Brewer, Matthew (2024) When Should Absence of Evidence Be Evidence of Absence?: A Case Study from Paleogeology. In: UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

According to what I call the Probabilistic View, absence of evidence is evidence of absence when finding evidence is highly expected. However, this view fails to make sense of the practice of using absence of evidence in the paleosciences, where finding evidence is typically not highly expected. Using a case from paleogeology, I offer a novel account of when absence of evidence should be evidence of absence, which I call the Pragmatic View: appeals to absence of evidence as evidence of absence are warranted because they offer a scaffold to investigate auxiliary hypotheses related to the hypothesis in question.

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Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (UNSPECIFIED)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Brewer, Matthew brewer@bu.edu 0009-0007-5634-2973
Keywords:	Philosophy of the geosciences, paleogeology, absence of evidence, evidence of absence, pragmatism, pragmatic, geology, Bayesian, Bayesianism, probability, probabilistic, Elliott Sober, scaffolds, historical sciences, deep time, plate tectonics, practice, practice-oriented, case study, earth sciences, evidence
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Earth Sciences General Issues > Evidence Specific Sciences > Historical Sciences
Depositing User:	Matthew Brewer
Date Deposited:	28 May 2024 15:15
Last Modified:	28 May 2024 15:15
Item ID:	23493
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Earth Sciences General Issues > Evidence Specific Sciences > Historical Sciences
Date:	March 2024
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23493

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