"For unto every one that hath shall be given". matthew properties for incremental confirmation

Roberto Festa

pp. 89-100

in: Jeanne Peijnenburg, Branden Fitelson, Igor Douven (eds), Probability, confirmation and fallacies, Synthese 184 (1), 2012.

Abstract

Confirmation of a hypothesis by evidence can be measured by one of the so far known incremental measures of confirmation. As we show, incremental measures can be formally defined as the measures of confirmation satisfying a certain small set of basic conditions. Moreover, several kinds of incremental measure may be characterized on the basis of appropriate structural properties. In particular, we focus on the so-called Matthew properties: we introduce a family of six Matthew properties including the reverse Matthew effect; we further prove that incremental measures endowed with reverse Matthew effect are possible; finally, we shortly consider the problem of the plausibility of Matthew properties.