Hudson Robert
Department of Philosophy, University of Saskatchewan, 9 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A5 Canada.
Erkenntnis. 2023;88(6):2493-2514. doi: 10.1007/s10670-021-00464-z. Epub 2021 Sep 29.
What does it mean to replicate an experiment? A distinction is often drawn between 'exact' (or 'direct') and 'conceptual' replication. However, in recent work, Uljana Feest argues that the notion of replication in itself, whether exact or conceptual, is flawed due to the problem of systematic error, and Edouard Machery argues that, although the notion of replication is not flawed, we should nevertheless dispense with the distinction between exact and conceptual replication. My plan in this paper is to defend the value of replication, along with the distinction between exact and conceptual replication, from the critiques of Feest and Machery. To that end, I provide an explication of conceptual replication, and distinguish it from what I call 'experimental' replication. On the basis, then, of a tripartite distinction between exact, experimental and conceptual replication, I argue in response to Feest that replication is still informative despite the prospect of systematic error. I also rebut Machery's claim that conceptual replication is fundamentally confused and wrongly conflates replication and extension, and in turn raise some objections to his own Resampling Account of replication.
重复一项实验意味着什么？人们常常对“精确”（或“直接”）重复和“概念性”重复加以区分。然而，在近期的研究中，乌尔贾娜·费斯特认为，由于系统误差问题，重复这一概念本身，无论精确重复还是概念性重复，都是有缺陷的；而爱德华·马凯里则认为，尽管重复这一概念并无缺陷，但我们仍应摒弃精确重复和概念性重复之间的区分。本文我的计划是，回应费斯特和马凯里的批评，捍卫重复的价值以及精确重复和概念性重复之间的区分。为此，我对概念性重复进行了阐释，并将其与我所称的“实验性”重复区分开来。然后，基于精确重复、实验性重复和概念性重复的三方区分，我回应费斯特的观点，认为尽管存在系统误差的可能性，但重复仍然是有信息价值的。我还反驳了马凯里的观点，即概念性重复从根本上就是混乱的，错误地将重复与扩展混为一谈，进而对他自己关于重复的重抽样解释提出了一些异议。
