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    Carmelics

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    Elliott Sober — Carmelics
    Thinkers/Elliott Sober
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    Elliott Sober

    contemporaryAnalytic Philosophy of Science

    b. 1948

    Elliott Sober is an American philosopher of science, best known for his work in philosophy of biology, evolutionary theory, and probabilistic reasoning. He is Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has made influential contributions to debates about parsimony, natural selection, and the structure of scientific inference.

    WWikipedia

    Notable Achievements

    1

    Authored 'The Nature of Selection' (1984), a foundational work in philosophy of biology

    2

    Developed influential analyses of parsimony and simplicity in scientific inference

    3

    Co-authored 'Unto Others' (1998) with David Sloan Wilson defending group selection and psychological altruism

    4

    Advanced likelihoodist approaches to evidence and the philosophy of statistics

    5

    Wrote 'Evidence and Evolution' (2008), examining the logic of evolutionary inference and intelligent design arguments

    Positions & Arguments(3)

    Skepticism

    claim

    We need to rethink the cognitive status of the theory of natural selection.

    claim

    Backward induction is self-undermining as a solution concept in certain extensive-form games

    Truth & Knowledge

    claim

    We need to rethink the cognitive status of the theory of natural selection.

    claim

    Backward induction is self-undermining as a solution concept in certain extensive-form games

    Natural Theology

    claim

    When focusing on a limited class of constants C, background evidence used to motivate the prior P(D) may include initial conditions of the universe, laws of physics, and values of all constants other than C

    At a Glance

    Ideas

    3

    Topics

    3

    Era

    contemporary

    Tradition

    Analytic Philosophy of Science

    Topic Influence

    Truth & Knowledge2
    Skepticism2
    Natural Theology1

    Related Thinkers

    Immanuel Kant3 sharedDavid Hume3 sharedBertrand Russell3 sharedAristotle3 sharedRené Descartes3 sharedPlato3 sharedDavid Hilbert3 sharedG.W.F. Hegel3 shared

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