Selective Confirmation, Bootstrapping, and Theoretical Constants

Abstract

Clark Glymour’s “bootstrap” account of confirmation rightly stresses the importance of selective confirmation of individual hypotheses, on the one hand, and the determination of theoretical constants, on the other. But in our view it is marred by a failure to deal with the problem of confounding, illustrated by the demonstration of a causal link between smoking and lung cancer, and by the apparent circularity of bootstrap testing (which is distinguished from statistical bootstrapping). Glymour’s proper insistence on a variety of evidence is built into our account of evidence and not added on as a way of handling the apparent circularity in his account. We discuss and dissolve his well-known charge against Bayesian theories of confirmation, that they lead to the paradox of “old evidence,” in Chap. 9.