‎Thoughts on jun otsuka’s thinking about statistics– the philosphical foundations

Document Type : Translation Paper

Author

Faculty of Mathematical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Jun Otsuka’s excellent book, Thinking about Statistics - the Philosophical Foundations (Otsuka 2023) is mostly organized around the idea that diferent statistical approaches can be illuminated by linking them to diferent ideas in general epistemology. Otsuka connects Bayesianism to internalism and foundationalism, frequentism to reliabilism, and the Akaike Information Criterion in model selection theory to instrumentalism. This useful mapping doesn’t cover all the interesting ideas he presents. His discussions of causal inference and machine learning are philosophically insightful, as is his idea that statisticians embrace an assumption that is similar to Hume’s Principle of the Uniformity of Nature. I discuss these topics in what follows, sometimes disagreeing with details while at other times adding ideas that complement those presented in the book.

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Main Subjects


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Articles in Press, Corrected Proof
Available Online from 30 September 2025
  • Receive Date: 12 February 2025
  • Revise Date: 21 May 2025
  • Accept Date: 09 March 2025
  • Publish Date: 30 September 2025