When is it possible to decide that a theory is confirmed by the available evidence? Probabilities seem first to be the good framework for addressing this question. But the philosophers of science did not succeed in building any probabilistic criterion of confirmation beyond dispute. We examine two of the main reasons for this failure. First, the principles of adequacy used by philosophers are often logically inconsistent with each other. We show in the paper how to build consistent subsets of these principles. We identify three main subsets which embody the principles of ade~quac.y for two main kinds of eonfirrnatlon, namely the relative confirmation and the absolute confirmation. Second, we prove the impossibility of building any probabilistic criterion for absolute confirmation.
The paper builds a belief hierarchy as a framework common to all uncertainty measures expressing that an actor is ambiguous about his uncertain beliefs. The belief hierarchy is further interpreted by distinguishing physical and psychical worlds, associated to objective and subjective probabilities. Various rules of transformation of a belief hierarchy are introduced, especially changing subjective beliefs into objective ones. These principles are applied in order to relate different contexts of belief change, revising, updating and even focusing. The numerous belief change rules already proposed in the literature receive epistemic justifications by associating them to specific belief hierarchies and change contexts. As a result, it is shown that the resiliency of probability judgments may have some limits and be reconciled with the possibility of learning from factual messages
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.