I think the whole issue of “one person’s modus ponens is another’s person’s modus tolens” is not very well understood by most people and including most philosophers and myself. In fact, I’m don’t think anyone knows quite how to think about these things. I guess it gets into Quinean holism and the intractability problems that accompany it.
But, presumably, it has something to do with Bayesian networks of beliefs and regularization in machine learning (~valuing simplicity) as well as Bayesian philosophy of science more generally. [Part IV of Itzhak Gilboa’s decision theory book gets into some of this stuff, which seemed pretty interesting.]
I don’t understand why much more attention is not paid to these things in philosophy, where formal epistemology seems to still be considered a pretty niche field.
Tangential:
I think the whole issue of “one person’s modus ponens is another’s person’s modus tolens” is not very well understood by most people and including most philosophers and myself. In fact, I’m don’t think anyone knows quite how to think about these things. I guess it gets into Quinean holism and the intractability problems that accompany it.
But, presumably, it has something to do with Bayesian networks of beliefs and regularization in machine learning (~valuing simplicity) as well as Bayesian philosophy of science more generally. [Part IV of Itzhak Gilboa’s decision theory book gets into some of this stuff, which seemed pretty interesting.]
I don’t understand why much more attention is not paid to these things in philosophy, where formal epistemology seems to still be considered a pretty niche field.
I hope people think more about these issues.