Prediction and accommodation revisited

• A new defence of my resolution of the old ‘prediction versus accommodation’ debate.
• Maher’s influential defence of the predictivist thesis fails.
• Lange’s variation on Maher’s treatment also fails.
• Both Maher’s and Lange’s insights are correctly captured only within my account.

The paper presents a further articulation and defence of the view on prediction and accommodation that I have proposed earlier. It operates by analysing two accounts of the issue—by Patrick Maher and by Marc Lange—that, at least at first sight, appear to be rivals to my own. Maher claims that the time-order of theory and evidence may be important in terms of degree of confirmation, while that claim is explicitly denied in my account. I argue, however, that when his account is analysed, Maher reveals no scientifically significant way in which the time-order counts, and that indeed his view is in the end best regarded as a less than optimally formulated version of my own. Lange has also responded to Maher by arguing that the apparent relevance of temporal considerations is merely apparent: what is really involved, according to Lange, is whether or not a hypothesis constitutes an “arbitrary conjunction.” I argue that Lange’s suggestion fails: the correct analysis of his and Maher’s examples is that provided by my account.