Falsificationist Confirmation

Sprenger, Jan (2007) Falsificationist Confirmation.

Abstract

Existing accounts of hypothetico-deductive confirmation are able to circumvent the classical objections (e.g. the tacking problems), but the confirmation of conjunctions of hypotheses brings them into trouble. Therefore this paper develops a new, falsificationist account of qualitative confirmation by means of Ken Gemes' theory of content parts. The new approach combines the hypothetico-deductive view with falsificationist and instance confirmation principles. It is considerably simpler than the previous suggestions and gives a better treatment of conjunctive hypotheses while solving the tacking problems equally well.