Theoretical Virtues: Do Scientists Think What Philosophers Think They Ought to Think?

Abstract

Theoretical virtues play an important role in the acceptance and belief of theories in science and philosophy. Philosophers have well-developed views on which virtues ought and ought not to influence one’s acceptance and belief. But what do scientists think? This paper presents the results of a quantitative study with scientists from the natural and social sciences and compared their views to those held by philosophers. Some of the main results are: (i) there is broad agreement across all three groups about how the virtues are to be ranked, (ii) all groups agree that unification is an epistemic virtue and there is even some evidence that simplicity is viewed as epistemic by scientists, (iii) all groups consider syntactic parsimony as more important than ontological parsimony, and (iv) all groups consider unifying power as independent from simplicity.

“Scie-losophy” a teaching and learning framework for the reconciliation of the P4C and the scientific method

“…The theoretical virtues make up the trait that shows that the theory is true or worth accepting [48] . Thus, while using the scientific method, students are practicing theoretical virtues, such as consistency, accuracy, simplicity, unifying power, and fertility [ 48 , 49 ]. Members of the scientific community are required to clarify on what basis they have accepted or rejected a scientific claim.…”

How Do Scientists Perceive the Relationship Between Ethics and Science? A Pilot Study of Scientists’ Appeals to Values

“…While there has been considerable normative and philosophical work on values in science, empirical studies of what scientists think of the role of values in science are more limited. While there has been some discussion (O’Rourke & Crowley 2013 ; Robinson et al, 2019 ; Beebe and Delsén, 2020 ; Schindler, 2022 ) about the relative importance scientists place on different, mostly epistemic, values, few focus on both epistemic and non-epistemic factors. 3 However, there is evidence that some scientists recognize non-epistemic values as having a place in scientific inquiry.…”