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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
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    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The Old Evidence Problem identified by Garber and Glymour shows Bayesian probabilistic relevance fails when evidence is already known, exposing its deductive dependency.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.The problem conflates epistemic justification with historical discovery. Known evidence still confirms via conditional probability calculations.
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    • 2.Bayesian solutions exist: using priors about what hypotheses physicists would have proposed given the evidence solves the problem without abandoning Bayesianism.
      ?

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    • 3.Many scientific confirmations involve old evidence (gravitational lensing confirmed general relativity). Rejecting such cases as non-confirmatory is implausibly restrictive.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Bayesian confirmation requires P(E|H) > P(E) to show evidential support, but old evidence satisfies P(E)=1, making the ratio undefined.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Theories gain justification through novel predictions, not post-hoc fit to known facts. Old evidence cannot distinguish between competing hypotheses.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.If Bayesianism allows old evidence to confirm theories, it cannot explain why retroactively fitting any theory to facts seems confirmatorily weak.
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