Epistemologists often suppose that the extent to which evidence e confirms hypothesis H depends on probabilities involving e and H, and nothing more. We show experimentally that human reasoners sometimes violate this assumption.

Many philosophers of science have argued that a set of evidence that is "coherent" confirms a hypothesis which explains such coherence. In this paper, we examine the relationships between probabilistic models of all three of these concepts: coherence, confirmation, and explanation. For coherence, we consider Shogenji's measure of association (deviation from independence). For confirmation, we c...

This paper presents a new analysis of e.G. Hempel's conditions of adequacy for any relation of confirmation [Hempel C. G. (1945). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science. New York: The Free Press, pp. 3-51.], differing from the one Camap gave in §87 of his [1962. Logical/ounthltions a/probability (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.]. Hempel, ...

Stevens (1946) draws a useful distinction between ordinal scales, interval scales, and ratio scales. Most recent discussions of confirmation measures have proceeded on the ordinal level of analysis. In this paper, I give a more quantitative analysis. In particular, I show that the requirement that our desired confirmation measure be at least an interval measure naturally yields necessary condit...