The Role of Empirical Analysis in the Investigation of Situations Involving Ignorance and Historical Time

Abstract

When empirically investigating situations in which human ignorance and historical time are significant features, use of the notion of probability, in any of its forms, is not legitimate. Thus, familiar distributional techniques such as hypothesis testing and estimation, and standard methods of probabilistic prediction, have to be discarded. Nondistributional "estimation" and nonprobabilistic "prediction" are still possible, and the potential for empirical falsification and "corroboration" of theoretical propositions and models remains intact.