Lutz, Sebastian (2010) On Sober's Criterion of Contrastive Testability. [Preprint]
There is a more recent version of this item available. |
|
PDF
on_sobers_testability.pdf - Draft Version Download (351kB) |
Abstract
Elliott Sober has suggested his criterion of contrastive testability as an improvement over previous criteria of empirical significance like falsifiability. I argue that his criterion renders almost any theory empirically significant because its restrictions on auxiliary assumptions are to weak. Even when the criterion is modified to avoid this trivialization, it fails to meet other conditions of adequacy for a criterion of empirical significance that follow from Sober's position. I suggest to define empirical significance as empirical non-equivalence to a tautology, because this definition does meet the conditions of adequacy. Specifically, it is equivalent to the standard Bayesian criterion of empirical significance whenever all probabilities are defined and contains falsifiability as a special case. This latter feature is important because those conditions of adequacy that apply to criteria of deductive empirical significance single out falsifiability.
Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
Social Networking: |
Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Creators: |
|
||||||
Keywords: | empirical significance, testability, empiricism, falsifiability | ||||||
Subjects: | General Issues > Operationalism/Instrumentalism General Issues > Science vs. Pseudoscience General Issues > Structure of Theories General Issues > Theory/Observation |
||||||
Depositing User: | Sebastian Lutz | ||||||
Date Deposited: | 14 Dec 2010 12:08 | ||||||
Last Modified: | 18 Apr 2011 11:37 | ||||||
Item ID: | 8424 | ||||||
Subjects: | General Issues > Operationalism/Instrumentalism General Issues > Science vs. Pseudoscience General Issues > Structure of Theories General Issues > Theory/Observation |
||||||
Date: | 13 December 2010 | ||||||
URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/8424 |
Available Versions of this Item
- On Sober's Criterion of Contrastive Testability. (deposited 14 Dec 2010 12:08) [Currently Displayed]
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
View Item |