The no miracles argument and the base rate fallacy
| Autor: | Leah Henderson |
|---|---|
| Přispěvatelé: | Theoretical Philosophy |
| Rok vydání: | 2015 |
| Předmět: |
education.field_of_study
REALIST Philosophy 05 social sciences Population Base rate fallacy General Social Sciences Argumentum ad crumenam 06 humanities and the arts 050905 science studies 0603 philosophy ethics and religion Epistemology Argument Formal fallacy 060302 philosophy Fallacy of four terms Fallacy of division 0509 other social sciences education Deductive fallacy |
| Zdroj: | Synthese, 194(4), 1295-1302. SPRINGER |
| ISSN: | 1573-0964 0039-7857 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11229-015-0995-7 |
| Popis: | The no miracles argument is one of the main arguments for scientific realism. Recently it has been alleged that the no miracles argument is fundamentally flawed because it commits the base rate fallacy. The allegation is based on the idea that the appeal of the no miracles argument arises from inappropriate neglect of the base rate of approximate truth among the relevant population of theories. However, the base rate fallacy allegation relies on an assumption of random sampling of individuals from the population which cannot be made in the case of the no miracles argument. Therefore the base rate fallacy objection to the no miracles argument fails. I distinguish between a “local” and a “global” form of the no miracles argument. The base rate fallacy objection has been leveled at the local version. I argue that the global argument plays a key role in supporting a base-rate-fallacy-free formulation of the local version of the argument. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
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