An Inquiry Into Hempel's Qualitative Confirmation Conception

The author suggests in the first part that Hempelian qualitative confirmation conception is the classic work in scientific confirmation theories. It has its methodological and epistemological sources. The methodological sources mainly are the experience confirming method, the hypothetical-deductive method, and the logical analysis method of theory structure. Galileo's experience confirming method affects Hempelian qualitative confirmation conception very much in the tools, steps, and methods of confirmation; the hypothetical-deductive method stresses the correspondence between experience and the testing consequence, which lays a firm foundation for Hempelian qualitative confirmation conception; the logical analysis method of theory structure provides a suggestion to Hempel's reconstruction of the Observational-Theoretical Link. One of the epistemological sources of the Hempelian qualitative confirmation conception is the empiricism after Bacon. It is impressed deeply by the logical empiricism, but it is impressed more directly by Comte's positivism .The other important epistemological source is the antimetaphysicalism based on meaning theories. The verification principle of meaning of antimetaphysical empiricism discusses the logical connection between theoretical sentences and observational ones. It is the direct theoretical source of the qualitative confirmation conception. In words, the development of scientific methodology makes possible the Hempelian qualitative confirmation conception, and the development of epistemology makes it necessary.In the second part of the essay, the author describes the main ideas and the basic characteristics of Hempelian qualitative confirmation conception. The main ideas are composed of the nature of the theory, the shortcomings of the Nicod's criterion and equivalence condition of confirmation, the shortcomings of the prediction-criterion of confirmation, conditions of adequacy for any definition of confirmation, the satisfaction criterion of confirmation, and the relation between confirmation and scientific explanation. The basic characteristics of the theory arethe reconstruction of observational-theoretical Link, purely logical formal criteria of confirmation, and well-organized theory.In the third part, the author shows that the Hempelian qualitative confirmation conception has the importance in philosophy and methodology .The theory argues in favor of the logical empiricism and develops it.The Hempelian qualitative confirmation conception suggests that the observational sentences be the foundation of science in ontology. The theory pushes forward the theoretical researches on scientific confirmation. It also provokes the theoretical researches on scientific explanation. At last, the theory provides a rationally formal criterion for the concept of scientific confirmation.Some shortages of the theory are investigated in the fourth part .the first shortage is that the purely formal logical research can generate confirmation paradoxes easily. The second is that the theory doesn't solve the problem of irrelative evidence because the definition of it allows the irrelative evidence entering confirming procedure. The third is that the theory doesn't do any historical researches. While the author demonstrates these shortages, he describes the modifications for these shortages from some philosophers and methodologist and evaluates the modifications. After that, the author suggests that we must pay attention to the unification of contents and forms, and the unification of logic and history.