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Multimodal evidence

Abstract

We often have a variety of evidence available for a given hypothesis. For example, the efficacy of pharmaceuticals is studied with diverse experiments on animals, humans, and cells. I call evidence like this multimodal; a "mode" is a particular way of learning about the world: a technique, apparatus, or experiment. Philosophers have appealed to multimodal evidence to make robustness claims to advance various forms of scientific realism and to resist skeptical worries. The depth of such arguments, though, has advanced little since Whewell. What are the conditions under which such arguments are compelling? I raise methodological and epistemological arguments, and use examples from biology and medicine, to identify demanding constraints for successful appeals to multimodal evidence

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