Abstract
In this paper, I critically analyse two strands of Bayesian solution to the paradox: the standard Bayesian solution and the attempts to refute Nicod’s criterion (NC). I argue that the standard Bayesian solution evades the exact challenge of the paradox. I hold that though the NC or instance confirmation is imprecisely formulated, it cannot be ruled out as an invalid form of confirmation. I formulate three conditions of instance confirmation which sufficiently captures our intuitive notion of instance confirmation. Finally on the basis of the conditions of instance confirmation, I show that paradoxical contrapositive instances like white shoe are not contrapositive instances of the raven hypothesis.
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Notes
c is measure of confirmation. c(H,E|K) means the degree of confirmation of H provided by E given the background information K.
This formalisation is the suggestion of one of the reviewers of this article. He/she pointed out that the predicate has an internal logical structure and also suggested the formalisation.
In the strict logical sense, all these hypotheses are consistent with one another; they could be simultaneously true; so they are not contrary. But they are contrary if we assume the information raven exists as part of our background information. Since in the case of testing of the hypothesis like all ravens are black, agents or practitioners indeed assume that raven exists. So it is quite reasonable to include the information as a part of background information.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Prof. Prajit K. Basu and Dr. B. Shobha, University of Hyderabad for their guidance and useful comments and Reema for the helpful feedback. I also thank the reviewers for their interesting and thought provoking comments.
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Koshy, P. A Solution to the Raven Paradox: A Redefinition of the Notion of Instance. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 34, 99–109 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-016-0075-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-016-0075-5