Does information inform confirmation?

Howson, Colin (2015) Does information inform confirmation? Synthese. pp. 1-15. ISSN 0039-7857

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Abstract

In a recent survey of the literature on the relation between information and confirmation, Crupi and Tentori (Stud Hist Philos Sci 47:81–90, 2014) claim that the former is a fruitful source of insight into the latter, with two well-known measures of confirmation being definable purely information-theoretically. I argue that of the two explicata of semantic information (due originally to Bar Hillel and Carnap) which are considered by the authors, the one generating a popular Bayesian confirmation measure is a defective measure of information, while the other, although an admissible measure of information, generates a defective measure of confirmation. Some results are proved about the representation of measures on consequence-classes.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://link.springer.com/journal/11229
Additional Information:	© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Divisions:	Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Date Deposited:	11 Nov 2015 11:23
Last Modified:	14 Sep 2024 06:52
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/64398

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