Workshop on Theoretical Virtues in Theory-Choice

It is a well-known fact that theoretical virtues such as consistency, unifying power, simplicity, coherence, fertility, and even elegance and beauty play an important role in scientific theory-choice. Philosophers are divided over how to interpret this. Early scientific realists held that some theoretical virtues are epistemic virtues, but this view never gained wide acceptance among philosophers. Instead, theoretical virtues have long been treated as pragmatic virtues. Recent developments, however, warrant renewed attention to theoretical virtues. In the model selection literature, for instance, it has been argued that the theoretical virtue of simplicity grounds the predictive power of models. It is furthermore claimed that simplicity needs to be traded-off against descriptive ‘fit’. That different theoretical virtues need to be traded-off against each other is course also a claim made by T.S. Kuhn. Kuhn furthermore held that the weight assigned to each virtue in theory-choice very much depends on personal preferences, rendering theory-choice a highly subjective matter. A recent application of Arrow’s impossibility theorem to the problem of theory-choice has invited even less optimistic conclusions than these. But is theory-choice in science really as irrational as these considerations seem to imply? Might the traditional realist view about theoretical virtues being truth-conducive be resurrected in any way? Should our theories of confirmation not reflect the import of theoretical virtues in the practice of science? How can notoriously vague virtues such as simplicity, coherence, and fertility be made more precise? These are just some of the questions this workshop will try to elucidate.

The workshop is organized by Samuel Schindler (Aarhus), Giora Hon (Haifa/Konstanz), and James McAllister (Leiden). The workshop has been kindly sponsored by the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz. 

The conference website can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/TVTC2012.

Please send any queries to [email protected].