Induction, Probability, and Confirmation

Induction, Probability, and Confirmation was first published in 1975.This is Volume VI of the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, a series edited by Herbert Feigl and Grover Maxwell for the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, of which Professor Maxwell was the director and Professor Feigl, Regents' Professor Emeritus of the University of Minnesota. The main inspiration for the volume came from a Center conference on the confirmation theory, and most of the essays were contributed by the participants. However, many of them were written considerably more recently, and others have been extensively augmented or revised.The book begins with essays which discuss general and fundamental problems of confirmation theory and its foundations, and these are followed by topics of a more specific or a more specialized nature. There are, in all, twenty essays by eighteen leaders in the field. They consider new approaches to such matters as the foundations of confirmation theory, the growth of scientific knowledge, and applications and interpretations of probability theory. In addition to the contributions by philosophers of science a physician, Jeffrey Bub, contributes a substantial article, and there is a monograph-length essay by a psychologist, Walter Weimer. The other contributors are Wesley C. Salmon, Richard C. Jeffrey, Mary Hesse, Grover Maxwell, Paul Teller, Abner Shimony, Ronald N. Giere, Henry Kyburg, David Miller, William H. Hanson, Tom Settle, Peter Caws, Brian Skyrms, and Robert M. Anderson, Jr.