HPS250H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Fallibilism, Prior Probability, Verificationism
7 Apr 2018
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Theory-ladenness- we see a picture of a synapse, a layman would only see a picture of a blob. An educated person will see a synapse, but that experience depends on the accepted neurophysiological theory. *different experiences of gravity were accepted at different times because of the accepted theory of the time. Aristotelian (falling towards centre of the universe), newtonian (being pulled by gravity), relativistic (state of inertial motion in a curved space) Theory-ladenness: any proposition that describes experience presupposes many different theoretical propositions. What we perceive, how we describe it and why we trust it, depends on theories we accept and the theory according to which our observational instruments are constructed. Since theories cannot be absolutely certain, no observational proposition can be absolutely certain either. Calculating the degree to which the extant evidence supports a hypothesis, we use bayes" theorem. Bayes" theorem: in order to work, we know: the prior probability of the hypothesis and the expectedness of the evidence.
