What Philosophy Can Do

predicting the future is integral to a scientific paradigm’s success.

we can rely on an inductive argument only if we have good reason to think that the premises include all the evidence relevant to the question of whether the conclusion is true.

freedom of thought and correctness of thought,

truth of the premises logically (on pain of contradiction) requires the truth of the conclusion.

Neither of us will insist that his or her calculation is correct. We will instead agree that we each have an equal chance of being wrong and so redo the calculation until we agree. But until we do agree, neither of us will claim to be right.

statistical significance,

salient facts that require invoking the exception clause of a guiding picture.

what isn’t worth doing isn’t worth doing well.

(epistemic peers),