Political science and economic science . . . make use of the same language, the same mode of abstraction, the same instruments of thought and the same method of reasoning. (Black 1998, 354) Proponents as well as opponents of economics imperialism agree that imperialism is a matter of unification; providing a unified framework for social scientific analysis. Uskali Mäki distinguishes between derivational and ontological unification and argues that the latter should serve as a constraint for the former. We explore whether, (...) in the case of rational-choice political science, self-interested behavior can be seen as a common causal element and solution concepts as the common derivational element, and whether the former constraints the use of the latter. We find that this is not the case. Instead, what is common to economics and rational-choice political science is a set of research heuristics and a focus on institutions with similar structures and forms of organization. (shrink)

It's widely supposed that unification is an epistemic virtue: the degree to which a theory is unified contributes to its overall confirmation. However, this supposition has consequences which haven't been noted, and which undermine the leading accounts of unification. For, given Hempel's equivalence condition, any epistemic virtue must be such that logically equivalent theories must equally well unify any body of evidence, and logically equivalent bodies of evidence must be equally well unified by any theory. Yet the leading accounts of (...) unification in Bayesian terms, or those in terms of argument patterns, cannot satisfy these constraints conditions. The reason for this runs deep: these accounts of unification make unity depend on factors that vary between equivalent theories: the probabilistic relations of their components, or their relations to argument patterns. The solution is to abandon such accounts and instead adopt an account of unity based on worldly relations such as causation, rather than inferential relations. Such an account effortlessly satisfies the equivalence conditions, and so may describe the epistemic virtue of unity. (shrink)

This paper discusses two senses in which a hypothesis may be said to unify evidence. One is the ability of the hypothesis to increase the mutual information of a set of evidence statements; the other is the ability of the hypothesis to explain commonalities in observed phenomena by positing a common origin for them. On Bayesian updating, it is only mutual information unification that contributes to the incremental support of a hypothesis by the evidence unified. This poses a challenge for (...) the view that explanation is a confirmatory virtue that contributes to such incremental support; its advocates must ground it in some relevant difference between humans and a Bayesian agent. (shrink)

I propose a measure of dependence that relates a set of items of evidence to an hypothesis H and to H's negation. I dub this measure relative consilience and propose a method for using it as a correction factor for dependence among items of evidence. Using RC, I examine collusion and testimonial independence, the value of diverse evidence, and the strengthening of otherwise weak or non-existent cases. RC provides a valuable tool for formal epistemologists interested in analyzing cumulative case arguments.

This paper considers the importance of unification in the context of developing scientific theories. I argue that unifying hypotheses are not valuable simply because they are supported by multiple lines of evidence. Instead, they can be valuable because they guide experimental research in different domains in such a way that the results from those experiments inform the scope of the theory being developed. I support this characterization by appealing to the early development of quantum theory. I then draw some comparisons (...) with discussions of robustness reasoning. (shrink)

This paper considers the importance of unification in the context of developing scientific theories. I argue that unifying hypotheses are not valuable simply because they are supported by multiple lines of evidence. Instead, they can be valuable because they guide experimental research in different domains in such a way that the results from those experiments inform the scope of the theory being developed. I support this characterization by appealing to the early development of quantum theory. I then draw some comparisons (...) with discussions of robustness reasoning. (shrink)

In this article, we reflect on the use of formal methods in the philosophy of science. These are taken to comprise not just methods from logic broadly conceived, but also from other formal disciplines such as probability theory, game theory, and graph theory. We explain how formal modelling in the philosophy of science can shed light on difficult problems in this domain.

Many have argued that unified theories ought to be pursued wherever possible. We deny this on the basis of social-epistemological and decision-theoretic considerations. Consequently, those seeking a more ubiquitous role for unification must either attend to the scientific community’s social structure in greater detail than has been the case, and/or radically revise their conception of unification.

We discuss two influential views of unification: mutual information unification (MIU) and common origin unification (COU). We propose a simple probabilistic measure for COU and compare it with Myrvold’s (2003, 2017) probabilistic measure for MIU. We then explore how well these two measures perform in simple causal settings. After highlighting several deficiencies, we propose causal constraints for both measures. A comparison with explanatory power shows that the causal version of COU is one step ahead in simple causal settings. However, slightly (...) increasing the complexity of the underlying causal structure shows that both measures can easily disagree with explanatory power. The upshot of this is that even sophisticated causally constrained measures for unification ultimately fail to track explanatory relevance. This shows that unification and explanation are not as closely related as many philosophers thought. (shrink)

Schurz (Synthese 164:201–234, 2008) proposed a justification of creative abduction on the basis of the Reichenbachian principle of the common cause. In this paper we take up the idea of combining creative abduction with causal principles and model instances of successful creative abduction within a Bayes net framework. We identify necessary conditions for such inferences and investigate their unificatory power. We also sketch several interesting applications of modeling creative abduction Bayesian style. In particular, we discuss use-novel predictions, confirmation, and the (...) problem of underdetermination in the context of abductive inferences. (shrink)

This paper aims to flesh out the celebrated notion of reflective equilibrium within a probabilistic framework for epistemic rationality. On the account developed here, an agent's attitudes are in reflective equilibrium when there is a certain sort of harmony between the agent's credences, on the one hand, and what the agent accepts, on the other hand. Somewhat more precisely, reflective equilibrium is taken to consist in the agent accepting, or being prepared to accept, all and only claims that follow from (...) a maximally comprehensive theory that is more probable than any other such theory. Drawing on previous work, the paper shows that when an agent is in reflective equilibrium in this sense, the set of claims they accept or are prepared to accept is bound to be logically consistent and closed under logical implication. The paper also argues that this account can explain various features of philosophical argumentation in which the notion of reflective equilibrium features centrally, such as the emphasis on evaluating philosophical theories holistically rather than in a piecemeal fashion. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the relationship between Inference to the Best Explanation and Bayesianism, both of which are well-known accounts of the nature of scientific inference. In Sect. 2, I give a brief overview of Bayesianism and IBE. In Sect. 3, I argue that IBE in its most prominently defended forms is difficult to reconcile with Bayesianism because not all of the items that feature on popular lists of “explanatory virtues”—by means of which IBE ranks competing explanations—have confirmational import. (...) Rather, some of the items that feature on these lists are “informational virtues”—properties that do not make a hypothesis \ more probable than some competitor \ given evidence E, but that, roughly-speaking, give that hypothesis greater informative content. In Sect. 4, I consider as a response to my argument a recent version of compatibilism which argues that IBE can provide further normative constraints on the objectively correct probability function. I argue that this response does not succeed, owing to the difficulty of defending with any generality such further normative constraints. Lastly, in Sect. 5, I propose that IBE should be regarded, not as a theory of scientific inference, but rather as a theory of when we ought to “accept” H, where the acceptability of H is fixed by the goals of science and concerns whether H is worthy of commitment as research program. In this way, IBE and Bayesianism, as I will show, can be made compatible, and thus the Bayesian and the proponent of IBE can be friends. (shrink)

Probabilistic dependence and independence are among the key concepts of Bayesian epistemology. This paper focuses on the study of one specific quantitative notion of probabilistic dependence. More specifically, section 1 introduces Keynes’s coefficient of dependence and shows how it is related to pivotal aspects of scientific reasoning such as confirmation, coherence, the explanatory and unificatory power of theories, and the diversity of evidence. The intimate connection between Keynes’s coefficient of dependence and scientific reasoning raises the question of how Keynes’s coefficient (...) of dependence is related to truth, and how it can be made fruitful for epistemological considerations. This question is answered in section 2 of the paper. Section 3 outlines the consequences the results have for epistemology and the philosophy of science from a Bayesian point of view. (shrink)

Proponents of IBE claim that the ability of a hypothesis to explain a range of phenomena in a unifying way contributes to the hypothesis’s credibility in light of these phenomena. I propose a Bayesian justification of this claim that reveals a hitherto unnoticed role for explanatory unification in evaluating the plausibility of a hypothesis: considerations of explanatory unification enter into the determination of a hypothesis’s prior by affecting its ‘explanatory coherence’, that is, the extent to which the hypothesis offers mutually (...) cohesive explanations of various phenomena. (shrink)

Erklärungstheoretisch bestimmter Kohärenzbegriff.

In this dissertation I consider the problem of external world skepticism and attempts at providing an argument to the best explanation against it. In chapter one I consider several different ways of formulating the crucial skeptical argument, settling on an argument that centers on the question of whether we're justified in believing propositions about the external world. I then consider and reject several options for getting around this issue which I take to be inadequate. I finally conclude that the best (...) option available to us at the moment is to argue that the antiskeptical view is the best explanation of our ordinary experiences In chapter two I argue that, if we hope to ground what counts as defending antiskepticism in common sense, there is an argument against the possibility of ever knowing one has succeeded in defending antiskepticism. After showing that common sense is no place to look in setting a goal for our antiskeptical project, I present the view that what will be crucial to settling on our antiskeptical goal is coming to a successful analysis of the nature of physical objects. I suggest some minimal criteria that must be met by a view in order to be antiskeptical based on our intuitions about core skeptical cases, but acknowledge that a fully successful response to external world skepticism will require the antiskeptic to engage in some much more difficult analysis. In chapter three I consider various views of the nature of explanation and conclude, tentatively, that explanation as it interests the antiskeptic is fundamentally causal. In chapter four I consider and reject some of the core views on which best explanation facts are so fundamental that a project of attempting to vindicate probabilistically the virtues which make explanations epistemically good. In this chapter I show that views which analyze justification in terms of best explanation factors fail. In chapter five I attempt to vindicate the various explanatory virtues probabilistically. In doing so I attempt to express or translate the various explanatory virtues in terms of probabilities in order to show that having those virtues makes a view at least prima facie more probable. In chapters six and seven I explain and evaluate the various arguments to the best explanation against skepticism present in current philosophical literature. I attempt to show that extant arguments fail to appreciate the virtues possessed by classical skeptical scenarios. In chapter eight I briefly consider some options that may be open to the antiskeptic moving forward. All routes forward contain considerable obstacles, but there are some fruitful areas of research to pursue. (shrink)