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Examining Criticisms of Probabilistic Versions of the No Miracle Argument: with a Special Focus on the "Base Rate Fallacy" Criticism

Sadeghpour, Zahra | 2021

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 54989 (42)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Philosophy of Science
  6. Advisor(s): Akbari Takhtameshlou, Javad
  7. Abstract:
  8. The No-Miracle Argument (NMA), the primary argument employed by realists to support their position, has been understood in two different ways: as a kind of IBE and as a probabilistic argument. Following an overview of this argument and its status, this dissertation addresses and evaluates the most recent version of NMA given as a kind of IBE, as well as the many versions of its probabilistic forms. I then move on to the criticisms of the NMA's probabilistic forms. Among these criticisms, I have devoted three chapters on the base rate fallacy, which has received little attention to date. In the first of these three chapters, I discuss the base rate fallacy criticism and the responses of prominent philosophers of science to it, as well as my critique of the responses. Then, because the claim of this fallacy is a psychological claim that entered the field of philosophy of science via Howson, I have devoted a chapter to its psychological analysis and attempted to present a number of arguments refuting its effect on the "correctness or incorrectness" of the probability assigned to the base rate. I show in the third of these three chapters that ignoring the base rate is a rational and acceptable reaction to the difference in data value. Thus, despite committing base rate fallacies, probabilistic forms of NMA do not necessarily lose their "logical validity". In this regard, the author's statistical idea of "extracting the factors affecting the base rate (both environmental and non-environmental factors) from the responses of the participants in the experiments and quantifying and entering these factors into the estimate of the base rate probability” has been proposed, which has the advantage of keeping 30% of the base rate information
  9. Keywords:
  10. Science Success ; No-Miracle Argument (NMA) ; Base Rate Fallacy ; Criticisms of the No-Miracle Argument (NMA) ; Truth Scientific Theories

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