Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

L ogic In ordinary language, to confirm is to verify. As a logical term, confirmation is the measurement of the extent to which evidence raises the probability of a hypothesis . Hence, it is closely related to probability and to the problem of induction . A confirmation proposition assesses the probability of a hypothesis. Carnap in his Logical Foundations of Probability claims that a confirmation-proposition can be classificatory (e[vidence] confirms h[ypothesis]), comparative (e confirms h more than e 1 confirms h 1 ), or quantitative (the confirmation of h given e is c ). Confirmation theory examines how different evidence renders different hypotheses probable and how much the evidence affects the probability. Confirmation (or affirmation) is a translation of Konstatierung (German), a term used by Schlick to denote what he takes to be the peculiar characteristic of observation statements, namely that one may be absolutely certain of their truth. Unlike many other logical positivists , he denies that observations are fundamental in the edifice of knowledge, since they are always of the form “here now so and so.” Instead, their place in the system comes at the end rather than at the beginning of knowledge. Other statements are hypotheses, which in a sense depend upon the fleeting confirmations but not in the sense of being built up from them. “Many writers use the ... log in or subscribe to read full text