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Scientific Inference and the Pursuit of Fame: A Contractarian Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jesús P. Zamora Bonilla
Jesús P. Zamora Bonilla*
Affiliation:
UNED, and Fundación Urrutia Elejalde. Spain
*
Send requests for reprints to the author; Depto. Lógica y Filosofía de la Ciencia, UNED, 28071 Madrid, Spain; jpzb@fsof.uned.es.
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Abstract

Methodological norms are seen as rules defining a competitive game, and it is argued that rational recognition-seeking scientists can reach a collective agreement about which specific norms serve better their individual interests, especially if the choice is made ‘under a veil of ignorance’, i.e., before knowing what theory will be proposed by each scientist. Norms for theory assessment are distinguished from norms for theory choice (or inference rules), and it is argued that pursuit of recognition only affects this second type of rule. An inference rule similar to ‘eliminative induction’ is defended on the basis of such a possible agreement. According to this contractarian approach, both the explanation and the justification of scientific norms only need to refer to the preferences of individual scientists, without assuming the existence of ‘collective’ points of view.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , June 2002 , pp. 300 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Financial support for this reseach was received from Fundación Urrutia Elejalde, from The Spanish Government's DGICYT research project PB98–0495-C08–01, and from the Department of Economics of the Universidad Carlos III. Previous versions of this paper were presented in the Seminar of Economic Methodology of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (November 1999), and in the Seminar ‘Theoretization and Experimentation in Economics’ (Rovaniemi, Finland, December 1999); my thanks to Juan Carlos García-Bermejo, Uskali Mäki and Timo Tammi for inviting me to take part in them. Hepful comments were made by Francisco Álvarez, José Ramón Álvarez-Rendueles, Salvador Barberá, Miguel Beltrán, José Luis Ferreira, Shaun Hargreaves Heap, Frank Hindriks, Javier Ruiz-Castillo, David Teira, and especially Juan Urrutia and two anonymous referees.

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