Abstract
A study of the Mill canons in the framework of the intrinsic inference model is presented. The canons, once interpreted in probabilistic terms, are shown to imply the adoption of specific probabilistic models for the dependence of the observations. This, in turn, implies that attention is required to guarantee accurate consistency of the assumptions adopted in statistical inference methods.
The Mill canons and their conceptual limitations are presented in somewhat new terms.
Several arguments of practical, methodological, statistical and epistemological nature are stated to justify our interest in the canons and to motivate the paper. The intrinsic inference model, in a form suitable for its application to the canons, is summarized. The interpretation of the Mill canons in probabilistic terms concludes the paper.
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Baldessari, B., Memoli, R. The Mill canons and the intrinsic inference model. Qual Quant 22, 139–150 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00223038
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00223038