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Better Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Howard Darmstadter
Howard Darmstadter*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts at Boston
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Abstract

It is argued that a better theory neither (I) proves better at enabling us to realize our goals, nor (II) enables us to make more accurate predictions than a worse theory. (I) fails because it, tacitly, erroneously assumes, in talking of our goals, that individual preferences for theories can be aggregated into a social preference ordering; (II) fails because it cannot distinguish between important and unimportant predictions. Neither of these failures can be patched up by appealing to the notion of a true theory. The conclusion is that we as yet possess no adequate understanding of the relationships among theoretical progress, goal realization, and predictive accuracy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , March 1975 , pp. 20 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Howard Cohen, Jonathan Rubinstein, Peter Unger, Lewis Wurgaft, and the referee of Philosophy of Science for their comments and criticisms.

References

REFERENCES

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