[SydPhil] Current projects June 23 Katie Steele

[Kristie Miller]

Greetings all,

This coming Monday, June 23 1.00-2.30 in the
philosophy common room we have our own Katie Steele to
talk about:

What sort of inference is 'Inference to the Best
Explanation (IBE)'?

Abstract:

There has been some debate about the relationship
between Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and
Bayesian reasoning. Like a number of
 others, I regard van Fraassen's argument for the
incompatibility of the
 two to be overly simplistic. To the extent that
explanatory
 considerations are relevant to our credence in
hypotheses, we should be able to express these
explanatory considerations in Bayesian terms. The
troubles start, however, when we understand IBE as
recommending that the hypothesis providing the best
explanation of the evidence be given the highest
probability (or else the highest prior or likelihood).
This may well hold under some conditions (e.g. for
some sets of hypotheses) but it need not hold in
general. The further question, then, is whether there
is a weaker compatibilist position that still has some
bite--whether there is at least the promise that
explanatory considerations can contribute something
substantive to the Bayesian's
 toolset.

Dr. Kristie Miller
Australian Research Council Post-doctoral Fellow
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and
The Centre for Time
The University of Sydney
Sydney, Australia

Room 411, A18
Email: kristie_miller at yahoo.com
Email: kmiller at usyd.edu.au
Ph: (work) 02 9036 9663
Ph: (mobile)  0432 275 286
http://homepage.mac.com/centre.for.time/KristieMiller/Kristie/Home%20Page.html