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E-book Evidential Pluralism in the Social Sciences

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Penilaian

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Whether a proposition is established depends on prior evidence. Prior evidence must warrant not only sufficiently high confidence in the truth of the proposition, but also high confidence that further evidence will not call the proposition into question, i.e., that confidence in the proposition will remain sufficiently high in the light of new evidence. We can refer to these as the ‘threshold’ and ‘stability’ conditions for establishing (Williamson, 2022). One can distinguish establishing as an evidential relation from establishing as an act. As an evidential relation, an evidence base establishes a proposition when the threshold and stability conditions are met. As an act, an agent establishes a proposition when her evidence base establishes the proposition and she takes the proposition to be evident on those grounds. The act of establishing does not need to be a conscious act. Moreover, several propositions can be established by a single act: for example, causation, correlation and mechanism might all be established at once, if Evidential Pluralism is correct. An agent is ‘in a position’ to establish a proposition if her evidence base establishes the proposition. One can then construe Evidential Pluralism in terms of either the act or the eviden-tial relation. In the former case, Evidential Pluralism offers practical advice for someone intending to establish causation: for you to establish a causal claim, you need to gather evidence in order to be in a position to establish both correlation and mechanism. Under the evidential relation construal, Evidential Pluralism is impersonal: it says that the evidence base establishes causation just when it estab-lishes correlation and mechanism. Establishing requires meeting a high epistemological standard. In particular, establishing a causal claim should be distinguished from acting in accord with a causal claim as a precautionary measure. In certain cases in which a proposed inter-vention has a clear benefit and a relatively low cost, or if failing to act has a high cost, it may be appropriate to initiate the intervention even when its effectiveness has not been established, so that benefits can be reaped in case it turns out to be effective. Although establishing requires meeting a high epistemological standard, it is fallible. One’s prior evidence can be systematically misleading, making a proposition very plausible and making it very plausible that confidence in the proposition will not significantly decrease in the light of new evidence, even though the proposition is in fact false. If the threshold and stability conditions are sufficiently demanding, such cases will be very rare, which reduces the need to revisit previously established propositions. On the other hand, if the conditions are too demanding then they will too rarely be met and enquiry will stall. The need to avoid falsity must be balanced against the need to establish truth. This balance may differ from discipline to discipline and field to field. A younger field, such as social psychology, may attach less weight to avoiding fal-sity than an older field, such as particle physics, in the interest of building up a body of established propositions. (This kind of difference between fields is wit-nessed by their use of different p-values when establishing statistical hypotheses).

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

361.0072 SHA e

Penerbit

New York : Taylor & Francis., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

191 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781003143000

Klasifikasi

361.0072

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Research and Statistical Methods

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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