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Toward A Defensible Bootstrapping

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Sam Mitchell
Sam Mitchell*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Mount Holyoke College
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Abstract

An amended bootstrapping can avoid Christensen's counterexamples. Earman and Edidin argue that Christensen's examples to bootstrapping rely on his failure to analyze background knowledge. I add an additional condition to bootstrapping that is motivated by Glymour's remarks on variety of evidence. I argue that it avoids the problems that the examples raise. I defend the modification against the charge that it is holistic, and that it collapses into Bayesianism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , June 1995 , pp. 241 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1995

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank an anonymous referee, David Christensen, Peter Achinstein, Michael Bishop, Jane Braaten, Philip Bricker, Michael Dietrich, Philip Kitcher, Stephen Leeds, Elizabeth Lloyd, Shaun Nichols and Richard Nunan for their help on this paper.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075, USA.

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