Theoretical Virtues

According to John D. Norton's Material Theory of Induction, all reasonable inductive inferences are justified in virtue of background knowledge about local uniformities in nature. These local uniformities indicate that our samples are likely to be representative of our target population in our inductions. However, a variety of critics have noted that there are many circumstances in which induction seems to be reasonable, yet such background knowledge is apparently absent. I call such an absence of circumstances ‘the frontiers of science', (...) where background scientific theories do not provide information about such local uniformities. I argue that the Material Theory of Induction can be reconciled with our intuitions in favour of these inductions. I adapt an attempted justification of induction in general, the Combinatoric Justification of Induction, into a more modest rationalisation at the less foundational level that the critics discuss. Subject to a number of conditions, we can extrapolate from large samples using our knowledge of facts about the minimum proportions of representative subsets of finite sets. I also discuss some of Norton's own criticisms of his theory and argue that he is overly pessimistic. I conclude that Norton's theory at least performs well at the frontiers of science. (shrink)

Scientists imagine for epistemic reasons, and these imaginings can be better or worse. But what does it mean for an imagining to be epistemically better or worse? There are at least three metaepistemological frameworks that present different answers to this question: epistemological consequentialism, deontic epistemology, and virtue epistemology. This paper presents empirical evidence that scientists adopt each of these different epistemic frameworks with respect to imagination, but argues that the way they do this is best explained if scientists are fundamentally (...) epistemic consequentialists about imagination. (shrink)

Bilimsel faaliyetin ve bilimsel bilginin en temel özelliklerinden bir tanesi olarak karşımıza çıkan bilimsel nesnellik bilim felsefesi alanı içerisinde sıklıkla tartışılan bir konu olagelmiştir. Bu doğrultuda, bilimsel nesnelliğin temin edilmesine yönelik çeşitli görüşler ileri sürülmektedir. Genel olarak bilimsel nesnellik bilim insanlarının çalışmalarında olguları doğrudan yansıtması ya da bilim insanlarının çalışmalarını tarafsız bir bakış açısıyla tamamlaması olarak anlaşılmaktadır. Bu görüşlerin bilim felsefesi içerisindeki yansımaları sırasıyla olgulara bağlılık olarak nesnellik ve hiçbir yerden bakış olarak nesnellik isimleriyle olmuştur. Bu bakış açısı, kişisel çıkarların (...) ve değerlerin bilimsel çalışmalardan izole edilmesi sayesinde bilimsel nesnelliğin sağlanabileceğini kabul etmektedir. Diğer bir deyişle, bilimler değerlerden bağımsız olduğu takdirde nesnel olabilmektedirler. Bu görüşe karşı olarak, Helen Longino gibi bilim insanları ise değerleri bilimsel nesnelliğin bir gerekliliği olarak görmektedirler. Bu çalışmada, özellikle değerlerin göz ardı edilmesiyle bilimsel nesnelliğin gerçekleştirilmesinin mümkün olamayacağını vurgulan Helen Longino’nun “bağlamsal deneycilik” olarak bilinen görüşlerine yer verilmektedir. Buna göre Longino, bilimsel araştırmanın toplumsal yönlerini göz önünde bulundurarak değerden bağımsız ideali tamamen reddetmektedir. O değer yüklü bir bilimin hem bilgi kuramsal açıdan hem de nesnellik açısından güvenilir olabileceğini düşünmektedir. -/- Scientific objectivity, which is one of the most basic features of scientific activity and scientific knowledge, is a subject that is frequently discussed in the field of philosophy of science. In this direction, various views are put forward to ensure scientific objectivity. In general, scientific objectivity is understood as scientists reflecting the facts as they are in their studies or scientists completing their studies with an impartial point of view. The reflections of these views in the philosophy of science were respectively called objectivity as faithfulness to facts and objectivity as a view from nowhere. This perspective recognizes that scientific objectivity can be achieved by isolating personal interests and values from scientific studies. In other words, sciences can only be objective if they are value-free. Against this view, scientists such as Helen Longino see values as a necessity of scientific objectivity. In this study, Helen Longino's views known as "contextual empiricism" are included. Accordingly, it is emphasized that it is not possible to realize scientific objectivity by ignoring values. Longino completely rejects the value-free ideal, considering the social aspects of scientific research. She thinks that a value-laden science can be reliable both in terms of epistemology and objectivity. (shrink)

Recent philosophical literature has turned its attention towards assessments of how to judge scientific proposals as worthy of further inquiry. Previous work, as well as papers contained within this special issue, propose criteria for pursuitworthiness (Achinstein, 1993; Whitt, 1992; DiMarco & Khalifa, 2019; Laudan, 1977; Shan, 2020; Šešelja et al., 2012). The purpose of this paper is to assess the grounds on which pursuitworthiness demands can be legitimately made. To do this, I propose a challenge to the possibility of even (...) minimal criteria of pursuitworthiness, inspired by Paul Feyerabend. I go on to provide a framework for identifying the contexts in which pursuitworthiness criteria may promote the efficiency of scientific inquiry. I then spell out some implications this framework has for values and pursuit. (shrink)

Epidemiological explanation often has a “black box” character, meaning the intermediate steps between cause and effect are unknown. Filling in black boxes is thought to improve causal inferences by making them intelligible. I argue that adding information about intermediate causes to a black box explanation is an unreliable guide to pragmatic intelligibility because it may mislead us about the stability of a cause. I diagnose a problem that I call wishful intelligibility, which occurs when scientists misjudge the limitations of certain (...) features of an explanation. Wishful intelligibility gives us a new reason to prefer black box explanations in some contexts. (shrink)

Sublinhando que a evocação dos acontecimentos que tiveram lugar ab origine converge, segundo a perspectiva mítico-religiosa, para a manifestação das forças sagradas, de acordo com o referencial teórico-conceitual de Eliade, o artigo assinala que tal invocação implica uma correlação de narrativas míticas e gestos e ações paradigmáticas que se destinam a suscitar o poder sagrado e a produção de seus efeitos, ressaltando a prece como poder mágico de exercer influência sobrenatural, como afirma Mauss. Dessa forma, analisando a oração que caracteriza (...) o monoteísmo judaico-cristão, o artigo assinala o relacionamento pactual que encerra Javé e Israel como um processo que implica a Sua invocação como Deus, que converge para manifestações e intervenções na vida do povo em sua realidade concreta, perfazendo, segundo a perspectiva bíblico-teológica neotestamentária, uma construção que encerra a expressão da existência escatológica e realização de si em Bultmann. Finalizando, baseado na perspectiva teológico-filosófica de Tillich, o texto sublinha o poder que implica a oração em um processo que se sobrepõe às estruturas supraindividuais de destruição através do novo ser que o Deus-Homem Jesus Cristo manifesta e que envolve a capacidade de superar as estruturas escravizadoras do mal e as consequências autodestruidoras do estado de alienação existencial. (shrink)

In a recently published article A. Nordmann highlighted the fact that Hertz considered it as the greatest pleasure of scientific research to be “alone with nature” and to learn “directly from nature” (see Nordmann, 1998, p. 156). Hertz contrasts this being on his own with nature with the “disputes about human opinions views and demands. (see Nordmann, 1998, p. 156) . It is this contrast between nature on the one hand and human beliefs etc. on the other that is fundamental (...) for his central epistemological pursuit: the attempt to sort out which features of our theories can be attributed to nature as opposed to those which depend on us. I will discuss the various writings in which Hertz touches this subject. (shrink)

Scientists often diverge widely when choosing between research programs. This can seem to be rooted in disagreements about which of several theories, competing to address shared questions or phenomena, is currently the most epistemically or explanatorily valuable—i.e. most successful. But many such cases are actually more directly rooted in differing judgments of pursuit-worthiness, concerning which theory will be best down the line, or which addresses the most significant data or questions. Using case studies from 16th-century astronomy and 20th-century geology and (...) biology, I argue that divergent theory choice is thus often driven by considerations of scientific process, even where direct epistemic or explanatory evaluation of its final products appears more relevant. Broadly following Kuhn’s analysis of theoretical virtues, I suggest that widely shared criteria for pursuit-worthiness function as imprecise, mutually-conflicting values. However, even Kuhn and others sensitive to pragmatic dimensions of theory ‘acceptance’, including the virtue of fruitfulness, still commonly understate the role of pursuit-worthiness—especially by exaggerating the impact of more present-oriented virtues, or failing to stress how ‘competing’ theories excel at addressing different questions or data. This framework clarifies the nature of the choice and competition involved in theory choice, and the role of alternative theoretical virtues. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring the resources of virtue epistemology to bear on the issue of the epistemic objectivity of science. A distinction is made between theoretical virtues that may be possessed by scientific theories and epistemic virtues that may be exercised by individual scientists. A distinction is then made between ontological objectivity, objectivity of truth and epistemic objectivity, the latter being the principal focus of the paper. It is then noted that a role must be played (...) by deliberative judgement in determining how to apply the theoretical virtues. It is suggested that such judgement may be virtuous in light of the exercise of the epistemic virtues. It is argued that the primary location of epistemic objectivity is the theoretical virtues, whereas the epistemic virtues of scientists play a subordinate role. (shrink)

Are there any facts that call for explanation? According to one possible view, all facts call for explanation; according to another, none do. This paper is concerned with an intermediate view according to which some facts call for explanation and others do not. Such a view requires explaining what makes some facts call for explanation and not others. In this paper, I explore a neglected proposal, inspired by the work of George Schlesinger, according to which facts call for explanation when (...) they belong to extraordinary types. I compare the merits of this view to those of several alternatives and respond to a salient objection. I end with a discussion of how the theory fares when applied to cosmological fine-tuning arguments. (shrink)

Within eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition we can distinguish at least three main theoretical positions: (i) Buffon’s mechanism, (ii) Reimarus’ theory of instincts, and (iii) the sensationalism of Condillac and Leroy. In this paper, I adopt a philosophical perspective on this debate and argue that in order to fully understand the justification Buffon, Reimarus, Condillac, and Leroy gave for their respective theories, we must pay special attention to the theoretical virtues these naturalists alluded to while justifying their position. These theoretical (...) virtues have received little to no attention in the literature on eighteenth-century animal cognition, but figure prominently in the justification of the mechanist, instinctive, and sensationalist theories of animal behavior. Through my philosophical study of the role of theoretical virtues in eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition, we obtain a deeper understanding of how theoretical virtues were conceptualized in eighteenth-century science and how they influenced the justification of theories of animal cognition. (shrink)

The notion of strength has featured prominently in recent debates about abductivism in the epistemology of logic. Following Williamson and Russell, we distinguish between logical and scientific strength and discuss the limits of the characterizations they employ. We then suggest understanding logical strength in terms of interpretability strength and scientific strength as a special case of logical strength. We present applications of the resulting notions to comparisons between logics in the traditional sense and mathematical theories.

Based on a framework that distinguishes several types, roles and functions of values in science, we discuss legitimate applications of values in the validation of computer simulations. We argue that, first, epistemic valuesEpistemic values, such as empirical accuracyAccuracy and coherence with background knowledgeBackground knowledge, have the role to assess the credibilityCredibility of simulation results, whereas, second, cognitive valuesCognitive values, such as comprehensiveness of a conceptual modelConceptual model or easy handling of a numerical model, have the role to assess the usefulness (...) of a model for investigating a hypothesisHypothesis. In both roles, values perform what we call first-order functions. In addition, cognitive values may also serve an auxiliary function by facilitating the assessment of credibility. As for a third type of values, i.e. social valuesSocial values, their legitimate role consists in specifying and weighing epistemic and cognitive values with respect to practical uses of a simulation, which is considered a second-order function. Rational intersubjective agreementAgreement on how to specify and weigh the different values is supposed to ensure objectivity in simulation validation. (shrink)

An analogue of Arrow’s theorem has been thought to limit the possibilities for multi-criterial theory choice. Here, an example drawn from Toy Science, a model of theories and choice criteria, suggests that it does not. Arrow’s assumption that domains are unrestricted is inappropriate in connection with theory choice in Toy Science. There are, however, variants of Arrow’s theorem that do not require an unrestricted domain. They require instead that domains are, in a technical sense, ‘rich’. Since there are rich domains (...) in Toy Science, such theorems do constrain theory choice to some extent—certainly in the model and perhaps also in real science. (shrink)

This paper is about the putative theoretical virtue of strength, as it might be used in abductive arguments to the correct logic in the epistemology of logic. It argues for three theses. The first is that the well-defined property of logical strength is neither a virtue nor a vice, so that logically weaker theories are not—all other things being equal—worse or better theories than logically stronger ones. The second thesis is that logical strength does not entail the looser characteristic of (...) scientific strength, and the third is that many modern logics are on a par—or can be made to be on a par—with respect to scientific strength. (shrink)

To find "criteria of simplicity" was the goal of David Hilbert's recently discovered twenty-fourth problem on his renowned list of open problems given at the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris. At the same time, simplicity and economy of means are powerful impulses in the creation of artworks. This was an inspiration for a conference, titled the same as this volume, that took place at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in April of 2013. This (...) volume includes selected lectures presented at the conference, and additional contributions offering diverse perspectives from art and architecture, the philosophy and history of mathematics, and current mathematical practice. (shrink)

Science has not only produced a vast amount of knowledge about a wide range of phenomena, it has also enhanced our understanding of these phenomena. Indeed, understanding can be regarded as one of the central aims of science. But what exactly is it to understand phenomena scientifically, and how can scientific understanding be achieved? What is the difference between scientific knowledge and scientific understanding? These questions are hotly debated in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science. While philosophers have long regarded (...) understanding as a merely subjective and psychological notion that is irrelevant from an epistemological perspective, nowadays many of them acknowledge that a philosophical account of science and its aims should include an analysis of the nature of understanding. This chapter reviews the current debate on scientific understanding. It presents the main philosophical accounts of scientific understanding and discusses topical issues such as the relation between understanding, truth and knowledge, the phenomenology of understanding, and the role of understanding in scientific progress. (shrink)

Roughly, instrumentalism is the view that science is primarily, and should primarily be, an instrument for furthering our practical ends. It has fallen out of favour because historically influential variants of the view, such as logical positivism, suffered from serious defects. -/- In this book, however, Darrell P. Rowbottom develops a new form of instrumentalism, which is more sophisticated and resilient than its predecessors. This position—‘cognitive instrumentalism’—involves three core theses. First, science makes theoretical progress primarily when it furnishes us with (...) more predictive power or understanding concerning observable things. Second, scientific discourse concerning unobservable things should only be taken literally in so far as it involves observable properties or analogies with observable things. Third, scientific claims about unobservable things are probably neither approximately true nor liable to change in such a way as to increase in truthlikeness. -/- There are examples from science throughout the book, and Rowbottom demonstrates at length how cognitive instrumentalism fits with the development of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century chemistry and physics, and especially atomic theory. Drawing upon this history, Rowbottom also argues that there is a kind of understanding, empirical understanding, which we can achieve without having true, or even approximately true, representations of unobservable things. In closing the book, he sets forth his view on how the distinction between the observable and unobservable may be drawn, and compares cognitive instrumentalism with key contemporary alternatives such as structural realism, constructive empiricism, and semirealism. -/- Overall, this book offers a strong defence of instrumentalism that will be of interest to scholars and students working on the debate about realism in philosophy of science. (shrink)

While science is taken to differ from non-scientific activities in virtue of its methodology, metaphysics is usually defined in terms of its subject matter. However, many traditional questions of metaphysics are addressed in a variety of ways by science, making it difficult to demarcate metaphysics from science solely in terms of their subject matter. Are the methodologies of science and metaphysics sufficiently distinct to act as criteria of demarcation between the two? In this chapter we focus on several important overlaps (...) in the methodologies used within science and metaphysics in order to argue that focusing solely on methodology is insufficient to offer a sharp demarcation between metaphysics and science, and consider the consequences of this for the wider relationship between science and metaphysics. (shrink)

Subjective Bayesianism is a major school of uncertain reasoning and statistical inference. It is often criticized for a lack of objectivity: it opens the door to the influence of values and biases, evidence judgments can vary substantially between scientists, it is not suited for informing policy decisions. My paper rebuts these concerns by connecting the debates on scientific objectivity and statistical method. First, I show that the above concerns arise equally for standard frequentist inference with null hypothesis significance tests. Second, (...) the criticisms are based on specific senses of objectivity with unclear epistemic value. Third, I show that Subjective Bayesianism promotes other, epistemically relevant senses of scientific objectivity—most notably by increasing the transparency of scientific reasoning. (shrink)

The lack of public support for climate change policies and refusals to vaccinate children are just two alarming illustrations of the impacts of dissent about scientific claims. Dissent can lead to confusion, false beliefs, and widespread public doubt about highly justified scientific evidence. Even more dangerously, it has begun to corrode the very authority of scientific consensus and knowledge. Deployed aggressively and to political ends, some dissent can intimidate scientists, stymie research, and lead both the public and policymakers to oppose (...) important public policies firmly rooted in science. -/- To criticize dissent is, however, a fraught exercise. Skepticism and fearless debate are key to the scientific process, making it both vital and incredibly difficult to characterize and identify dissent that is problematic in its approach and consequences. Indeed, as de Melo-Martín and Intemann show, the criteria commonly proposed as means of identifying inappropriate dissent are flawed and the strategies generally recommended to tackle such dissent are not only ineffective but could even make the situation worse. -/- The Fight Against Doubt proposes that progress on this front can best be achieved by enhancing the trustworthiness of the scientific community and by being more realistic about the limits of science when it comes to policymaking. It shows that a richer understanding of the context in which science operates is needed to disarm problematic dissent and those who deploy it. This, the authors argue, is the best way forward, rather than diagnosing the many instances of wrong-headed dissent. (shrink)

In a recent issue of this journal, Miloud Belkoniene challenges explanationist accounts of evidential support in two ways. First, he alleges that there are cases that show explanatory virtues are not linked to the truth of hypotheses. Second, he maintains that attempts to show that explanatoriness is relevant to evidential support because it adds to the resiliency of probability functions fail. I contest both of Belkoniene’s claims.

This doctoral dissertation introduces economical unification as a method of analysis and shows how it is applied in dealing with some topics that are central in contemporary philosophy. The method resembles a production line that consists of three successive elements which are interconnected in two stages: -/- Economy > Ontology > Applications -/- In the first stage, an economically unified ontology is explicated by applying the principle of economy, which is an evaluation criterion of alternative ontologies. An economically unified ontology (...) is an empirically sufficient, metaphysically minimal and generally virtuous world-view or a belief system of a human being. In the second stage everything else is dealt with in terms of the ontology. -/- The central argument is that economical unification is a more progressive method than plain conceptual analysis which proceeds in the absence of an economically unified ontology and without the principle of economy. Its progressiveness results from having economy as an unambiguous evaluation criterion, which enables explicating a stable and minimal unified ontology which functions as a common base for all topics, and which enables defining and disambiguating meanings of concepts, thereby facilitating their genuine understanding and resolving problems around them, more efficiently than without an economically unified ontology, and without an unambiguous evaluation criterion that would enable explicating it. -/- The progressiveness of the method is substantiated by applying it in disambiguating some of the central concepts that are dealt with in contemporary philosophy such as time, truth and possibility, and in resolving problems around them. The method works: unification efficiently resolves problems whose central source is disunification itself. In other words, the absence of an economically unified ontology is a central source of problems and ambiguities in contemporary philosophy; in economical unification such problems are resolved by removing their source; their source is removed by replacing the absence of an economically unified ontology by bringing it in the center of the analysis. -/- The holistic method that handles special topics in the top-down order by relying on an understandable world-view, is very different from traditional conceptual analysis that proceeds in the absence of an economically unified ontology, and even in the absence of having it as the goal, i.e., without economy or the degree of virtuousness as the criterion. Moreover, the method was formulated in order to systematically overcome those limitations of plain conceptual analysis which result from their absence. Traditional conceptual analysis proceeds typically by investigating isolated topics and various angles to them, but this does not manage to interconnect the isolated topics and thus does not resolve problems which are due to the isolation itself. -/- It is practically impossible to unify many things by concentrating on one thing only, and the optimal rate of progress in philosophy and in science in general cannot be achieved if the analysis is limited into investigating isolated fragments. In order to achieve the optimal rate of progress, unification is needed in counterbalancing specialization. By looking at many individual pieces together, one can start streamlining them into a functional totality. In this process much is revealed about what kinds of parts are needed in the totality and what are not. The totality consists of interrelated parts, but in economical unification the overall picture of reality guides the development of its parts at least as strongly as the requirements for the parts guide the development of the totality. Economical unification can thus be seen merely as the project getting hold of the natural order where the totality and its parts interact, and whose alternative is to keep on investigating details of isolated parts blindfolded without worrying about their roles in a totality, for all parts that are applicable do have a role in a totality. -/- One can and one should scrutinize any suggested totality and replace it when a better one is available, but not before a better one has been presented. This holds for contemporary paradigmatic theories and for everything that comes after them. This brings the focus to the question of what is the objective meaning of better. The suggested answer is: the more economically unified, the better. The most important starting point in the project of economical unification is the acceptance of the principle of economy or the degree of virtuousness as the evaluation criterion, for without a commonly accepted and acknowledged criterion the path towards consensus is unnecessarily long and painful. The easiest way of accepting economy as the criterion is understanding that its general acceptance would accelerate the progress rate of science, including philosophy: virtuousness as the criterion of theories likely results into more virtuous science, faster than without it. Once we have a common criterion, people no longer have to settle on agreeing to disagree, but people have leaped forward into evaluating which theory is objectively better. Everything can be scrutinised, including economy, but rejecting it without replacing it with a more progressive criterion means that one does not fully appreciate progress. -/- Tämä väitöskirja esittelee ekonomisen unifikaation metodin ja soveltaa sitä filosofian keskeisiin aiheisiin. Metodi muistuttaa tuotantolinjaa mikä koostuu kolmesta peräkkäisestä elementistä jotka liittyvät toisiinsa kahdessa vaiheessa: -/- Ekonomia > Ontologia > Sovellukset -/- Ensimmäisessä vaiheessa eksplikoidaan ekonomisesti unifioitu ontologia soveltamalla ekonomian periaatetta, joka on vaihtoehtoisten ontologioiden arviointikriteeri. Ekonomisesti unifioitu ontologia on empiirisesti riittävä, metafyysisesti minimaalinen ja yleisesti hyveellinen maailmankuva. Toisessa vaiheessa sovellukset käsitellään ontologian avulla. -/- Keskeinen väite on, että ekonominen unifikaatio on edistyksellisempi metodi kuin pelkkä käsitteellinen analyysi mikä etenee ilman ekonomisesti unifioitua ontologiaa, käyttämättä ekonomian periaatetta arviointikriteerinä. Metodin edistyksellisyys juontuu selkeästä ekonomian periaatteesta, mikä mahdollistaa stabiilin, yhtenäisen ja minimaalisen ontologian eksplikoinnin. Ontologia toimii kaikkien sovellusten käsittelyn yhtenäisenä pohjana ja mahdollistaa käsitteiden merkitysten selkeyttämisen ja niiden ympärillä olevien ongelmien ratkaisun, tehokkaammin kuin pelkkä käsitteellinen analyysi ilman yhtenäistä ontologiaa, ja ilman selkeää arviointikriteeriä mikä mahdollistaisi yhtenäisen ontologian eksplikoinnin. -/- Metodin progressiivisuutta alleviivataan soveltamalla sitä. Joitain nykyfilosofian keskeisiä käsiteitä -kuten aika, totuus ja mahdollisuus- selkeytetään ja näitten ympärillä olevia ongelmia ratkaistaan. Metodi toimii: unifikaatio ratkaisee tehokkaasti ongelmia joiden keskinen syy on hajanaisuus. Toisin sanoen, ekonomisesti unifioidun ontologian poissaolo on nykyfilosofian ongelmien ja epämääräisyyksien keskeinen lähde; ekonomisen unifikaation metodissa tällaiset ongelmat ratkaistaan poistamalla niiden lähde; niiden lähde poistetaan korvaamalla ekonomisesti unifioidun ontologian poissaolo tuomalla se analyysin keskelle. -/- Holistinen unifikaation metodi joka käsittelee sovelluksia ylhäältä-alas järjestyksessä, luottamalla intuitiiviseen maailmankuvaan on hyvin erilainen kuin perinteinen käsitteellinen analyysi joka etenee ilman yhtenäistä maailmankuvaa ja jopa tavoittelematta sitä, eli ilman ekonomian periaatetta arviointikriteerinä joka suosii yhtenäistä ja kaikin puolin hyveellistä maailmankuvaa. Ekonominen unifikaatio on luotu jotta näiden puutteesta johtuvista rajoitteista päästäisiin systemaattisesti yli. Perinteinen käsitteellinen analyysi etenee tyypillisesti tutkimalle lukuisia näkökulmia eristyneisiin aiheisiin; tällainen analyysi ei onnistu yhdistämään hajanaisia aiheita eikä täten kykene ratkaisemaan ongelmia joiden syy on hajanaisuus itse. -/- Tieteen ja filosofian optimaalista edistystahtia ei voi saavuttaa rajoittumalla eristyneisiin fragmentteihin. Jotta optimaalinen edistystahti voitaisiin saavuttaa, unifikaatiota tarvitaan spesialisaation vastapainona. Katsomalla monia yksittäisiä osia yhdessä, voi ne saneerata toimivaksi kokonaisuudeksi. Tässä prosessissa selviää minkälaisia osia kokonaisuudessa tarvitaan ja mitä ei. Kokonaisuus koostuu yhteenliittyneistä osista, mutta ekonomisessa unifikaatiossa kokonaismaailmankuva ohjaa osiensa kehitystä vähintään yhtä vahvasti kuin vaatimukset osille ohjaavat kokonaisuuden kehitystä. Ekonomisen unifikaation voi täten nähdä luonnollisen järjestyksen tavoitteluna, missä kokonaisuus ja sen osat ovat interaktiossa, ja jonka vaihtoehto on jatkaa eristyneiden osien yksityiskohtien tutkimista side silmillä, huolehtimatta niiden roolista kokonaisuudessa, vaikka kaikki osat joita voi todellisuudessa käyttää, kuuluvat johonkin kokonaisuuteen. -/- Kaikkia ehdotettuja kokonaisuuksia tulee tarkastella kriittisesti ja korvata ne paremmalla heti kun tällainen on saatavilla, mutta ei ennen kuin tällainen on esitetty. Tämä pätee nykyisiin paradigmaattisiin teorioihin ja kaikkeen mikä tulee niitten jälkeen. Tämä keskittää huomion kysymykseen siitä mikä on sanan parempi objektiivinen merkitys. Ehdotettu vastaus on: mitä enemmän ekonomisesti unifioitu, sitä parempi. Tärkein lähtökohta ekonomisessa unifikaatiossa on luonnollisesti ekonomian periaate tai teoreettisten hyveiden arvostaminen, koska tie konsensukseen on tarpeettoman pitkä ja tuskallinen ilman yleisesti hyväksyttyä ja tiedostettua arviointikriteeriä. Helpoin tapa hyväksyä ekonomian periaate on ymmärtää että sen yleinen hyväksyminen kiihdyttäisi tieteen ja filosofian kehitystahtia: hyveellisyys teorioiden arviointikriteerinä luonnollisesti johtaa hyveellisempään tieteeseen, nopeammin kuin ilman sitä. Yleisen kriteerin nojalla, ihmisten ei tarvitse tyytyä olemaan samaa mieltä siitä että he ovat subjektiivisesti eri mieltä, vaan he ovat harpanneet eteenpäin arvioimaan mikä teoria on objektiivisesti parempi. Ekonomian periaatetta voi kritisoida ja parantaa, mutta sen hylkääminen, korvaamatta sitä edistyksellisemmällä kriteerillä, ei ole edistyksellistä. (shrink)

Review of Beauty and Revolution in Science, by JW McAllister.

Copernicus claimed that his system was preferable in part on the grounds of its superior harmony and simplicity, but left very few hints as to what was meant by these terms. Copernicus’s pupil, Rheticus, was more forthcoming. Kepler, influenced by Rheticus, articulated further the nature of the virtues of harmony and simplicity. I argue that these terms are metaphors for the structural features of the Copernican system that make it more able to effectively exploit the available data. So it is (...) a mistake to conclude that early Copernicans could only offer aesthetic or pragmatic arguments; they could and did offer evidential ones as well. Moreover, the evidential arguments they offered parallel current arguments in the philosophical literature.Keywords: Nicolaus Copernicus; Georg Joachim Rheticus; Johannes Kepler; Simplicity; Bayesianism; Hirotsugu Akaike. (shrink)

Conceptual merits of a theory are important for its acceptance. According to the traditionally held view, theory acceptance depends mainly on empirical support or confirmation. This paper argues that a new theory has also to cohere with already accepted theories to be accepted. In other words, confirmation alone is insufficient for acceptance. Coherence, like simplicity and internal consistency, is a conceptual merit. Coherence between theories, according to this paper, consists in agreement on the main concepts and mutual support. That is, (...) two theories cohere with each other when they do not differ on the principal notions and assumptions and also provide support for each other. (shrink)

Any interesting philosopher’s thoughts contain many prima facie mutually contradicting ideas. Especially if a thinker philosophizes intensely on an extremely wide area of enquiry over a long period, as is the case with Leibniz, advancing many views on each problem, often shifting his position, especially in the context of exchanges of opinions in letters, developing his views without necessarily tying up loose ends, and if in addition the thinker only publishes a minute portion of what he has written, it would (...) be strange, even grotesque, if his writings did not contain conflicting and contradictory strands. What is philosophically interesting, is not so much tracing the exact time of the changes, worthy and difficult as the detective work of historical scholarship involved may be, but realising, through such investigation, the depth and multiple facets of the issue that troubled the philosopher and led him to assert or hold on to those contradictory pairs or groups of ideas. We are sometimes made to realize that the issues throw light on problems that still puzzle us today. (shrink)

Robustness may increase the degree to which the robust result is indirectly confirmed if it is shown to depend on confirmed rather than disconfirmed assumptions. Although increasing the weight with which existing evidence indirectly confirms it in such a case, robustness may also be irrelevant for confirmation, or may even disconfirm. Whether or not it confirms depends on the available data and on what other results have already been established.

I review and challenge the views on simplicity and its role in linguistics put forward by Ludlow. In particular, I criticize the claim that simplicity—in the sense pertinent to science—is nothing more than ease of use or “user-friendliness”, motivated by economy of labor. I argue that Ludlow’s discussion fails to do justice to the diversity of factors that are relevant to simplicity considerations. This, in turn, leads to the neglect of crucial cases in which the rationale for simplification is unmistakably (...) epistemic, as well as instances where simplicity is part of the content of substantive, empirical hypotheses. I illustrate these points with examples from the history of generative linguistics, such as: the shaping influence exerted by simplicity, via its involvement in the notion of “linguistically significant generalization”, its methodological and substantive contribution to the goal of explanatory adequacy, and its central role in the Minimalist Program’s search “beyond explanatory adequacy”. (shrink)

In a short 1997 book entitled Simplicity as Evidence of Truth, the Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne has put forward the following thesis summarily: ‘… for theories rendering equally probable our observational data, fitting equally well with background knowledge, the simplest is most probably true’.

In this paper I compare parametric and nonparametric regression models with the help of a simulated data set. Doing so, I have two main objectives. The first one is to differentiate five concepts of simplicity and assess their respective importance. The second one is to show that the scope of the existing philosophical literature on simplicity and model selection is too narrow because it does not take the nonparametric approach into account, S112–S123, 2002; Forster and Sober in The British Journal (...) for the Philosophy of Science 45, 1–35, 1994; Forster, 2001, in Philosophy of Science 74, 588–600, 2007; Hitchcock and Sober in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55, 1–34, 2004; Mikkelson in Philosophy of Science 73, 440–447, 2006; Baker 2013). More precisely, I point out that a measure of simplicity in terms of the number of adjustable parameters is inadequate to characterise nonparametric models and to compare them with parametric models. This allows me to weed out false claims about what makes a model simpler than another. Furthermore, I show that the importance of simplicity in model selection cannot be captured by the notion of parametric simplicity. ‘Simplicity’ is an umbrella term. While parametric simplicity can be ignored, there are other notions of simplicity that need to be taken into consideration when we choose a model. Such notions are not discussed in the previously mentioned literature. The latter therefore portrays an incomplete picture of why simplicity matters when we choose a model. Overall I support a pluralist view according to which we cannot give a general and interesting justification for the importance of simplicity in science. (shrink)

Models carry the meaning of science. This puts a tremendous burden on the process of model selection. In general practice, models are selected on the basis of their relative goodness of fit to data penalized by model complexity. However, this may not be the most effective approach for selecting models to answer a specific scientific question because model fit is sensitive to all aspects of a model, not just those relevant to the question. Model Structural Adequacy analysis is proposed as (...) a means to select models based on their ability to answer specific scientific questions given the current understanding of the relevant aspects of the real world. (shrink)

Robert Sugden argues that robustness analysis cannot play an epistemic role in grounding model-world relationships because the procedure is only a matter of comparing models with each other. We posit that this argument is based on a view of models as being surrogate systems in too literal a sense. In contrast, the epistemic importance of robustness analysis is easy to explicate if modelling is viewed as extended cognition, as inference from assumptions to conclusions. Robustness analysis is about assessing the reliability (...) of our extended inferences, and when our confidence in these inferences changes, so does our confidence in the results. Furthermore, we argue that Sugden’s inductive account relies tacitly on robustness considerations. (shrink)

This paper supports the literature which argues that derivational robustness can have epistemic import in highly idealized economic models. The defense is based on a particular example from mathematical economic theory, the dynamic Walrasian general equilibrium model. It is argued that derivational robustness first increased and later decreased the credibility of the Walrasian model. The example demonstrates that derivational robustness correctly describes the practices of a particular group of influential economic theorists and provides support for the arguments of philosophers who (...) have offered a general epistemic justification of such practices. (shrink)

Galileo’s telescopic lunar observations, announced in Siderius Nuncius (1610), were a triumph of observational skill and ingenuity. Yet, unlike the Medicean stars, Galileo’s lunar “discoveries” were not especially novel. Indeed, Plutarch had noted the moon’s uneven surface in classical times, and many other renaissance observers had also turned their gaze moonward, even (in Harriot’s case) aided by telescopes of their own. Moreover, what Galileo and his contemporaries saw was colored by the assumptions they already had. Copernicans assumed the moon was (...) a terrestrial satellite, thus Galileo saw its mountains and Kepler “saw” the dwellings of its inhabitants. Aristotelians assumed the moon was a perfect sphere, so they saw differences in density and rarity in the lunar body. Theory corrected the results of observation, so Galileo’s lunar observations, like those that had come before, proved nothing. Yet this failure contained the germ of Galileo’s success, since the Siderius Nuncius gave observation a rhetorical force it did not have before. Observers on all sides set out to see for themselves what Galileo reported. Hence, all parties now had to answer to what they saw, whatever they believed. Thus, the Siderius Nuncius ultimately changed the grounds upon which natural philosophical argument and debate was carried out. In this new empirical arena, the Galilean science would eventually prevail. (shrink)

This entry gives an account of falsifiability both as championed in particular by Karl Popper and also more generally and examines its wider implications for scientific methodology.

Recent literature in philosophy of science has addressed purported notions of explanatory virtues—‘explanatory power’, ‘unification’, and ‘coherence’. In each case, a probabilistic relation between a theory and data is said to measure the power of an explanation, or degree of unification, or degree of coherence. This essay argues that the measures do not capture cases that are paradigms of scientific explanation, that the available psychological evidence indicates that the measures do not capture judgements of explanatory power, and, finally, that the (...) measures do not provide useful methods for selecting hypotheses. 1. Introduction2. Some Proposed Measures of Explanatory Virtues3. Descriptive Inadequacy3.1 Excellent but false explanations3.2 Causal explanation4. Psychological Inadequacy5. Finding the Truth6. Conclusion. (shrink)

Sustainability is a catch-all term in need of more tangible, yet qualitatively measureable operationalisations. This paper discusses the relevance of robustness as an image of sustainability. We argue that robustness has conceptual advantages against sustainability because it is embedded in system thinking and gives direction to operationalisations of sustainable development more than sustainability ever can. We consider conceptualisations of robustness in three TransForum projects which were set up to develop the concept of robustness in agricultural innovation. In these projects, robustness (...) is conceptualised from an engineering perspective in relation to system efficiency and control. We suggest a frame of reference based on two organising principles, and suggest that other conceptualisations of robustness should be taken into account when operationalising sustainable development through robustness. (shrink)

The impression that agricultural systems are increasingly vulnerable to unwanted environmental fluctuations has created an urge for robustness in agriculture. However, the meaning of robustness and its relation to sustainable agriculture remain unclear. Considering two related concepts, i.e., vulnerability and stability, this article analyses different conceptualizations of robustness and their applications in agricultural production systems. It is argued that robustness should not be seen as a clear-cut system feature, and that it only exists in the absence of stability and by (...) the grace of disruptions that could possibly harm the system structurally or functionally. The article introduces the term robustness state to refer to an intermediate sphere between vulnerable and stable, in which a system's capacity to cope with both ordinary and occasional disturbances is optimized. We distinguish three robustness states that differ in the degree by which systems are allowed or inclined to follow environmental changes: a state of avoiding exposure, a state of inherent resistance, and a state of response and recovery after being disrupted. In addition to cardinal questions inevitably related to robustness, namely the specification of both system and perturbation, this article discusses the issue in what way a system feature is robust. This issue may help to clarify the actual meaning given to robustness and appears particularly relevant when discussing the desirability of different strategies to cope with aspects of vulnerability. Different rationales behind recent calls to make agricultural systems more robust are discussed with a view to agricultural developments related to sustainability of agricultural practices and the questioned necessity of external control measures. (shrink)