A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Arguments for Postmortem SurvivalExotic Counter-Explanations
A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Arguments for Postmortem Survival: Exotic Counter-Explanations
Sudduth, Michael
2015-12-21 00:00:00
[In Chapter 7 and Chapter 8, we saw that in Bayesian arguments for survival, the posterior probability of the survival hypothesis, Pr(S | E & K), depends on the prior probability of the survival hypothesis, Pr(S | K), and the explanatory power of the survival hypothesis, Pr(E | S & K)/Pr(E | K).1 Since the explanatory power of any hypothesis h is formally expressed as the fraction of h’s likelihood over the prior probability of the evidence e, the explanatory power of h will be very great to the extent that h’s likelihood is high and e’s prior probability is low. In other words, the explanatory power of a hypothesis will be very great to the extent that the hypothesis leads us to expect the evidence and the evidence is otherwise improbable. And the evidence will be otherwise improbable just if there is no rival hypothesis with significant prior probability that leads us to expect the evidence at least as well as does the survival hypothesis.]
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A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Arguments for Postmortem SurvivalExotic Counter-Explanations
[In Chapter 7 and Chapter 8, we saw that in Bayesian arguments for survival, the posterior probability of the survival hypothesis, Pr(S | E & K), depends on the prior probability of the survival hypothesis, Pr(S | K), and the explanatory power of the survival hypothesis, Pr(E | S & K)/Pr(E | K).1 Since the explanatory power of any hypothesis h is formally expressed as the fraction of h’s likelihood over the prior probability of the evidence e, the explanatory power of h will be very great to the extent that h’s likelihood is high and e’s prior probability is low. In other words, the explanatory power of a hypothesis will be very great to the extent that the hypothesis leads us to expect the evidence and the evidence is otherwise improbable. And the evidence will be otherwise improbable just if there is no rival hypothesis with significant prior probability that leads us to expect the evidence at least as well as does the survival hypothesis.]
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