Synthese 195 (6):2761-2793 (2018)
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Abstract |
There are at least twelve major virtues of good theories: evidential accuracy, causal adequacy, explanatory depth, internal consistency, internal coherence, universal coherence, beauty, simplicity, unification, durability, fruitfulness, and applicability. These virtues are best classified into four classes: evidential, coherential, aesthetic, and diachronic. Each virtue class contains at least three virtues that sequentially follow a repeating pattern of progressive disclosure and expansion. Systematizing the theoretical virtues in this manner clarifies each virtue and suggests how they might have a coordinated and cumulative role in theory formation and evaluation across the disciplines—with allowance for discipline specific modification. An informal and flexible logic of theory choice is in the making here. Evidential accuracy, according to my systematization, is not a largely isolated trait of good theories, as some have made it out to be. Rather, it bears multifaceted relationships, constituting significant epistemic entanglements, with other theoretical virtues.
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DOI | 10.1007/s11229-017-1355-6 |
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References found in this work BETA
Inference to the Best Explanation.Peter Lipton - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2):421-423.
How to Tell When Simpler, More Unified, or Less A D Hoc Theories Will Provide More Accurate Predictions.Malcolm R. Forster & Elliott Sober - 1994 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (1):1-35.
The Best Explanation: Criteria for Theory Choice.Paul R. Thagard - 1978 - Journal of Philosophy 75 (2):76-92.
View all 47 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Are Algorithms Value-Free? Feminist Theoretical Virtues in Machine Learning.Gabbrielle Johnson - forthcoming - Journal Moral Philosophy.
Overcoming the modal/amodal dichotomy of concepts.Christian Michel - 2020 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 20 (4):655-677.
View all 29 citations / Add more citations
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