What is Relative Confirmation?

Abstract

It is commonly acknowledged that, in order to test a hypothesis, one must, in Duhem's phrase, rely on a theoretical to connect the hypothesis with something measurable. Hypothesis-confirmation, on this view, becomes a three-place relation: evidence E will confirm hypothesis H only to some such scaffolding B. Thus the two leading logical approaches to qualitative confirmation-the hypothetico-deductive (H-D) account and Clark Glymour' s bootstrap account-analyze confirmation in terms. But this raises questions about the philosophical interpretation of the technical conditions these accounts describe. What does it mean to say that E confirms H relative to B? How should we interpret the relation we are trying to analyze? The answer to this question must lie largely in how confirmation-relativeto-B is to inform rational belief. The relationship between confirmation and belief-worthiness may not be all there is to confirmation. But if an account of confirmation is to have any interest, there should be circumstances in which the fact that E confirms H to B should provide reason for believing H. Thus one question that must be answered, if we are to understand fully what we are doing in confirmation theory, is when does the fact that E confirms H to B constitute reason for belief in ('real confirmation' of) H?1 Now it clearly cannot be that one should take E to provide a reason for believing H whenever there is some B or other to which E confirms H. It is only if B meets certain conditions that confirmation to it will provide reason for belief. Just what those conditions are, however, is not obvious. Moreover, writers developing confirmation theories have surprisingly little to say on this question (though their arguments often seem to presuppose one or another answer to the question).