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Biases, Evidence and Inferences in the story of Ai

Wallach, Efraim (2019) Biases, Evidence and Inferences in the story of Ai. [Preprint]

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Abstract

This treatise covers the history, now more than 170 years long, of researches and debates concerning the biblical city of Ai. This archetypical chapter in the evolution of biblical archaeology and historiography was never presented in full. I use the historical data as a case study to explore a number of epistemological issues, such as the creation and revision of scientific knowledge, the formation and change of consensus, the Kuhnian model of paradigm shift, several models of discrimination between hypotheses about the past, the interplay between scientists' values and their epistemic beliefs, and the truth-bearing of historiographic reconstruction. I show, in particular, that when scientists share common epistemic values they can modify their beliefs even when such changes go against deeply entrenched biases and preconceptions. Considerations of coherence usually constrain such modifications, and when sufficient data is available the result can be a profound change of beliefs. Several episodes of the "Ai debates" demonstrate, however, that similar change of beliefs will not occur when non-epistemic values take precedence.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Wallach, Efraimefraim.wallach@mail.huji.ac.il0000-0001-7506-6790
Keywords: Archaeology; Historiography; Empirical evidence; Explanation; Biblical interpretation; Coherence; Knowledge
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Archaeology
General Issues > Evidence
General Issues > Explanation
General Issues > History of Science Case Studies
Depositing User: Dr. Efraim Wallach
Date Deposited: 25 Sep 2020 13:07
Last Modified: 25 Sep 2020 13:07
Item ID: 18137
DOI or Unique Handle: 10.13140RG.2.2.27118.23363
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Archaeology
General Issues > Evidence
General Issues > Explanation
General Issues > History of Science Case Studies
Date: 10 March 2019
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/18137

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