Technical notes on a theory of simplicity

Synthese 109 (2):281 - 289 (1996)
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Abstract

Recently Samuel Richmond, generalizing Nelson Goodman, has proposed a measure of the simplicity of a theory that takes into account not only the polymorphicity of its models but also their internal homogeneity. By this measure a theory is simple if small subsets of its models exhibit only a few distinct (i.e., non-isomorphic) structures. Richmond shows that his measure, unlike that given by Goodman's theory of simplicity of predicates, orders the order relations in an intuitively satisfactory manner. In this note I formalize his presentation and suggest an improvement designed to overcome certain technical difficulties.

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Fact, Fiction, and Forecast.Nelson Goodman - 1965 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
The Structure of Appearance.Nelson Goodman - 1951 - Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.
Model Theory.Gebhard Fuhrken - 1976 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 41 (3):697-699.
Safety, strength, simplicity.Nelson Goodman - 1961 - Philosophy of Science 28 (2):150-151.

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