Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T21:21:40.843Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On a Bayesian Analysis of the Virtue of Unification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Abstract

In three recent papers, Wayne Myrvold (1996, 2003) and Timothy McGrew (2003) have developed Bayesian accounts of the virtue of unification. In his account, McGrew demonstrates that, ceteris paribus, a hypothesis that unifies its evidence will have a higher posterior probability than a hypothesis that does not. Myrvold, on the other hand, offers a specific measure of unification that can be applied to individual hypotheses. He argues that one must account for this measure in order to calculate correctly the degree of confirmation that a hypothesis receives from its evidence. Using the probability calculus, I prove that the two accounts of unification require the same underlying inequality; thus, McGrew and Myrvold have accounted for unification in fundamentally identical probabilistic terms. I then evaluate five putative counterexamples to this account and show that these examples, far from disqualifying it, serve to clarify our notion of unification by disentangling it from a host of other concepts.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I owe special thanks to Elliott Sober, Wayne Myrvold, and especially Timothy McGrew, for helpful correspondence.

References

Lange, Marc (2004), “Bayesianism and Unification: A Reply to Wayne Myrvold”, Bayesianism and Unification: A Reply to Wayne Myrvold 71:205215.Google Scholar
McGrew, Timothy (2003), “Confirmation, Heuristics, and Explanatory Reasoning”, Confirmation, Heuristics, and Explanatory Reasoning 54:553567.Google Scholar
Myrvold, Wayne C. (1996), “Bayesianism and Diverse Evidence”, Bayesianism and Diverse Evidence 63:661665.Google Scholar
Myrvold, Wayne C. (2003), “A Bayesian Account of the Virtue of Unification”, A Bayesian Account of the Virtue of Unification 70:399423.Google Scholar
Sober, Elliott (2003), “Two Uses of Unification”, in Stadler, Friedrich (ed.), The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism: Re-evaluation and Future Perspectives. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 205216.10.1007/0-306-48214-2_17CrossRefGoogle Scholar