It is well known that there are, at least, two sorts of cases where one should not prefer a direct inference based on a narrower reference class, in particular: cases where the narrower reference class is gerrymandered, and cases where one lacks an evidential basis for forming a precise-valued frequency judgment for the narrower reference class. I here propose (1) that the preceding exceptions exhaust the circumstances where one should not prefer direct inference based on a narrower reference class, and (2) that minimal frequency information for a narrower (non-gerrymandered) reference class is sufficient to yield the defeat of a direct inference for a broader reference class. By the application of a method for inferring relatively informative expected frequencies, I argue that the latter claim does not result in an overly incredulous approach to direct inference. The method introduced here permits one to infer a relatively informative expected frequency for a reference class R′, given frequency information for a superset of R′ and/or frequency information for a sample drawn from R′.
CITATION STYLE
Thorn, P. (2017). Direct Inference from Imprecise Frequencies. In European Studies in Philosophy of Science (Vol. 5, pp. 347–358). Springer Science and Business Media B.V. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53730-6_28
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