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Vassend on Verisimilitude and Counterfactual Probabilities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Ilkka Niiniluoto
Ilkka Niiniluoto*
Affiliation:
To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, History, and Art Studies, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland; e-mail: ilkka.niiniluoto@helsinki.fi.
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Abstract

Olav Benjamin Vassend proposes two solutions to the “interpretive problem” of assigning nonzero probabilities to hypotheses that are known to be false. He argues that the verisimilitude interpretation (probability expresses the degree of belief that the hypothesis is closest to the truth) and the counterfactual interpretation (probability is conditional on a false supposition) are equivalent. While Vassend’s intuition about these two solutions is basically correct, the technical details of his treatment need elaboration and correction. Appropriate tools for combining verisimilitude and Bayesian probabilities can be found in my Truthlikeness.

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Type
Research Article
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Philosophy of Science , Volume 88 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 554 - 561
Copyright
Copyright 2021 by the Philosophy of Science Association. All rights reserved.

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