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Theoretical Simplicity and Defeasibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Evan Fales
Evan Fales*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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Abstract

Theoretical simplicity is difficult to characterize, and evidently can depend upon a number of distinct factors. One such desirable characteristic is that the laws of a theory have relatively few “counterinstances” whose accommodation requires the invocation of a ceteris paribus condition and ancillary explanation. It is argued that, when one theory is reduced to another, such that the laws of the second govern the behavior of the parts of the entities in the domain of the first, there is a characteristic gain in simplicity of the sort mentioned: while I see no way of quantitatively measuring the “amount” of defeasibility of the laws of a theory, microreduction can be shown to decrease that “amount.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 273 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1978

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