An Inferentialist Account of Confirmation

Imagine a scientist S who endorses a hypothesis H but is confronted with incontrovertible evidence E that contradicts H. Unless S is a defeatist, two main options seem available. S can attempt to either construct an entirely new hypothesis or modify the existing one. 1 Either way, if progress is to be made, S will have to ensure that the hypothesis endorsed stands in the right kind of inferential relations, ideally the entailment of true propositions, to the wayward and other established empirical results. A question that emerges at this point is whether E confirms the new hypothesis or the modified one regardless of how S went about making sure that E stands in the right kind of inferential relations to the chosen hypothesis. Those who answer this question in the affirmative endorse the view that standing in the right kind of inferential relations is sufficient for confirmation. Let us call this the ‘inferentialist ’ view of confirmation. Various confirmation theorists nowadays consider this view false. Its falsity is patent, it is argued, to anyone who knows how cheaply the right kind of inferential relations can be acquired. The aim of this talk is to defend the inferentialist view from a challenge that originates in predictivism. It is argued that predictivism and its challenge fai