Dawid, Richard and Hartmann, Stephan and Sprenger, Jan (2012) The No Alternatives Argument. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Scientific theories are hard to find, and once scientists have found a theory H, they often believe that there are not many distinct alternatives to H. But is this belief justified? What should scientists believe about the number of alternatives to H, and how should they change these beliefs in the light of new evidence? These are some of the questions that we will address in this paper. We also ask under which conditions failure to find an alternative to H confirms the theory in question. This kind of reasoning (which we call the No Alternatives Argument) is frequently used in science and therefore deserves a careful philosophical analysis.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Dawid, Richard richard.dawid@univie.ac.at Hartmann, Stephan s.hartmann@lmu.de 0000-0001-8676-2177 Sprenger, Jan J.Sprenger@uvt.nl
Keywords:	Confirmation theory, evidence, underdetermination
Subjects:	General Issues > Confirmation/Induction Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics General Issues > Theory/Observation
Depositing User:	Stephan Hartmann
Date Deposited:	02 Mar 2012 11:43
Last Modified:	12 Jul 2024 17:27
Item ID:	9038
Subjects:	General Issues > Confirmation/Induction Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics General Issues > Theory/Observation
Date:	2 March 2012
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/9038

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