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Discussion: Hypothetico-Deductivism is Hopeless

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Clark Glymour
Clark Glymour*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Extract

An attractive and apparently indestructible idea about confirmation is that a hypothesis h is confirmed by evidence e if h is a logical consequence of e, or of h and the right sort of other stuff. This idea was advanced in various ways by Ayer (1936), Hempel (1965), Carnap (1959), and still recurs constantly in discussions of confirmation; recently for example, in Schlesinger (1976) and Horwich (1978). The typical modern version of the idea goes like this: a sentence h is confirmed by a sentence e with respect to a theory T if e is true and h & T is consistent and h & T entails e (hereafter, h & T ⊢ e) but T does not entail e (hereafter, T ⊬ e).

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Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , June 1980 , pp. 322 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1980

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References

Ayer, A. J. (1936), Language, Truth and Logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carnap, R. (1959), “The Methodological Character of Theoretical Concepts,” Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1. University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Glymour, C. (1980), Theory and Evidence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hempel, C. (1965), Aspects of Scientific Explanation. Glencoe: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Horwich, P. (1978), “An Appraisal of Glymour's Confirmation Theory,” Journal of Philosophy, 75: 98–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merrill, G. (1979), “Confirmation and Prediction,” Philosophy of Science 46: 98–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlesinger, G. (1976), Confirmation and Confirmability. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar

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