articles and in a book that she co-authored with Eric Barends (Barends & Rousseau 2018). It is based on the idea that good-quality management decisions require both critical thinking and use of the best available evidence. In this paper we want to contribute to the scholarship on evidence-based management by showing how its central concept – evidence – can and should be defined (...)
- Rational Hypothesis: Inquiry Direction Without Evidence.Michele Palmira - forthcoming - Philosophical Topics.There are scenarios in which letting one’s own views on the question whether p direct one’s inquiry into that question brings about individual and collective epistemic benefits. However, these scenarios are also such that one’s evidence doesn’t support believing one’s own views. So, how to vindicate the epistemic benefits of directing one’s inquiry in such an asymmetric way, without asking one to hold a seemingly irrational doxastic attitude? To answer this question, the paper understands asymmetric inquiry direction in terms of (...)
- The Epistemic Role of Vividness.Joshua Myers - forthcoming - Analysis.The vividness of mental imagery is epistemically relevant. Intuitively, vivid and intense memories are epistemically better than weak and hazy memories, and using a clear and precise mental image in the service of spatial reasoning is epistemically better than using a blurry and imprecise mental image. But how is vividness epistemically relevant? I argue that vividness is higher-order evidence about one’s epistemic state, rather than first-order evidence about the world. More specifically, the vividness of a mental image is higher-order evidence (...)
- What Logical Evidence Could not be.Matteo Baggio - 2023 - Philosophia 51 (5):2559–2587.By playing a crucial role in settling open issues in the philosophical debate about logical consequence, logical evidence has become the holy grail of inquirers investigating the domain of logic. However, despite its indispensable role in this endeavor, logical evidence has retained an aura of mystery. Indeed, there seems to be a great disharmony in conceiving the correct nature and scope of logical evidence among philosophers. In this paper, I examine four widespread conceptions of logical evidence to argue that all (...)
- Capturing the conspiracist’s imagination.Daniel Munro - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (12):3353-3381.Some incredibly far-fetched conspiracy theories circulate online these days. For most of us, clear evidence would be required before we’d believe these extraordinary theories. Yet, conspiracists often cite evidence that seems transparently very weak. This is puzzling, since conspiracists often aren’t irrational people who are incapable of rationally processing evidence. I argue that existing accounts of conspiracist belief formation don’t fully address this puzzle. Then, drawing on both philosophical and empirical considerations, I propose a new explanation that appeals to the (...)
- How should we ascribe the third stance?Luis Rosa - 2025 - In Verena Wagner & Zinke Alexandra, Suspension in epistemology and beyond. New York, NY: Routledge.Epistemologists often describe subjects as being capable of adopting a third kind of categorical doxastic stance regarding whether something is the case, besides belief and disbelief. They deploy a variety of idioms in order to ascribe that stance. In this paper, I flesh out the properties that the third kind of categorical stance is supposed to have and start searching for the best ways to ascribe it. The idioms ‘suspends judgment about whether’ and ‘is agnostic about whether’, among others, are (...)$180.50 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation Bookmark 1 citation
- Resistant beliefs, responsive believers.Carolina Flores - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.Beliefs can be resistant to evidence. Nonetheless, the orthodox view in epistemology analyzes beliefs as evidence-responsive attitudes. I address this tension by deploying analytical tools on capacities and masking to show that the cognitive science of evidence-resistance supports rather than undermines the orthodox view. In doing so, I argue for the claim that belief requires the capacity for evidence-responsiveness. More precisely, if a subject believes that p, then they have the capacity to rationally respond to evidence bearing on p. Because (...)
- Fragments: Poems and Narratives.Edward Francisco - 2022 - Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press.Fragments is a verse and narrative work of phenomenological and existential ontology focusing on mind-world unity and mind-world dislocation in the experience of self through time. Pivotal experiential and historical moments -- moments when normative guardrails and unreflective models of the world may be compromised -- are approached as fundamental markers of how we transact with evolving versions of ourselves and world.
- Hasty Generalizations Are Pervasive in Experimental Philosophy: A Systematic Analysis.Uwe Peters & Olivier Lemeire - 2023 - Philosophy of Science.Scientists may sometimes generalize from their samples to broader populations when they have not yet sufficiently supported this generalization. Do such hasty generalizations also occur in experimental philosophy? To check, we analyzed 171 experimental philosophy studies published between 2017 and 2023. We found that most studies tested only Western populations but generalized beyond them without justification. There was also no evidence that studies with broader conclusions had larger, more diverse samples, but they nonetheless had higher citation impact. Our analyses reveal (...)
- Absence of evidence against belief as credence 1.Andrew del Rio - 2022 - Analysis 83 (1):31-39.On one view of the traditional doxastic attitudes, belief is credence 1, disbelief is credence 0 and suspension is any precise credence between 0 and 1. In ‘Rational agnosticism and degrees of belief’ (2013) Jane Friedman argues, against this view, that there are cases where a credence of 0 is required but where suspension is permitted. If this were so, belief, disbelief and suspension could not be identified or reduced to the aforementioned credences. I argue that Friedman relies on two (...)
- Evidentialism.Giada Fratantonio - forthcoming - In Kurt Sylvan, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy & Matthias Steup, The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley Blackwell.At the core of evidentialism lies a very plausible claim: rational thinkers follow their evidence. While this seems to be a very intuitive, almost trivial, claim, providing a full and complete evidentialist theory is complicated. In this entry, I begin with elucidating what kind of theory evidentialists aim to provide us with. I will show that, in order to provide a complete evidentialist theory, we have to provide a lot of details on what evidence is and how it relates to (...)
- Why think that belief is evidence-responsive?Carolina Flores - forthcoming - In Eric Schwitzgebel & Jonathan Jong, What is Belief? Oxford University Press.The orthodox view in epistemology is that belief is constitutively evidence-responsive. I offer a novel argument for a version of this view, one that appeals to capacities to rationally respond to evidence. I do so by developing the Sellarsian idea that the concept of belief functions to mark the space of reasons in a non-intellectualist and naturalistic direction. The resulting view does justice to the role of belief in social interactions, joint deliberation, and rational persuasion, while including evidence-resistant beliefs and (...)
- Echo Chambers and Social Media: On the Possibilities of a Tax Incentive Solution.Megan Fritts - 2023 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 12 (7):13-19.In “Regulating social media as a public good: Limiting epistemic segregation” (2022), Toby Handfield tackles a well-known problematic aspect of widespread social media use: the formation of ideologically monotone and insulated social networks. Handfield argues that we can take some cues from economics to reduce the extent to which echo chambers grow up around individual users. Specifically, he argues that tax incentives to encourage network heterophily may be levied at any of three different groups: individual social media users, social media (...)
- Extragalactic Reality Revisited: Astrophysics and Entity Realism.Simon Allzén - 2023 - In Nora Mills Boyd, Siska De Baerdemaeker, Kevin Heng & Vera Matarese, Philosophy of Astrophysics: Stars, Simulations, and the Struggle to Determine What is Out There. Springer Verlag. pp. 2147483647-2147483647.Astrophysics is a scientific field with a rich ontology of individual processes and general phenomena that occur in our universe. Despite its central role in our understanding of the physics of the universe, astrophysics has largely been ignored in the debate on scientific realism. As a notable exception, Hacking (Philos Sci 56(4):555–581, 1989) argues that the lack of experiments in astrophysics forces us to be anti-realist with respect to the entities which astrophysics claim inhabit the universe. In this paper, I (...)$59.24 used (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation Bookmark
- Epistemic style in OCD.Carolina Flores - 2023 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 30 (2):147-150.Commentary on Pablo Hubacher Haerle’s paper “Is OCD Epistemically Irrational?”. I argue for expanding our assessment of rationality in OCD by considering a wider range of epistemic parameters and how they fit together.
- What is mentioned in the famous article by Edmund Gettier.Aleksey Kardash - 2023 - Siberian Journal of Philosophy 21 (1):127-139.The paper analyzes the problem of interpretations of the Gettier problem. The author draws a distinction between counterexamples presented in Edmund Gettier’s article and Gettier-style cases, between the Gettier problem and general epistemological problem supposedly occurring in all or many Gettier-style cases. It is argued that in Gettier’s article there is a gap associated with an insufficiently defined concept of justification, which does not allow talking about Gettier problem without any explicit or implicit interpretation of his views on justification. Along (...)
- Delusion and evidence.Carolina Flores - 2024 - In Ema Sullivan-Bissett, The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Delusion. Routledge.Delusions are standardly defined as attitudes that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. But what evidence do people with delusion have for and against it? Do delusions really go against their total evidence? How are the answers affected by different conceptions of evidence? -/- This chapter focuses on how delusions relate to evidence. I consider what delusions-relevant evidence people with delusions have. I give some reasons to think that people typically have evidence for their delusions, and (...)
- Causation and Realism: The Role of Instrumentally Mediated Empirical Evidence.Mahdi Khalili - 2024 - In Federica Russo & Phyllis Illari, The Routledge handbook of causality and causal methods. New York, NY: Routledge.This chapter explores the relevance of empirical evidence to real causes. I argue for the claim that instrumentally mediated empirical results are causally dependent on unobservable entities. I develop this idea in the context of discussions on entity realism. As a consequence of my argument, an antirealist version of empiricism, which underlines the significance of empirical evidence but which abstains from real causation, is incoherent.
- Probability and Inductive Logic.Antony Eagle - 2025 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Reasoning from inconclusive evidence, or 'induction', is central to science and any applications we make of it. For that reason alone it demands the attention of philosophers of science. This element explores the prospects of using probability theory to provide an inductive logic: a framework for representing evidential support. Constraints on the ideal evaluation of hypotheses suggest that the overall standing of a hypothesis is represented by its probability in light of the total evidence, and incremental support, or confirmation, indicated (...)
- Logika opravdanja u Boškovićevoj indukciji [Justification Logic in Bošković's Induction].Srećko Kovač - 2014 - In Nikola Stanković, Stipe Kutleša & Ivan Šestak, Filozofija Ruđera Josipa Boškovića. Filozofsko-teološki institut Družbe Isusove. pp. 153-168.[English in PhilArchive, unpublished]. Ruđer Bošković's (Rogerius Joseph Boscovich, 1711-1787) induction is described as a reasoning procedure that combines abductive, generalizing and deductive forms of inference. According to Bošković, the application of inductive reasoning extends beyond natural science. Bošković's critique of the use of the principle of sufficient reason is discussed, and constructive rules of Bošković's inductive logic are proposed from the standpoint of contemporary justification logic. To that end, justification logic could be extended with Bošković's typology of reasons. Hunter's (...)
- Evidential Pluralism in the Social Sciences.Yafeng Shan & Jon Williamson - 2023 - London: Routledge.Through case studies in sociology, economics and legal studies, this book advances new philosophical foundations for the methods of the social sciences, providing an account of how to establish or evaluate causal claims, and offering a new way of thinking about evidence-based policy, basic social science research and mixed methods research.
- Evidence, computation and AI: why evidence is not just in the head.Darrell P. Rowbottom, André Curtis-Trudel & William Peden - 2023 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (1):1-17.Can scientific evidence outstretch what scientists have mentally entertained, or could ever entertain? This article focuses on the plausibility and consequences of an affirmative answer in a special case. Specifically, it discusses how we may treat automated scientific data-gathering systems—especially AI systems used to make predictions or to generate novel theories—from the point of view of confirmation theory. It uses AlphaFold2 as a case study.
- Theory, Evidence, Data: Themes from George E. Smith.Marius Stan & Christopher Smeenk - 2023 - Springer.A volume of papers inspired by the work of George E. Smith on confirmation and evidence in advanced science—from Newton's gravitation theory to the physics of molecules.
- Corroboration.Georgi Gardiner - 2023 - American Philosophical Quarterly 60 (2):131-148.Corroborating evidence supports a proposition that is already supported by other initial evidence. It bolsters or confirms the original body of evidence. Corroboration has striking psychological and epistemic force: It potently affects how people do and should assess the target proposition. This essay investigates the distinctive powers of corroborating evidence. Corroboration does not simply increase the quantifiable probability of the adjudicated claim. Drawing on the relevant alternatives framework, I argue that corroboration winnows remaining uneliminated error possibilities. This illuminates the independence, (...)
- Against Imprinting: The Photographic Image as a Source of Evidence.Dawn M. Wilson - 2022 - Social Research: An International Quarterly 89 (4):947-969.A photographic image is said to provide evidence of a photographed scene because it is a causal imprint of reflected light, an indexical trace of real objects and events. Though widely established in the history, theory, and philosophy of photography, this traditional imprinting model must be rejected because it relies on a “single-stage” misconception of the photographic process: the idea that a photographic image comes into existence at the time of exposure. In its place, a “multistage” account properly articulates different (...)
- The Fragile Epistemology of Fanaticism.Joshua DiPaolo - 2019 - In Michael Klenk, Higher Order Evidence and Moral Epistemology. New York: Routledge. pp. 217-235.Are fanatical beliefs rational? This paper examines this question. After outlining two arguments for the rationality of fanatical beliefs, based respectively on what I call the "crippled epistemology" explanation and the "echo chambers" explanation, the paper rejects these arguments by appeal to considerations related to higher-order evidence. Then it explains what defending the rationality of fanatical beliefs actually requires. From this, it derives the practical conclusion that radicalization can be prevented and the growth of fanaticism stalled by preventing the encroachment (...)
- Is Evidential Support the Same as Increase-in-Probability?Tamaz Tokhadze - 2022 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 99 (2):135–158.Evidential support is often equated with confirmation, where evidence supports hypothesis H if and only if it increases the probability of H. This article argues against this received view. As the author shows, support is a comparative notion in the sense that increase-in-probability is not. A piece of evidence can confirm H, but it can confirm alternatives to H to the same or greater degree; and in such cases, it is at best misleading to conclude that the evidence supports H. (...)
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