Skip Navigation

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2004 55(2):269-285; doi:10.1093/bjps/55.2.269
© 2004 by British Society for the Philosophy of Science
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Gimbel, S.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

Restoring Ambiguity to Achinstein's Account of Evidence

Steven Gimbel

Department of Philosophy, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 17325, U.S.A. sgimbel{at}gettysburg.edu

In The Book of Evidence, Peter Achinstein argues against the long-standing claim that ‘evidence’ is ambiguous in possessing a sense of confirming evidence and a sense of supporting evidence. He argues that explications of supporting evidence will necessarily violate his contentions that evidence is a discontinuous ‘threshold concept’ and that any philosophical account of supporting evidence will be too weak to be useful to working scientists. But an account of supporting evidence may be formulated which includes Achinstein's notion of epistemic thresholds that finds examples in Achinstein's own historical case studies.

  1. Thresholds and the denial of ambiguity
  2. Achinstein's new account of confirming evidence
  3. Achinstein's argument against the ‘ambiguity response’
  4. A threshold-based approach for restoring the ambiguity
  5. Maxwell and ‘a subject of rational curiosity’
  6. Bohr and ‘future development of our understanding’
  7. Perrin and the edge of reasonable belief
  8. Restoring ambiguity


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.