Abstract
This Chapter is the introduction. Here I lay out the principal aims of the book, which are to investigate the way that evidence is gathered and used to confirm the kinds of hypotheses that are commonly found in clinical medical science, and to introduce and defend a new theory that I call the “weight of evidence” account. I present some notions that have been offered of what we should expect from a theory of evidence. In the book I discuss five theories of evidence that have been proposed, namely hypothetico-deductivism, Bayesianism, Carl Hempel’s “satisfaction” theory, Deborah Mayo’s “error-statistical” theory, and Peter Achinstein’s theory. I also consider Inference to the Best Explanation to the extent that it can be considered a method of theory choice. I advance reasons why I do not believe that previous theories satisfactorily explain confirmation in clinical medical science. I briefly outline the contents of the other chapters.
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Notes
- 1.
I use the expressions “theory of evidence ” and “theory of confirmation” interchangeably (e.g., see Achinstein 1983, 351).
- 2.
In a note, Achinstein states that more accurately, it is the fact that e, rather than the sentence describing that fact, that constitutes the evidence , but that he is following standard philosophical practice of speaking of the sentence e.
- 3.
By “explanation” here is meant what is ordinarily construed as explanation, i.e., that it is context-dependent and dependent on the particular interests of persons. It may not necessarily pertain to the notion of explanation used by Achinstein in his “explanatory connection,” as I later argue.
- 4.
An N of 1 study is a study involving a single person.
References
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Pinkston, J.A. (2020). Introduction. In: Evidence and Hypothesis in Clinical Medical Science. Synthese Library, vol 426. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44270-5_1
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