Aarhus Universitets segl

PoS paper by Schindler out

Schindler's paper Explanatory Stabilizations in Situations of Evidential Uncertainty has now been published by the journal Philosophy of Science

Explanatory Stabilization in Situations of Evidential Uncertainty

In this article I issue a challenge to what I call the Independence Thesis of Theory Assessment (ITTA). According to ITTA, the evidence for (or against) a theory must be assessed independently from the theory explaining the evidence. I argue that ITTA is undermined by cases of evidential uncertainty, in which scientists have been guided by the explanatory power of their theories in the assessment of the evidence. Instead, I argue, these cases speak in favor of a model of theory assessment in which explanatory power may indeed contribute to the stabilization of the evidential basis.

https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2024.26