Relatório Final de Atividades (PIBIC / CNPq)

A STUDY OF EXPLANATORY VIRTUES

1 Informações de Identificação
Declaramos que o presente documento consiste no relatório final de atividades de nossa pesquisa de Iniciação
Científica pelo programa PIBIC do CNPq, processo de número 118051/2018-0. A pesquisa foi realizada pelo
aluno Daniel Credico de Coimbra (RA 155077) enquanto foi aluno de graduação em Filosofia no Instituto de
Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH) da Universidade Estaudal de Campinas (UNICAMP). A pesquisa foi
orientada em todos os momentos pelo professor e pesquisador Marco Antonio Caron Ruffino, integrante do
Departamento de Filosofia do IFCH. A vigência original consistiu no período de 01/08/2018 até 31/07/2019 mas,
em virtude da admissão do aluno ao Programa de Pós-Graduação (PPG) em Filosofia do IFCH e do recebimento
de uma bolsa, requerimos o cancelamento de nossa bolsa PIBIC/CNPq após o período de 01/03/2019.

Declaração. Esta pesquisa trata de uma discussão primariamente conduzida em uma bibliografia anglófona.
Sendo assim, tendo como objetivo de capacitar o aluno a participar neste debate, todo o material redigido durante
o período de pesquisa foi preparado em inglês. Em virtude da articulação das análises principais do aluno e dos
autores comentados terem sido feitas em inglês, o presente relatório também estará redigido em inglês a partir da
próxima seção, a fim de evitar complicações oriundas da tradução de um debate para uma língua no qual ele ainda
não é amplamente realizado.

2 Introdução (Introduction)
Português. Uma inferência não-dedutiva amplamente empregada na vida comum, nas ciências empíricas, e na
filosofia é a Inferência à Melhor Explicação (em inglês, IBE). Esta inferência mobiliza uma certa classificação de
hipóteses explicativas e infere pela verdade da hipótese que estiver melhor classificada. Esta classificação é
parcialmente feita em termos do poder explicativo da hipótese em questão. Poder explicativo é uma medida de (a)
o quão completamente um alvo explicativo é explicado e (b) o quão variado é o domínio de fenômenos sendo
explicados. Todavia, é comum se argumentar que o poder explicativo de uma hipótese não é forte indicativo de
que ela é verdadeira. Isto é problemático para a IBE. Ela será uma inferência melhor na medida em que houver
forte correlação positiva entre ser a melhor explicação e ser a verdadeira explicação. Sendo assim, classificar
hipóteses de acordo com eu seu poder explicativo torna a IBE inferencialmente fraca. Esta é uma objeção cética
contra a IBE. Em resposta, defensores da IBE defenderam que hipóteses podem ter outras características, –
chamadas de virtudes explanatórias, – que devem ser levadas em contas na classificação. Virtudes explanatórias
não contribuem para o poder explanatório de uma explicação, mas indicam que uma explicação é verdadeira. A
IBE se tornaria inferencialmente forte caso a melhor explicação fosse aquela que melhor combinasse poder
explanatório e virtude explanatória. Nesta pesquisa, almejamos entender e avaliar duas supostas virtudes explana-
tórias: simplicidade e ausência de elementos ad hoc.

English. A non-deductive inference widely employed in daily life, in the empirical sciences, and in philosophy is
the Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). This inference makes use of a certain ranking of explanatory
hypotheses and infers the truth of the one best ranked. Such classification is made partially in terms of the
hypotheses’ explanatory power. Explanatory power is a measure of (a) how completely a hypothesis explains an
explanatory target and (b) how varied are the phenomena constituting that explanatory target. However, it is
common to hold that having high explanatory power is not a reliable sign of being true. This is troubling for IBE.
It will be a better inference in proportion to the strength of the positive correlation between being the best
explanation and being the true explanation. As such, ranking hypotheses according to explanatory power renders
IBE inferentially weak. This amounts to a skeptical attack on IBE. In response, defenders of IBE have argued that
hypotheses can bear other properties, – entitled explanatory virtues, – which must be considered in the ranking.
Explanatory virtues do not contribute to a hypothesis’s explanatory power, but rather indicate that it is a true
explanation. IBE would become inferentially strong if the best explanation were that which best combined
explanatory power and explanatory virtue. Our research purports to understand and evaluate two alleged
theoretical virtues: simplicity and non ad hocness.

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3 Materials and Methods
Science studies is an interdisciplinary research field that aims to understand the methodology and psychology of
scientific practice as well as the sociology, politics, and economics of scientific communities. The philosophy of
science is a theoretical approach to science studies. Our work fits squarely into the philosophy of science. We
have aimed to find theoretical grounds to accept or reject simplicity and non ad hocness as indications of a
theory’s truth. As such, our methodology consisted mainly of reading, discussion, and armchair thought.

This research is placed into science studies because simplicity and non ad hocness are appealed to in the selection
of scientific hypotheses among empirically similar or equivalent rivals. The student has read articles and books
written by scientists and by philosophers of science, as listed in our bibliography. Often the authorts had a
background in some specific science, such as statistics, physics, and biology.

Aiming to gather perspectives from practicing scientists, the student signed up for the ‘Exatas’ subdivision of the
XXVI Congresso de Iniciação Científica da Unicamp and presented his early reasoning on the subject in 2018. At
the time of subscription, the student had not yet received a research grant, and therefore signed up as a voluntary
researcher. His official presentation will be at the XXVII Congresso de Iniciação Científica da Unicamp in 2019.
The student has also performed presentations in epistemology and the philosophy of science at the 4a Semana de
Filosofia da UFABC and at the XXI Encontro Nacional de Pesquisa em Graduação em Filosofia da USP.

4 Final Results
Research objectives. Our research objective consisted of closely reading all the material in the primary
bibliography. Our objective was not to reproduce the reasoning inherent in this material, but rather to synthesize
its best ideas into a philosophical assessment of our own creation. Our original research objective was to produce
an assessment of four explanatory virtues: simplicity, non adhocness, coherence, and unification. It has proven
impossible to do high-quality work on these four topics in the short period we had to carry out our research. As
disclaimed above, due to the student’s admission into a post-graduate research program (with scholarship), our
research will be cut short after a semester – rather than the usual full year. As such, our research has focused on
the first two topics: simplicity and non adhocness.

Research results. Our topic is the reliability of simplicity and non ad hocness as criteria for theory choice, given
the aim of choosing true theories. We surveyed descriptive theories of simplicity and non ad hocness. We also
surveyed defenses and attacks on their reliability. We had no strong prior expectations about the verdict of such
defenses and attacks. The results of our studies are two-fold. On the descriptive side, we have obtained an
interesting descriptive categorization of kinds of ad hocness, but we have concluded that there is no precise
definition of simplicity. The notion seems to be better wielded by scientists intuitively rather than formally.
On the reliability side, we have obtained moderate defenses of both kinds of appeal. Simplicity is not a guide
to truth, but it is an effective procedure for surveying the landscape of possible theories more effectively. As such,
research programs which adopt the simplest empirically adequate theories are more efficient truth-seekers. Non ad
hocness is indeed correlated with falsity and should be distrusted, but an ad hoc theory can be vindicated on the
long-run. The reason is that ad hocness is correlated with unwise theory-building. Scientists who construct ad hoc
theories are generally engaged in motivated reasoning, which cripples their good sense as hypothesizers. This can
lead them to introduce, for example, bad idealizations and postulates which cohere badly with our background
knowledge and expectations (even if such postulates are logically consistent with such background). However,
careful armchair scrutiny of an ad hoc theory may reveal that it has not been badly built after all, so that the
theory’s ad hocness becomes irrelevant. Other times, its quality is a theory cannot be examined from the armchair.
Still, the theory’s true merits can be revealed in experimental practice, in which case the theory’s ad hocness once
more becomes irrelevant. We now turn to a detailed discussion of these subjects.

4.1 Preliminary discussion.

Explanatory virtues, also called ‘theoretical virtues’, are a certain class of properties which have played a certain
role in scientific theory choice. They have been appealed to in explanatory justifications of scientific theories.
They are properties which made scientists prefer some explanations over others despite their empirical
equivalence (DOUVEN, 2018). There is a dispute about whether explanatory virtues are compatible with

2
empiricism. (See HEMPEL, 1965: 101-19.) We will expand upon this in the next sub-section (‘Definition of
empirical fit’).
Explanatory virtues include simplicity, non ad hocness, external coherence, unification, elegance,
fruitfulness, naturalness, and non-fine-tuning. The latter two are appealed to especially by contemporary
physicists.1 The physicist Richard Dawid, in the context of discussing the justification of the controversial string
theory, has added to the list (a) the discovery of new potential explanatory connections between previously known
phenomena and (b) mathematical analogy to previous successful theories. (See DAWID, 2013.)
Some provide ‘explanatory virtue’ with an extensional definition. The term will merely denote the above set
of properties: those which have been appealed to in a certain way in scientific practice. We will stick to this usage.
Nothing of theoretical import hinges on this choice of usage. Given that definition, it is only possible to discover
that an alleged explanatory virtue is not really so in case it is discovered that they are not really appealed to by
scientists.
Now, scientists appealed to these properties for a reason. It was due to the belief that (i) they indicated that an
explanation is correct or, at least, that (ii) their lack indicated that an explanation is incorrect. We will refer to both
‘i’ and ‘ii’ as truth-indication. (It is possible that an explanatory virtue is truth-indicative only within a certain
context or, perhaps, only when present to a certain degree. For example, simplicity may be truth-indicative while
too much simplicity is not.) Additionally, these properties were conceived as enhancing a theory’s explanatory
power. For example, simple explanations would not just be more likely to be true, but also more explanatory. That
is why they came to be called explanatory virtues rather than just, say, theoretical virtues.
Yet, it is possible is for explanatory virtues to be discovered to be neither truth-indicative nor enhancive of
explanatory power. This is just an artifact of how we have chosen to employ terms. Again, no theoretical
consequence depends on such choice of usage.
It should be noted that, if an explanatory virtue fails to be truth-indicative or explanatory, it may still remain
as a desideratum for our scientific theories for other reasons – reasons of a non-epistemic nature. For example,
simplicity plausibly yields pragmatic benefits, such as aiding teaching and research. As we will see, there are
reasons to believe that such pragmatic benefits are the best that the appeal to simplicity can provide.
For epistemologists, the interesting fact about explanatory virtues is that they are supposed to be truth-
indicative elements over and above the strict adequacy of a theory to the empirical data. They are put forth as
criteria for theory choice in science (THAGARD, 1978). If they are justified criteria, then the strict empiricist
would be incorrect to choose theories based solely on how they relate to observations. The discussion on
explanatory virtues, therefore, touches on quite fundamental topics in epistemology. In order to bring out what is
at stake in this debate, we will define the criterion of theory choice employed by the empiricist. We will call it
empirical fit.

Rough definition of empirical fit. Let us say that a theory has empirical fit to the degree that it either entails or
probabilistically implies our total empirical data about the domain to which the theory pertains. 2 Empirical fit is
very plausibly an indication that a theory is true. The strength of that indication depends on the breadth and
variety of the data, as well as on the tightness of the fit.
For epistemic purposes, empirical fit is considered by many as a quite blunt measure. The reason is that it is
insensitive to four plausibly epistemically relevant factors:

i. How the theory in question works internally. Two such internal features are a theory’s simplicity and a
theory’s internal unity. These aspects are not easy to define;

ii. What psychological and sociological processes led to the generation of the theory. This is part of what
determines whether some theory is ad hoc;

1
See HOSSENFELDER (2018). Non-fine-tuning obtains when a theory does not contain free parameters which allow for
the emergence of complex systems, and hence life, only within a narrow range. Free parameters are those for which the
theory does not determine a precise value. Naturalness obtains when dimensionless ratios between physical constants are
close to one. The exception is when such ratio radically deviates from one but for a reason provided by the theory itself.
Then the theory is not said to be unnatural.
2
Empirical fit is a much less demanding feature than the criterion of empirical adequacy in VAN FRAASSEN (1980).
That requires empirical fit to all possible observational data. There is no empiricist procedure to verify whether a given
theory has empirical adequacy. Verifying for empirical fit is, comparatively, a trivial enterprise.

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 iii. How the theory relates to our background knowledge. It may be consistent with our other theories, but
implausible in the light of them. If so, then it lacks (external) coherence;

iv. What explanatory relation the theory bears to the data. Can the theory explain well each datum in our
observations? Can it explain many different kinds of data?

It is common for two scientific theories to share empirical fit. Such theories are said to be empirically equivalent.
The strict empiricist then has no resources with which to choose between them. When this occurs, it is said that
theory is underdetermined by data. LYCAN (2002: §2) takes it that the fundamental question about scientific
theory choice is whether there is more to a theory’s epistemic justification than just the support it obtains from
being empirically fit. That is, does our evidence peer further than mere empirical fit? Many scientists have had the
hunch that, when underdetermination occurs, the criteria i-iv are reliable guides for theory choice. One would be
epistemically justified to favor, among empirically fit theories, those that respect these criteria. Some have argued
that, in this case, the scientifically anti-realist argument from underdetermination would be defeated
(CHAKRAVARTTY 2017: §3.2).
We will argue that non ad hocness and simplicity are indeed truth-conducive. Below, we have dedicated a
section to each of these two explanatory virtues. We begin by discussing their definition and proceed to construct
a defense. Our defense of them obtains much more modest results than would be desired by enthusiasts of IBE.
Our approach is a posteriori: We aim to find empirical reasons to believe that these two explanatory virtues are
truth-indicative. Others have attempted to justify them a priori, obtaining much stronger results, but which are
also less epistemically secure. Two recent instances of rationalist approaches to justifying IBE are SCHUPBACH
(2007) and HASAN (2017). Perhaps such approaches are more forthcoming, but we took another route. (See DAY
& KINCAID (1994) and PSILLOS (2007) for criticism of a priori justifications of IBE.)

4.2 Accommodations and Ad Hocness

In this section, we discuss the phenomena of accommodation in theory development. We will define
accommodation and ad hocness in hopefully precise and interesting ways, not too worried to respect all usages
these terms may have had. Accommodations are theory designs performed with the chief intention of fitting a
theory to some empirical data. Accommodations with a narrow scope and scarce new predictions are called ad
hoc. Ad hocness is widely seen as an explanatory vice, i.e., as good grounds for rejecting a theory even if it has
empirical fit (DOUVEN, 2018).
We will explore whether this and other kinds of accommodations are indeed explanatory vices. We study
accommodation in the case of empirical theories. The account may be extendable to non-empirical theories, such
as theories in philosophy and even in mathematics (regarding the mathematical practice of “monster-barring”; see
LAKATOS, 1976).

Setting up the problem. Let us provide a sketch of the problem before we delve into its details. Roughly, an
accommodation is a change in a theory which is intentionally performed to make the theory “fit” with certain
observations. So a theory is accommodated with respect to a datum if and only if that datum was taken into
account when designing the theory. We will call “accommodated” those theories with accommodated elements to
any degree (be them ad hoc or not), and call a theory “non-accommodated” otherwise.
Non-accommodated theories, then, are those who have predicted all the data they imply. Prediction should be
understood in a precise sense. A datum can be predicted by a theory even if it is a datum about the past. It can be
predicted even if the datum was known before the theory’s development. What matters for prediction is whether
that datum was taken into account in designing the theory. If a theory implies a datum, for that implication to
count as a prediction it is both necessary and sufficient that the datum has not been taken into account during the
theory’s design. Scientists must not have designed the theory with the intention of making it imply facts which
were already known.
Let T1 and T2 be relevantly similar theories. Let them be similar in a way so that, given any set of
observations, the two render our data similarly likely. Let us say that they account for the data equally. Accounting
for the data is just having empirical fit. Let them also be very similar with respect to their explanatory virtues:
their simplicity, internal unification, external coherence, etc. The only difference between them is that T 1 is the
product of accommodations whereas T2 is not.
Many argue that T1 would obtain, from the data, significantly less empirical support than T2. Theorists who
accept this are named predictivists (BARNES, 2018). For the predictivist, the gap in empirical support between T 1

4
and T2 varies depending on the kind of accommodation to which T 2 was subjected, as we will see below.
Non-predictivists would argue that no present empirical fact would distinguish between those two theories. We
were careful to equalize their empirical fit and their explanatory virtues (other than their level of accommodation).
The non-predictivist believes that these are the only things which could provide support to a theory. Therefore, T 1
and T2 receive equal empirical support from their data.
As we have seen, the general question of about scientific theory choice is: “Can theories with identical
empirical fit differ in their empirical support?” (DOUVEN, 2018). Those who employ explanatory virtues in
theory choice answer positively. Our question here is narrowed on the specific explanatory virtue of non ad
hocness: “Can two (otherwise identical) theories differ in empirical support in virtue of predicting or
accommodating the data?” This is the debate between predictivists and non-predictivists. As HORWICH
(1982:10) puts it, it is a debate about whether “accurate prediction has greater evidential value than the mere
ability of a theory to accommodate, or subsume, or explain the data.” 3 We now proceed to introduce key notions to
the debate.

Precise definition of empirical fit. We have already briefly introduced this notion at the opening, but let us
expand on it a bit. Empirical fit is a property of theories which has been called “saving the phenomena”. Let us
call the empirical realm all which is observable by us in actual or counterfactual situations, for some sense of
‘observable’. Theories in empirical science have definite consequences about the empirical realm. (That is, they
have such consequences in the context of auxiliary assumptions. More on that below.)
When a theory says the empirical realm is (probably) as we in fact find it to be, – containing certain facts and
statistical distributions, – that theory has empirical fit. We also say the theory fits the data. For convenience, we
also say that the data fit the theory. Now, if the theory renders probable (improbable) something which is unlikely
(likely) given other things which we in fact observe, then it has empirical misfit. The notion of empirical fit or
misfit can be specified independently of any theory of what counts as an empirical datum. For instance, it does not
touch upon whether empirical evidence is factive.
Sometimes, a theory’s consequence of the empirical realm has neither empirical fit nor misfit. This occurs
when the theory touches upon a part of the empirical realm which we have not yet observed. In a case of empirical
misfit, not seeing its predictions (an “absence of evidence”) would constitute evidence of the theory’s falsity (an
“evidence of absence”). In this case, not seeing its predictions is not evidence against the theory. It is a benign
form of absence of evidence.

On auxiliary assumptions. Empirical fit, however, is often not attributable to empirical theories taken by
themselves. For theories to have definite consequences about the empirical realm, it is often required some
supplementation from further statements. These further statements are called auxiliary assumptions. For example,
a theory of gold electroconductivity can only inform us of what we should observe in a given experimental
situation if it is supplemented by an account of the experimental set-up.
That is, we must add information about things such as (i) the scientists’ perceptual faculties, (ii) general
electromagnetism, (iii) our electrical instrumentation, (iv) the likelihood of measurement affecting the measured
object, and even (v) the likelihood of pyrite (fool's gold) having been mixed up with Aurum in our supply. Things
being so, the empirical fit or misfit of a theory is often relative to a background of auxiliary assumptions. Perhaps
this is always the case.

The history and content of theories. As a final bit of terminology, we can talk about theories in terms of their
content and in terms of their history. We may model the content of a theory to be the smallest set of propositions
closed under inductively strong inferences and deductive valid inferences, such that all the theory’s central theses
are contained inside.4
The theory’s empirical consequences are a function of their content and an auxiliary background. Empirical
fit is a measure of the match-up between the data and a theory’s empirical consequences. Theories with identical
contents have identical empirical consequences relative to any given auxiliary background, and therefore identical
empirical fit relative to any data set.
Two historically distinct theories may have identical content. Cases of independent co-discovery provide real
examples: Theories equally or very similarly formulated about what something is, or how something works, or
3
From the original text, Paul Horwich seems to be using ‘to explain’ in a non-standard sense.
4
Not all such sets are properly speaking theories. There is some debate in the literature about what exactly counts as a
theory. We will sidestep these complexities.

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why something is the case, but created by different minds at different times. There are many historical aspects of
theories. There is their country of origin and the height of their creators. We are interested in one aspect only: the
empirical data or evidence that was “taken into account”, in some sense, by their creators. 5 Whenever we speak of
two theories being historically distinct, we will mean that they were created or altered (from previous theories)
with different data taken into account. This is a useful terminology to this discussion because accommodation is
defined in terms of what data were taken into account when creating or altering some theory.
Both the content-individuation and the historical-individuation of theories is to be somewhat coarse-grained.
A theory may be no unified and precise thing, but something developed fragmentedly in multiple minds at
different times, occasionally involving inconsistent details or taking different data into account. So the content of
any given historical theory is a bit fuzzy, and what counts as one historical theory rather than another historical
theory is also somewhat vague. Since theories are the product of human activity, and the human world is messy,
this fuzziness was to be expected. As a result, our individuation of theories herein, both in terms of content and of
history, will be only as fine-grained as the discussion requires.
Having introduced the above terminology, now we can state: Predictivists claim that historical differences
among content-identicals can cause differences in their empirical support. That is, something about the process by
which a theory was designed influences its likelihood given our empirical data. The relevant process is whether or
not a theory’s empirical fit was brought about through accommodations.

Varieties of accommodation. Let E be any set of empirical data such that it fits a theory T relative to some
auxiliary background worldview B. (We will often omit mention of B.) Let E* be all the data in E that were
unknown, – or known, but not taken into consideration, – to theorists at any point in T’s development. We say that
E* were predicted by T. For all elements in E but outside E*, we say they were accommodated by T.
Accommodations can occur in three fashions:

i. T is created as a whole with the intention of fitting some data.

ii. T is the successor to a previous theory. The latter theory lacked empirical fit to some data or had empirical
misfit relative to it. It was modified with the intention of removing empirical misfit and adding empirical
fit, resulting in T.

iii. T is not a variant on a previous theory. Rather, its accompanying set of auxiliary assumptions B was
accommodated. Such set would be accommodated if it were created to make T become empirically fit. It
would also be accommodated if it was a variant on a previous set of auxiliary assumptions that failed to
make T empirically fit or made it empirically misfit. 6

We will bundle all three types together as ‘accommodated theories’. Despite their differences, we believe that
their accommodatednesses have similar epistemic consequences.
Note that, in any of these cases, theorists often have a range of possible accommodations which they can
introduce. Which one they choose can make a difference to the theory’s resulting plausibility. This point will be
relevant in evaluating the truth-indicativeness of non ad hocness.
We distinguished between (i) creating an accommodated theory ex nihilo, (ii) accommodating an already
existing theory, and (iii) accommodating auxiliary assumptions. Accommodations can be distinguished in three
more ways that cut across that tripartite distinction. As in the table below:

5
We remain neutral as regards the factivity of evidence and other theoretical disputes about evidence.
6
Making a theory empirically fit with an accommodated set of auxiliary assumptions may always be possible. The so-
called Duhem-Quine thesis is that any theory can be accommodated to any data set merely by altering one’s auxiliary
assumptions and background theories. It also states that this can be done without violating the empirical fit of any of our
other theories. Some theorists doubt that theories wildly incompatible with current data, such as Aristotelian physics,
could be accommodated in this way. The changes required to our total conception of the world would be so large that it is
hard to envisage its being done consistently with our data. See LAUDAN (1990) for an extended discussion.

6
The classification of an accommodation depends on whether the accommodated theory has new empirical
consequences relative to the previous one. If it does not, then the accommodation is called degenerate. If they do
produce new consequences, these consequences may be merely new or, more impressively, novel. New
predictions add content to a theory’s empirical consequences. Novel predictions go further, making new
predictions with respect to phenomena of a new kind, pertaining to a new domain, increasing the theory’s scope.
For example, a theory of celestial kinematics may be found to have applications to terrestrial kinematics, in which
case the former theory would have its scope broadened. We will refer to both merely new and novel predictions
simply as “new predictions”, and disambiguate when necessary. For more on the distinction, see PSILLOS (2009:
ch. 3).
Accommodations introducing merely new predictions are progressive, and those introducing novel
predictions are superprogressive. They contrast with degenerate theories. If these predictions have not been
confirmed so far, then we say they are theoretically progressive or superprogressive. If confirmation has been
obtained, then they are empirically progressive or superprogressive. The acquisition of new data can, therefore,
change their status. The “progressive” and “degenerate” terminology is inspired by that of LAKATOS (1968) in
describing what he calls scientific research programmes.
Above, we employ a specific conception of what predictions are, the so-called use-novelty conception
(BARNES 2018, §3). Let F be some fact we were aware of before accommodating T. Suppose the previous
version of T did not have F as an empirical consequence, but that T now does. We say that T predicts F if and only
if our awareness of F was not used in accommodating T. That is, the accommodation was not designed to make T
have F as an empirical consequence.7
As the table’s upper node makes clear, we are not interested in theories (accommodated or not) that lack a
sufficient degree of empirical fit. An accommodation that introduced disconfirmed predictions is generally of no
interest to us. There is, however, an exception. The introduction of empirical misfit may be compensated. An
accommodation may introduce simplicity, unification, coherence, and (confirmed) new predictions. Still, to avoid
unnecessary complications in our typology, let us ignore detain ourselves to empirically fit accommodations.
Recall that, while a theory’s content is invariant with respect to auxiliary background theories, its empirical
consequences are not. Therefore, any accommodation can be novel relative to one background, merely new
relative to another, and perhaps even degenerate relative to a third.
What accommodations count as ad hoc? Accommodations can lead to increases in predictive scope. Scope is
proportional to (a) the number of new predictions they lead to, (b) how numerous are the classes of facts to which
these predictions pertain to, and (c) how precise the predictions are. Let us call ad hoc those accommodations with
maximally narrow scope: No new predictions. An ad hoc accommodation had the sole function of fixing a hole,
however large it may be, by adding a non-predictive new empirical consequence – but it leads to nothing else.
Hence the Latin name ad hoc, meaning “for this”. Genuine, perfectly degenerate ad hocness can be approximated
to various degrees as the scope narrows. We will generally consider ad hoc things which are close enough to the
limit.

7
We may add that, to count as new predictions, the new empirical consequences, in addition to not being previously
known and used, must also not have other sources of support. For intance, it must not be a prediction of any back-ground
theories (or even rival theories). BARNES (2018: §3) comments on some proposals along these lines.

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Justifying non ad hocness. So far we were engaged in describing what accommodations are and which ones are
ad hoc. That required the introduction of various notions, such as prediction, content, and history. Now we turn to
argue that scientists are justified in preferring non ad hoc theories over similar ad hoc competitors. Could
predicting then-unknown data be more confirmatory than “retrodicting” then-known data? Could the mechanism
by which a theory was created, –human design in the form of accommodations, – be a special reason to doubt the
theory? That is, can a merely historical difference make an epistemic difference to theories identical in content?
These three (roughly) equivalent questions have puzzled philosophers of science throughout the twentieth
century. Consider how an economic theory that predicts (ex ante) an economic crisis strikes us as much more
likely to be true than an economic theory that retrodicts (ex post) that the economic crisis that just happened was
indeed to be expected. Is this judgment justified in economics? Would similar judgments for other areas of science
also be similarly justified?
We believe so. We have adopted a certain version of predictivism and, in this section,
we provide our argument for it. Before starting, let us briefly outline a useful taxonomy of kinds of predictivism,
outlined by Eric Barnes. He states:

Global predictivism holds that predictions are always superior to accommodations, while local
predictivism holds that this only holds in certain cases. Strong predictivism asserts that prediction is
intrinsically superior to accommodation, whereas weak predictivism holds that predictive success is
epistemically relevant because it is symptomatic of other features that have epistemic import.
(BARNES, 2018, §4.)

The position we end up accepting is local weak predictivism. Predictions are in almost all realistic cases
epistemically superior (so it is quasi-global rather than just local), but only insofar as in these accommodations are
indications that other epistemically relevant factors are at play. However, as we shall see, accommodations stop
being very epistemically suspect if they are at least empirically progressive, that is, in case they lead to confirmed
new predictions.

The null support thesis. One interesting fact which researchers have noticed is that the Bayesian probability
calculus entails a radical form of global predictivism (BARNES, 2018: §5). It entails that antecedently known
evidence never provides any confirmation for theories, not just less confirmation, and it is irrelevant whether such
evidence was used in accommodating a theory. Hence, ‘radical’. Given an antecedently known evidence E, it is
trivial to demonstrate that the following:

(NS) Null support thesis: If E is already known, then P(E) = 1. Therefore, P(E | T) = 1
and, as a result, P(T | E) = P(T).8

This is also called the old evidence problem. An application of the Bayesian calculus, however, is only as good as
the assumptions underlying it. It is common for anti-predictivists to fault either Bayesianism for entailing (NS) or
its application to a specific case, instead of seeing the above derivation as a reason to adopt predictivism.
We believe anti-predictivists are right on this score. There are indeed reasons to doubt that (NS) applies as
straightforwardly as that. A major reason is that we have provided no justification for assuming that the relevant
probability function P for evaluating P(T | E) is based on our entire knowledge at the time of evaluation. We could
just as equally choose another probability function P* such that it includes only the data taken into account when
constructing T, for example. That way, we can have that P*(E) < 1, so that P*(T | E) > P*(T). Another major
reason is that there are very simple cases in statistics where (NS) fails. Thus, the probability function P is
definitely not the right one for many cases, even if it is not clear what other probability function should be chosen.
See BARNES (2018, §5) for an exposition of these two points.

The no-miracles argument (NMA). One can redeploy a standard argument for scientific realism in favor of
predictivism, the NMA. It will be argued that NMA justifies a theory in case its empirical fit is non-
accommodated, but NMA fails to do so when the empirical fit is accommodated. Therefore, accommodated
theories are less justified. We believe this argument ultimately fails, but it is still illuminating to consider it.

8
We thank BARNES (2018: §5) for pointing this out to us.

8
 In a nutshell, the no-miracles argument (NMA) states that the most probable account, – or otherwise the best
explanation, – for a scientific theory’s voluminous empirical fit is that it is true. Truth accounts for great empirical
success better than anything else. Empirical fit is truth-indicative. This version of the argument, the predictivist
can argue, skips over an important distinction. Not all empirical fit is truth-indicative. Empirical fit obtained by
accommodation is not truth-indicative. This kind of empirical fit is best accounted for by human design, not by
truth. An account of empirical success in terms of human design pre-empts an account in terms of truth. The
accommodated theory may be true, but there is no reason to assume so. No reason based on the theory’s success,
at least. The theory’s success has already been accounted for It was forced to fit the data.
Here is how the above predictivist argument is formulated by HORWICH (1982: 111-6). Suppose C1 and C2
are independent possible causes for some evidence E one has just obtained. They are independent in the sense that
P(C1|C2) = P(C1) and vice versa. Furthermore, let the prior probability of E be less than 1. Simple Bayesian
calculations reveal that C1 and C2 are both confirmed by E.9 However, upon learning that C1, then the prior
probability of E increases. As a result, the confirmation of C2 by the future discovery of E proportionally
decreases. In the limit, E is made certain by C1, and thus C2 would fail to be confirmed at all by E. In that case, the
account or explanation of E in terms of C1 pre-empts the justification of an account of it in terms of C2.
Let C1 = “The theory is true”. Let also C2 = “The theory was designed to empirically fit”. Now let E = “The
theory has empirical fit”. The argument goes that C1 and C2 are independent possible causes of E. Thus, pre-
emption holds: Discovering human contrivance (C 2) as a cause of E defeats the no-miracles argument for theory’s
truth (C1). Accommodatedness is indicative of falsity insofar as it defeats a very strong indication of truth.
The argument is clever, but HORWICH (1982) himself, also cleverly, argues that the argument fails. The
crucial false assumption is the claim that accommodatedness and truth are independent. There are two arguments
against the claim. One concludes that accommodatedness is positively correlated with truth. Another concludes
that accommodatedness is negatively correlated with truth. The first argument is deployed by Horwich against the
above redeployment of the NMA argument. The second argument will be our argument in favor non ad hocness,
to be presented afterward.
Consider the design of automobiles. One explanation of the automobility of such vehicles is that humans
have made serious design efforts to ensure that they can move autonomously. This does not, however, pre-empt
another explanation of automobility: That there is an engine running inside which can convert chemical energy (a
form of potential energy) into kinetic energy. After all, automobiles could hardly move without an engine, no
matter how clever the human designer! Likewise, explaining a theory’s empirical fit in terms of human design
does not pre-empt an explanation in terms of its truth. The reason is that a theory could hardly achieve empirical
fit without being true, no matter how clever the scientist!
This line of reasoning, developed by Horwich, is the same underlying the general application of the NMA to
empirically fit theories. There are some problems with it. The one that has been most discussed lately is that the
NMA commits the so-called base-rate fallacy. The basic gist is that there are many more false theories than true
ones. As such, even if it is unlikely that a false theory happens, perchance, to be empirically fit, it does not follow
that most empirically fit theories are not false. To carry out such a conclusion would be to ignore how high is the
base-rate of false theories. However, we will not explore this mare’s nest. For details on this see HOWSON (2013)
and DAWID & HARTMANN (2018).

Fudged theories. Here we present the best argument we have found for non ad hocness as a criterion in scientific
theory choice. It has been elaborated by Peter Lipton, as summarized in LIPTON (2004: 180), with minor
elaborations on our part. When faced with recalcitrant counter-evidence to their otherwise successful theories,
humans are prone to accommodate their theories to the anomalous data. When doing so, they face an important
choice: Out of many possible accommodations, which should be picked?
In the best of cases, some interesting possible accommodations may be found after careful searching. These
accommodations may consist, for example, in plausible auxiliary assumptions, or in quite natural new
idealizations. In the worst of cases, no plausible or natural accommodations are found, possibly due to a lack of
serious effort. Lack of serious effort is likely insofar as scientists performing accommodations in their empirically
recalcitrant theories are engaging in motivated reasoning – a well-studied cognitive bias whereby we wish to
obtain a specific conclusion and, as a result, unwittingly perform low-quality reasoning so as to satisfy our wish.
Scientists have a pressure to publish, as research grants come to an end and the rest of the faculty expects results.
Furthermore, negative results are extremely undervalued.
9
Provided that E is more likely given C1 or C2 than it was before. This is not always the case, even if C 1 and C2 are indeed
possible causes of E.

9
 Therefore, scientists are motivated to obtain a working theory as soon as possible – competing with their
inclination to build a sensible, plausible, and explanatorily virtuous theory that will be fruitful in the long-run. The
result is a theory containing theoretical weirdnesses, – which LIPTON (2004: ch. 10) calls fudged elements, –
which are most likely not in correspondence with how things are. Coming back to the example of predicting an
economic crisis, it seems a plausible empirical claim that theories constructed after the crisis in order to explain it
are not theoretically virtuous theories with independently motivated components, reflecting the economist’s good
sense. That is why they are far less likely to be true.
BARNES (2018, §6.8) has expressed the same judgment about the fudging behavior of accommodating
scientists. According to Eric Barnes, also, the economist and statistician John Keynes made a point which is
recognizably similar to Lipton’s. Theories with confirmed predictions are more likely to be true, relative to
accommodated counterparts, because at their inception they were motivated by reasons other than merely fitting
the data – among which are the scientist’s sensible guesses about how the world is and how good theories look
like. The way he puts it is that such a theory had “some ground for it, arising out of our previous knowledge, apart
from the purely inductive ground.”10 The lack of this ground makes fudgedness more likely.
Here is a list of possible fudged elements which LIPTON (2004) believes that scientists have introduced at
one time or other in the history of science. They are elements which...

1. Are unnatural idealizations, which idealize away important factors in the subject matter.
2. Lack of coherence with our background knowledge.
3. Lack of intra-theoretic motivation. They are auxiliary assumptions which tie the theory’s core
assumptions to the data only very weakly. The same theoretical core could be coupled with quite distinct
auxiliary assumptions. This is tantamount to disunity within the theory.
4. Have empirical consequences only for a very narrow range of cases, possibly not exceeding at all the data
which prompted the accommodative element. That is, it is ad hoc.

Elements ‘1’ and ‘2’ are indicative of untruth. For ‘1’, this is so by definition. For ‘2’, this is so insofar as our
background knowledge is an approximately accurate picture of reality. Now, in the case of ‘3’, assessing its
relation to truth is equivalent to checking whether unification is truth-indicative; we leave this task for future
work. In the case of ‘4’, claiming it to be indicative of untruth is part of what the predictivist claims, and assuming
it to be so would be question-begging in this context. We proceed on the assumption that ‘1’ and ‘2’ and indicative
of untruth.
An argument for predictivism in general is a step for our argument for non ad hocness, a specific form of
predictivism. Let T be any accommodated theory. Here is our argument in a nutshell. We expand on its steps on
the next page. First: As discussed in the previous paragraphs, it is very likely that T contains fudged elements as a
result of accommodation, including ‘1’ and ‘2’. Second: As has also been seen, some of these elements, such as ‘1’
and ‘2’, are indicative that T is not true (and the others are, at best, neutral on this regard). Third: This would make
accommodatedness a sign of falsity if and only if scientists could not independently check whether T contains
fudged elements. Fourth: However, this can only occur either by an a priori examination of T or by submitting T
to empirical testing. Fifth: If one could check a priori whether T contains fudged elements, we could say it to be
transparent with respect to those fudged elements. As will be argued below, T is not transparent relative to ‘1’ and
‘2’. Sixth: In conclusion, T’s having been accommodated is a sign of its fudgedness, and therefore of its falsity,
until it has been put to test.
HORWICH (1982) argues that all fudged elements are transparent to trained scientists. The fact that a theory
has been accommodated is epistemically irrelevant. As its potential epistemic relevance lies only in its indication
of fugdedness, it would only be truly relevant if there were no independent (and reasonably accessible) methods of
checking for fudgedness. But there are such metohds, since fudgedness is transparent. Should a theory be
accommodated but fail to be fudged, it is unobjectionable. Should it be fudged but be non-accommodated, it is
none the better for that! The predictivist has therefore failed to provide to the scientist a useful criterion for theory
choice.
Contrastingly, LIPTON (2004) is pessimistic about scientists’ discriminative powers. He thinks that
fudgedness is seldom very transparent. It is, he thinks, generally unclear when an idealization is harmless, so that
‘1’ is not transparent. It is also generally unclear, due to the complexity of the matter, when a theory coheres well
with our general background worldview, so that ‘2’ is not transparent either.
10
Inductive ground seems to be what we have called empirical fit. Cf. KEYNES, John M. A Treatise on Probability.
London, UK: Macmillan, 1921, pp. 305-6. Quoted in BARNES (2018: §1).

10
 They are not transparent to a priori examination, but they are transparent to a posteriori testing. For instance,
the harmlessness of an idealization would be revealed in case the idealized theory performed fruitful predictive
work. Therefore, predictions are often important to check for fudgedness. Should an accommodated theory be ad
hoc, the only possible route to check for fudgedness is cut off.
LIPTON (2004) thinks that their non-transparency is the strongest for the scientists performing the
accommodations, who are engaging in motivated reasoning. He does not present arguments for other scientists, in
level-headed frames of mind, also being blocked from detecting fudgedness a priori. His argument is at best a
hasty generalization from the discriminative powers of accommodating theorists to the discriminative powers of
other scientists. Still, if Peter Lipton is right is his generalization of non-transparency, then we have completed our
argument for taking ad hocness as indicative of untruth, and thus taking non ad hocness as an epistemic criterion
of theory choice.
These, of course, are all empirical claims to be investigated by a proper history of science and cognitive
science of scientific reasoning. Our research on accommodatedness and ad hocness has been theoretical. We have
raised plausible hypotheses that, according to our standard academic division of labor, should be empirically
evaluated by other researchers.

4.3 Simplicity
Appeals to simplicity have guided theory-building in a variety of fields, ranging from physics and biology to the
human and philosophical sciences.11 Levels of complexity that are shown to be unnecessary to predict or to
explain some set of phenomena are avoided, to the benefit of theses exhibiting lower levels of complexity.
This avoidance has clear pragmatic benefits. It is a facilitator of teaching, manipulation, application, and
computational tractability. It also has an aesthetic appeal. But theorists intend simplicity to have epistemic benefits
also. There is a widespread intuition that given two rival theories differing in complexity, but otherwise equal, the
simpler tends to be the true one. Simplicity is therefore seen as an arbiter even among empirically equivalent
theories. Thus, it is thought to be an explanatory virtue.
However, there are many difficult theoretical issues surrounding simplicity. The simplicity researcher
SOBER (2002) has organized these issues into three categories as follows:

1. Measure. Before talking about the measure problem, an antecedent question is: Among the things
we are interested in, what kinds of things can be simple? Predicates, mechanisms, and theories are
good contenders. Then, the main question is: Which of their features determine (‘measure’) their
level of complexity?12

2. Justification. Does anything epistemically justify preferring simpler theories among otherwise
equals? If there is possible justification, do we or can we have access to it? If so, is it a priori or a
posteriori access? A further question is: Can appeal to simplicity be generally justified (‘globally’)
or only in specific contexts (‘locally’)?

3. Trade-off. The internal trade-off problem is to balance conflicting components of simplicity. For instance,
mathematical simplicity may lead to more empirical complexity. The external problem is to reconcile
conflicting explanatory virtues (BEN-MENAHEM, 1990). For example, more simplicity may lead to less
external coherence. How should these trade-offs occur in scientific theory choice?

The measure problem. Precise measures of simplicity are rare. Most treatments are limited to
(i) highlighting vague traits relevant to simplicity and (ii) considering examples to improve our intuitive, coarse-
grained evaluations of simplicity. We conjecture dim prospects for the quest for precise, epistemically relevant
measures of simplicity except for local or artificial cases.13 This has generated difficulties for the application of
11
Numerous examples are collected in SOBER (2015). Its application for the rationality of scientific communities has been
discussed in detail in COIMBRA (2017).
12
One can distinguish between theoretical and practical issues of measurement. The theoretical issue here is: What features
is one measuring when assessing x? This is the issue we are interested in. The practical issues of measure-ment would be
how to go out and discover these features. This issue is in general posterior to the theoretical one. An example of a
practical issue of measurement is how to measure extremely short time-scales. These issues are studied in the applied
science of metrology.
13
This is why trade-off problems are intractable. We lack sufficient fineness of grain.

11
simplicity in many different areas. 14 The formal measures and proofs given in SOBER (1975) and in FORSTER &
SOBER (1994), for instance, have quite limited application. Still, formal epistemologists may surprise us.
Due to that fact, attempts to measure simplicity are not of much interest. As such, our work on this will be
thin and swift. We are more interested on the justification problem. Here we outline the vague measures proposed
by SWINBURNE (1997: §§3-4).15 The titles below are not his.

 Quantitative parsimony. A compound trait. A property of theories inversely proportional to the number of
entity-tokens, property-tokens, and laws it contains. The complexity of the laws themselves counts. For
measures of the complexity of laws in mathematical form, see “mathematical simplicity”.

 Qualitative parsimony. A compound trait. A property of theories inversely proportional to the number of
entity-types, property-types, and mechanism-types it contains.

 Mechanistic simplicity. How mathematically simple is the behavior of a theory’s postulated entities and,
we might add, dispositional properties. Perhaps this includes how mathematically simple is the entity’s
long-run behavior. Swinburne leaves implicit the plausible point that, the more patterns (regularities) in a
behavior, the simpler it is. (See “mathematical simplicity.”)

 Conceptual simplicity. How many other concepts must be comprehended before a theory’s concepts can
be comprehended. The criterion is of unclear applicability for symmetrically dependent concepts, such as
is plausibly the case with opposites. It is similar to what we may call “predicate simplicity”, measured
comparatively by asymmetric reducibility relations. At the extreme of predicate simplicity, it seems,
would lie David Lewis’s perfectly natural properties. (It depends on whether the order of comprehension
mirrors the order of naturalness.) Conceptual simplicity may be dependent on (‘immanent to’) linguistic
or conceptual framework, as Goodman’s grue paradox indicates (GOODMAN, 1955).

 Axiomatic simplicity. This is not mentioned by Swinburne, but it is taken into account by mathematicians,
mathematical physicists, biomathematicians, and others. It is measured by the number of principles or
assumptions in a theory. Perhaps the complexity of the axioms’ contents is also considered. The other
measures in this list may be employed.

 Mathematical simplicity. We do not expect there to be a unified measure of mathematical complexity.

There are proposed measures for multiple classes of mathematical structures, from geometrical shapes to
differential equations. Using the idea of conceptual simplicity, Swinburne has argued for relative
simplicity between quantities (zero simpler than one, infinity simpler than large numbers), operations
(addition simpler than multiplication simpler than exponentiation), and other mathematical notions
(vectors simpler than tensors). A side-question we are interested in is whether fractals are mathematically
simple, as they are infinitely complex structures generated by a very simple recursive procedure.

The justification problem. Among rival theories with empirical fit, the simpler ones are often chosen. Are there
reasons to do so? There is undoubtedly a reason to reject extremely complex theories: They are unworkable. That
is a pragmatic reason to reject them. Now, the answer to the following two questions is less clear:

a) Are there reasons to prefer, among empirically adequate theories, the simplest instead
of the moderately complex among them? The latter are not unworkable.
b) If so, then are these reasons epistemic in some sense?

Many theorists judge both are to be answered ‘yes’. For instance, the statistical practice of curve-fitting has shown
that theorists are willing to sacrifice some degree of empirical fit (coverage of data points) for the sake of a
simpler theory (curve). The usual understanding is that simpler theories are more likely to be true. We will argue,
in the end, that the answer is indeed ‘yes’, but that simpler theories are nonetheless not more likely to be true.
Seemingly, even those who argue that simplicity is truth-indicative do not argue that it is always so. High
degrees of simplicity are usually obtained by trading away significant amounts of empirical fit, explanatory
14
For example, in the theory of laws of nature; see SALMON (1989) and WOODWARD (2014).
15
See Swinburne (1997: secs. 3 and 4).

12
power, and other explanatory virtues. Appeals to simplicity take place in the context of rival theories who are
similar in their overall empirical and explanatory aspects. Simplicity is an arbiter only within this bounded
domain. The prospect of trading away too much of these other desiderata defeats the attractiveness of simplicity.
Yet, the epistemic value of even this bounded arbitration is a vexed issue. That is, it is not clear whether we
are epistemically justified in preferring the simplest of otherwise similarly satisfactory theories. We will examine
two defenses of the epistemic value of simplicity.
The first strategy grounds its defense on the alleged epistemic successes of past appeals to simplicity in the
history of science. We will argue that this defense faces a possibly insurmountable charge of circularity, much like
have faced historical defenses of enumerative induction and other a posteriori defenses of non-deductive
inference rules. The second strategy is to argue that truth-seeking is more efficient if we construct and test theories
that are progressively more complex, but at every stage are as simple as empirical and explanatory considerations
allow. If this is correct, then appeals to simplicity help us in reaching the truth even if simple theories do not tend
to be true. This makes such appeals epistemically valuable, in a sense, yielding a positive answer to the two
questions above.
Some motivation for appeals to simplicity is widely recognized. Since both the environment and our
measuring instruments are noisy, our data includes jitter that masks the true regularities of nature. Complete
empirical fit would require our theories to account for the small errors in the data called ‘noise’. So there is a
reason to introduce empirically misfit simplifications: avoiding error-fragility, that is, theories that are too
influenced by small mistakes in our data. 16 Our penchant for simplicity, however, leads us to prefer simplicity
much more strongly than can be justified in this manner. The historical and virtue epistemological defenses below
aim to justify this stronger preference.

Historical justification. There are two types of (alleged) historical fact that may support appeals to simplicity.
The first is that, so far, all of our successful theories have been at most moderately complex. While our simplest
theories may have been false, no extremely complex theory has ever been enduringly successful. Their failure,
and the success of moderately complex theories, has been determined by their fit to data that have been collected
honestly and thoroughly. The general hypothesis that reality is complex has therefore been empirically refuted.
That provides the grounds for a general preference for simpler theories. It does not, however, ground the
preference for the simplest over the next-to-simplest theories.
The main objection to the above argument is that human meddling is what actually explains the failure of
highly complex theories. Scientists fail to register complex data or unconsciously simplify it. Our penchant for
simplicity leads us to study idealized cases and dismiss the remaining disordered reality as somehow anomalous
and unusual. Our moderately complex theories would fail if the world’s true complexity were diligently observed,
as some stray observations have already shown. So much, at least, has been put forth in CARTWRIGHT (1983,
1999) and DUPRÉ (1993).17
The second type of (alleged) historical fact used to justify simplicity is that it has been an aid in homing-in on
successful theories. For example, WILLIAMSON (2016: 277) claims that appeals to simplicity and elegance in
mathematical logic have helped us arrive at proofs, promising conjectures that turned out to be theorems, and
fruitful definitions. We conjecture the same should hold for the rest of mathematics and for theoretical computer
science, since they are also formal sciences.
Another example is due to SWINBURNE (1997: ch. IV). He accepts, for the sake of the argument,
hypothesis E: A detailed study of the history of empirical science reveals that simpler theories (among rivals) have
tended to be more successful. So past appeals to simplicity have been successful. Could E justify current appeals
to simplicity?18
For E to bear inductive fruit, as it were, we must be justified in projecting these past successes onto future
appeals to simplicity. That is, ‘empirical success’ must be a projectible predicate when predicated of simple
theories. Richard Swinburne himself does not think that we can be justified in projecting it. We agree. Before
offering a general argument for this, we examine and reject two popular accounts of E which render simplicity
projectible, which we call below HA and HB.
16
See WILLIAMSON (2016: 279-80).
17
Members of the so-called Stanford school in the philosophy of science, including Cartwright and Dupré, have famously
(i) argued that we obtain simplicity and intra-level unification at heavy costs in empirical adequacy, and ( ii) argued for
vertical pluralism, the thesis that we rarely reduce high-level theories with messy domains to low-level theories with
(supposedly) simpler domains.
18
From now on we refer to both simplicity and moderate complexity merely as ‘simplicity’.

13
 The problem of projectibility has an epistemic and a metaphysical facet. The epistemic is how we can
discover which predicates are projectable. The metaphysical is to discover worldly conditions for projectibility. 19
We begin by discussing such metaphysical conditions. We then move to the epistemic discussion. First, consider
that, if we wish to project a certain regularity, we must argue that a uniform and stable conjunction of factors was
responsible for it. Let us begin by discussing uniformity:

(Uniformity) A conjunction of factors is uniform if and only if they have operated on similar
conditions and have yielded similar effects (according to an intuitive measure of similarity).

Suppose we are considering accounts of E. An example of non-uniform account would be hypothesis HS: “A
theory is successful when and only when it has been created by Richard Boyle, ..., Noam Chomsky, or Future
Scientists A through Z”.20 By listing all authors of all successful theories up until now, HS can predict (indeed,
entail) all the scientific successes listed in E. However, the conditions under which these successful theories were
successful is not uniform at all. No similarity between those theorists has been pointed out (except their success).
Also, theorists very similar to the ones mentioned, crafting theories very similar to theirs and about very similar
subject matters, are given no guarantee of success. So uniformity is thrown out the window.
HS predicts what future scientists will be successful. But HS is not at all confirmed by its successful
retrodictions. The theory is clearly fudged. We thus have no reason to shower scientists
A through Z with research money. Compare HS with the toy hypothesis HA:
HA) Reality is (at most) moderately complex. More specifically, the world consists of a few kinds of
entities interacting according to simple rules (e.g. governing laws, causal dispositions). These rules are
arranged in such a way that seldom any extremely complex system arises. Furthermore, theories are
successful when they match reality.

HA latches onto a real pattern among the theories in E: their simplicity. It employs that pattern in providing a
uniform reason why each theory has been successful: reality is simple and successful theories match reality. The
theory is simplistic, but it is a paradigm of uniformity. It also explains the data in E. This can be contrasted with
HS, which is neither uniform nor explanatory. 21 Theories in the style of HA have been popular in the histories of
science and philosophy.22
Suppose such theories are correct. What can they give us? Let us introduce two notions of projectibility
before discussing this. Projections infer from samples at t0 to something at tF, such as a population or samples
elsewhere. If t0 = tF, then the projection is synchronic; otherwise it is diachronic. We believe the following is true
for diachronically projectible predicates:

It is necessary and sufficient for a predicate P being projectible that (i) P has a stable source S which
(ii) uniformly generates P in conditions C, where (iii) C is somehow recurrent. Suppose S is stable and
C is recurrent over time; then, P is diachronically projectible. Suppose S is stable and C is recurrent
over locations; then, P is synchronically projectible.

Conditions ‘i’ and ‘ii’ are sufficient for P to be projectible relative to C. Given also condition ‘iii’,
P becomes projectible simplicter. (It may still be restricted to synchronic or diachronic modalities.)

Objection to HA. HA does not guarantee diachronic projectibility, as it does not guarantee temporal stability.
Reality may increase in complexity as time marches on, as at least one eminent physicist has postulated to
happen.23 In that case, it would not be diachronically stable with respect to simplicity. This exemplifies the general
fact that uniformity, by itself, does not ensure diachronic projectibility: Simple worlds do uniformly generate the
success of simple theories, but this does not require them to remain simple in the future.
19
While epistemic projectibility may be context-bound, as has been argued by JACKSON (1975), metaphysical
projectibility does not seem to be so.
20
The subscript ‘S’ is in honor of Richard Swinburne, who conjured the same example to make points much similar to ours.
See SWINBURNE (1997: sec. VI).
21
HS explains the data in E like a conjunction explains its conjuncts and like regularist natural laws would explain their
instances. We would argue this is simply not explaining at all.
22
See SOBER (2015: ch. 1).
23
See arXiv:1810.11563v1 [HEP-Th] for Leonard Susskind’s 2018 lectures on this topic.

14
 We now turn to discuss stability:

(Stability) A conjunction of factors is stable if and only if they have a good chance of persisting in
otherwise similar situations – past, present, or future.

Consider Bertrand Russell’s famous inductive turkey, who inferred from the enduring good treatment it has
received that it would not be mistreated in the future (RUSSELL, 1912). Yet, the factors responsible for the
turkey’s good treatment are unstable with respect to its well-being: there was a mechanism of feeding and
protecting turkeys that would only last until the coming of another Thanksgiving Day. A similar situation would
be inferring that one is immortal because one has so far been alive, while, in fact, the conditions for enduring
health lose are unstable with respect to health. Another hypothesis which would account for E uniformly, but
allowing for instability, is HB:

HB) Our sense of simplicity is tuned to reality. ‘Simplicity’ does not denote a natural property. Instead,
it denotes a heterogeneous assortment of properties, much like ‘facial beauty’ denotes a heterogeneous
assortment of facial properties. Notwithstanding, the simplicity assortment has evolved to heuristically
detect promising theories.

HB explains well three things. First, the immense difficulty of the analysis of simplicity. Natural properties such as
Kolmogorov complexity, for example, do not encompass all there is to our intuitive notion of complexity for
scientific theories. All analyses must take simplicity to be a very complex cognitive phenomenon, just as in the
case of facial beauty.
Second, it explains well our ability to come up with promising theories: we use our fuzzy notion of simplicity
as a proxy, and this notion has evolved to detect promising theories. This need not have been a natural evolution.
Individual learning, trial-and-error scientific theory-building, and the evolution of human culture may have been
what crafted a truth-tropic sense of theoretical simplicity. The cosmologist Steven Weinberg argues that something
analogous is the case for theoretical elegance. Consider this allegory: Racehorse trainers have a sense of beauty
directed at racehorses. This sense embodies their hard-earned wisdom of what horse properties are strongly
correlated with success in racing. They detect what kinds of horses win races and experience this detection in a
sense of beauty. It boils down to pattern recognition. 24 Likewise, scientists have a sense of beauty directed at
scientific theories from the domain they are experienced in. They know what kinds of theories are somewhat
likely to be true. (See HOSSENFELDER, 2018.)
Third, it explains well the data in E, of course. The successful theories mentioned in E were all constructed
with the guidance of our sense of simplicity. Their success is explained by the mirroring between the world and
our aforementioned sense.

Objection to HB. The trouble is that, given HB, simplicity could fail to be diachronically or synchronically
projectible. On the former, the future may not resemble the past in a way that our sense of simplicity loses its
tuning to the world. On the latter, our sense of simplicity may be useless in domains we have yet to explore, as it
has not been adjusted to these domains. Unfortunately, simplicity, like the other explanatory virtues, is appealed in
theory choice in the frontiers of science, where new domains are usually one’s object of exploration. For instance,
cosmologists and particle physicists favor simple theories about hitherto uncharted domains. To put the point
allegorically, humans may have intuitively learned what is a good hand in ordinary poker, but they have not
learned much about what is a good hand in cosmic poker. We could not have developed a sense for what theories
of quantum gravity or systems ecology, for example, are likely to be true. A similar point holds for philosophy and
the sciences in general.25

General objection to the historical approach. There is a more general objection to any historical justification of
simplicity. The key ideas here have been put forth by SWINBURNE (1997). We have provided a Bayesian
dressing to his skeptical worries about the justification of simplicity. The same general Bayesian argument has
been employed by HORWICH (1982) but applied to another subject matter. The idea is that, for any account for
the contents of E which renders simplicity projectible, one can create an equally supported rival hypothesis which
does not – at least if we do not take into account explanatory virtues other than simplicity.
24
WILLIAMSON (2016: 277) briefly conjectures that pattern recognition relates to beauty in mathematics.
25
The poker analogy and the discussion of the frontiers of physics is due to HOSSENFELDER (2018: ch. 5).

15
 In our argument, we assume that any finite data set is logically consistent with an alarmingly large amount of
generalizations, including many which do not render simplicity projectible. 26
Below we employ Bayes’ rule in articulating our skeptical worries. Justifications of simplicity would be
circular if at some point they employed an appeal to simplicity or some theory which has been accepted by such
an appeal. A circularity of this kind seems to most theorists to be viciously circular, although there are dissenters
(e.g., PSILLOS, 1999).
Having this in mind, let BTOTAL be our total background justified beliefs. Let BFRAG be a proper subset of BTOTAL
which eliminates our beliefs about simplicity and our theories justified by simplicity. It is but a tiny fragment of it.
It is difficult to even imagine what BFRAG would look like; hopefully, it is not a sterile philosopher’s abstraction.
There is some reason to think it is. Our belief system may be too holistic to make sense of something like BFRAG.
This is why some theorists have claimed that a circular justification of simplicity in terms of BTOTAL would not be
viciously circular. See, for example, one of our chosen key readings: QUINE & ULLIAN (1970).
Notwithstanding, let us proceed on the assumption that BFRAG exists.
Key assumption. Now let H1 through HN be all the rival accounts of E. All these hypotheses, we assume, are
initially equally likely when we are given only BFRAG. So, for all k and m such that k ≠ m and 1 ≤ k, m ≤ n, we have
that Pr(HK | BFRAG) = Pr(HM | BFRAG). This is plausible because BFRAG is plausibly highly impoverished and, thus,
unable to reliably discriminate between these hypotheses. Lacking a specific probability distribution for these
hypotheses, we adopt the so-called principle of indifference towards them. This means that they are all equally
likely. As hypotheses H1 through HN partition the space of possibilities, their summed probability must be one, so
that their individual probabilities are all equal to 1/n. The whole proof will depend on that assumption. We will
argue for it in the end.
Given each HK, there is a certain probability of there having been a widespread success of past appeals to
simplicity. That is, E has a certain probability under HK. We expressed that as Pr(E | HN). For any k such that 1 ≤ k
≤ n,

(Bayes’s rule) Pr(HK | E & BFRAG) = Pr(E | HK & BFRAG) * Pr(HK | BFRAG) / Pr(E | BFRAG).

From which it trivially follows that, given the key assumption, for any k and m as above,

(Ratio) Pr(HK | E & BFRAG) / Pr(HM | E & BFRAG) = Pr(E | HK & BFRAG) / Pr(E | HM & BFRAG).27

From Ratio, we can distinguish the hypotheses’ likelihood using E only in terms of how likely they make E (given
only BFRAG). Therefore, should two hypotheses make E equally likely, then they will also be made equally likely
by E!
Now, let HO be the optimistic hypothesis-kind that “there has been a uniform and stable conjunction of
factors responsible for the past success of simplicity appeals”. It is even more optimistic than HA and HB above. It
does not deductively entail E. The end of the argument is that we can always trivially construct complex, ad hoc,
disunified, noncoherent, and non-explanatory hypotheses that deductively entail E. It will thus be more likely
given E (and BFRAG) than HO. The hypothesis HS is one example of such a hypothesis (the one that mentions every
case of success).
A similar example is the grue-like hypothesis HG: “Successful scientific theories tend to be simplex”. 28 Some
theory is simplex iff it is either simple and tested or complex and untested. This leads to an anti-induction relative
to simplicity: The past successes of simplicity confirms the projectability of simplexity for successful theories,
which in its turn renders probable the success of complexity in the future. It is an unstable world relative to the
success of simple theories. Yet, it inductively entails E to the same degree as HO.
One way to avoid this skeptical result would be to reject theories like HS or HG, but on what grounds? They
cannot be discarded for being unnecessarily complex; this would seemingly be (viciously) circular, as pointed out
by SWINBURNE (1997), although some theorists beg to differ. Alternatively, they could be discarded by
appealing to other explanatory virtues. This would require these virtues to be justified even when we are given
26
CHATER & VILÁNYI (2003) point out two examples of underdetermination of theory by data in cognitive science: of
grammar by linguistic input and of “perceptual organizations” by retinal visual input.
27
Note that Pr(E | BFRAG) is irrelevant to assess either side of the equality in Ratio.
28
Grue is a property designed by GOODMAN (1955). Objects are grue when they are either green & observed (before a
certain time) or blue & unobserved (after that certain time). He poses the puzzle of explaining how we are justified that
greenness is projectible whereas grueness is not – if indeed we are so justified.

16
only BFRAG. Yet, it is doubtable whether they can. Our justification of non ad hocness above, for example,
employed theories in the psychology of scientific inquiry which we could only justify by appeal to simplicity in
the first place!
Simplicity promises to be so basic to human inferential practice that the underdetermination landscape of
scientific and philosophical theories is impossible to traverse without it. 29 The landscape is generated by the fact
that our immediate (i.e., non-inferential) empirical observations and a priori knowledge logically underdetermine
the correct theory of the world. Non-deductive inferences are required to justify specific theories over empirically
equivalent rivals. Yet, BFRAG cannot even distinguish between HO and HG, and it goes as far as to favor HS over the
two. BFRAG is also insensitive to the other explanatory virtues.
Let us see if a different approach is successful in non-circularly justifying simplicity.

A virtue epistemological justification of simplicity. Having failed at non-circularly justifying appeals to

simplicity from its past successes, we retreat to a defense of simplicity as what may be called an epistemic virtue.
Epistemic virtues, in our sense, are characteristics of individual research practices or individual roles in a
research community. They are characteristics which help research to home-in on the truth.
An example. Consider scientists who provide bold conjectures. As most bold conjectures are false, this
practice is not truth-conducive per se. Nevertheless, a scientific community with some bold theorizers is more
likely to reach the truth on the long-run. We might then argue that it is epistemically rational, warranted, justified,
reasonable, etc. for these scientists to proceed in that particular way, and for communities to lend credence to their
theories. The rationality of this practice stems from its effectiveness in collective practice. The mixture of virtue
epistemology with social epistemology is still very underexplored. What we have to offer is accordingly quite
preliminary. We will argue that appeals to simplicity are like bold conjectures. They help communities home-in on
the truth.
Our argument is that the pragmatic virtues of simplicity translate into epistemic virtues. There are epistemic
benefits to starting simple in our theorizing, and they have literally no avoidable drawbacks. The procedure we
propose is to stick with the simplest theories compatible with the empirical data. Should one of our theories
become incompatible with new data, we reject and accept the next-simplest theory. The aim is to reach the truth
by successive complexifications, as in perturbation theory, a broad set of mathematical methods in physics.
The pragmatic virtues of simpler theories are as follows. They are easier to teach, to learn, to compute, and
their empirical consequences are easier to see. From these pragmatic virtues, we also obtain that these theories are
easier to develop and to test. Before taking a close look at the benefits, let us look at the “no avoidable
drawbacks” part.
There are potential drawbacks, to be sure. An analogy with perturbation theory, both a theory and a method
in empirical science, allows us to consider a potential drawback. Perturbative methods are, in some cases, unable
to ever approximate reality. This occurs, we have been told, when one has started too far off from reality. 30 The
resulting complexifications preserve too much of one’s erroneous starting point, yielding a distorted final picture.
Another analogy can be illuminating. In the field of optimization theory, optimization processes can get stuck on
local maxima and never reach the global maximum, so that again starting in the wrong place can have dire
consequences.
The analogy to both theories is that, by starting simple, we may begin on the wrong foot and get stuck on an
island of false theories. There would be no path of revisions from our starting theories to an approximately true
one. There is some reason to believe this is not the case for scientific theorizing. Scientific revolutions could act as
a sort of Bayesian “damping of the priors” by eliminating influence from which theory we start from. 31
Unfortunately, only detailed mathematical understanding of the methods and perils of surveying a landscape of
possibilities, – perils which are dependent on the shape of the landscape and on one’s survey methods, – could
give us a more precise understanding of the danger involved.
Thankfully, the menace is irrelevant, or so we argue. For every humanly possible evidential state E which is
like BFRAG, – i.e., untainted by simplicity appeals, – we uphold a “no loss” thesis NLE:

29
See DAY & KINCAID (1994) for a critique that simplicity could be basic to inference. They also critique that IBE could
be a basic form of inference. For a defense that it is, see HARMAN (1965) and PSILLOS (1999).
30
See CARTWRIGHT (1983: ch. 7).
31
Literal Bayesian damping of the priors involves eliminating influence from arbitrarily chosen prior probabilities.

17
 (NLE): At any BFRAG-like evidential state E, by picking the simplest theory empirically adequate to E,
humans cannot fail to obtain something which is obtainable by some alternative research strategy
viable at E.

Our argument is sketchy, yet promising. There are four exhaustive and mutually exclusive possibilities for each
evidential state E. NLE holds for every E in all four possibilities. They are:

(1) The truth is unreachable. Then, for any E, we are none the worse by starting simple, but none the
better either, relative to other truth-seeking strategies. They all fail equally.

(2) The truth is reachable only from a very complex start. Then, it is only if we had the epistemic
sources to know how complex is complex enough that would be able to knowingly employ a research
strategy that does not fail. Yet, very plausibly, no E constitutes such an epistemic source. Given that the
hierarchy of complexity levels is unbounded then, as far as we could know from any E, the menace of
not starting complex enough would present itself equally at every degree of complexity. Therefore,
there is no successful research strategy epistemically available to us. No degree of complexity is
preferable from any E.

(3) The truth is reachable only from the right degree of complexity. The reasoning here is parallel to the
one in ‘3’.

(4) The truth is reachable from anywhere. Perhaps one can get there without radical theory changes
(through progressive, cumulative convergence). Perhaps one can get there only with them (through
discontinuous, noncumulative convergence). Since no starting point of complexity can be recognized at
E to be quicker at getting to the truth than any other, nothing is lost by starting simple. No other
strategy could be recognizably quicker.

That serves as a swift defense of NLE for every E, concluding our defense of the “no avoidable drawbacks” part of
our thesis. The summary is that nothing in our BFRAG-like evidence ever points to any other research strategy as
more promising than starting simple.
Given scenario four, however, starting simple is preferable for any E. It is more efficient in truth-seeking than
either starting complex or starting from a random degree of complexity. The reasons are that simplicity provides
us with:

(P) Quick phenomenology: We are better able to do the “phenomenology” of simple theories. That is,
we can more quickly and more accurately extract the observable consequences of our theories. 32

From (P), we get:

(O) Quick observation: Quickened theory-guided observation. As a result, we end up learning more
quickly about the world than we would otherwise, even by observing through the lens of a false initial
theory. This is true insofar as most old observations are preserved through the (possibly radical) theory
changes we may undergo (even if their relevance becomes disputed). Some have argued such
preservation does not occur. See, for example, KUHN (1962).

This hastens the shrinkage of the vast landscape of theories empirically fit our evidence
state E. This is because, due to (O), E is growing quickly in content. As a result, empirical fit becomes a status
harder to achieve. So fewer theories are capable of fitting E. From (P) and (O), we obtain yet another benefit:

(T) Quick theory change: Since observations are the main way to test theories, we end up testing more
theories in a lesser amount of time if our theories are simple. If the truth is not simple, then we at least
ensure a high turnover rate.

32
In physics, phenomenology is the field connecting theoretical and experimental physics; physicist can attest the more
complicated the theory, the harder the phenomenology

18
Given (T), we survey the theory-landscape more quickly. Of course, it would be counter-productive to halt
research until a simple theory has been found. What is justified is engaging in some effort to find it and, after
having done so, accepting the simplest one found over its rivals.
The moral is: If we lost our keys in the dark, and no place seems more promising than any other to look (on
the light of our evidence), and if we are bound to be lead to its true location somehow (say, by picking up threads
on the floor), then we better start where we can look better. This does not presuppose that the keys are likely to be
under the light. (It does not presuppose that the world bears the natural or unnatural property of simplicity, as HA
and HB do.)
We have discovered two issues with the above reasoning. First, the underdetermination problem has not been
solved. The theory landscape remains infinitely populated (or so it is claimed) and our theory-guided observations
still yield finite results. No finite rate of blind theory-creation and insightful theory-testing could, by
happenstance, stumble upon one of the members of the vanishingly small set of approximately true theories.
(Small relative to the total set of theories.) The probability would remain at a constant zero or, at least, arbitrarily
close to it. It is like looking for one amongst a finite number of needles in an infinite haystack, or trying to hit a
rational number with a throwing dart on the real line. It is rationally expectable that we will not ever reach a true
theory. So simplicity appeals cannot be epistemically justified as increasers of the rational expectability of finding
out the truth. Perhaps research benefitting from (Q), (O), and (T) are not even more objectively likely at hitting on
the truth. (It depends on where, on the theory landscape, the true theory is. But this is inaccessible by us from any
starting point.)
Second, we have justified appeals to simplicity only insofar as simple theories are significantly easier to
develop and to test. However, often we have theories differing in complexity but not enough so as to outrun the
cognitive bandwidth of clever humans. The difference in our final ability to work out a theory’s consequences is
thus negligible. For rival theories within that “humanly tractable complexity band”, accepting the simplest one is
neither more nor less justified than accepting any of the others. This is the best we could do in the enterprise of
epistemically justifying simplicity.

5 Conclusions
We have found moderate a posteriori justifications of two explanatory virtues: non ad hocness and simplicity. The
premature conclusion of our research has not allowed us to pursue justifications for the other two explanatory
virtues we were interested in, namely, coherence and unification.
On non ad hocness, empirical theories about the psychology of practicing scientists seem to lend support to
local weak predictivism. This thesis states that ad hocness is a symptom that a theory has had its genesis in
motivated reasoning rather than sensible theory-building. As such, it is a symptom that the theory is likely to be
false. Insofar as its being unpromising often cannot be independently assessed (i.e., fudgedness is not transparent),
ad hocness is an indefeasible indicator that a theory is false. This is the best justification we have found of non ad
hocness as a criterion for theory choice, as an explanatory virtue. The argument is mostly due to the late Peter
Lipton (cf. LIPTON, 2004).
On simplicity, the pragmatic side-effects of simple theorizing quite plausibly allow us to make more
observations and test more theories in the limited time available for scientific research. Even if this does not
occur, there are no drawbacks from this strategy that could be avoided by some other rationally justified strategy,
in which case simple theorizing would break even on its epistemic benefits. (It would be neither positive nor
negative.) Stronger defenses of simplicity, such as the metaphysical position that reality is simple and the
historical position that simplicity has been successful cannot, without incurring in (apparently vicious) circularity,
be maintained. Simplicity is too basic to our modes of inference to allow for such a strong noncircular defense.

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7 Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for
providing us the opportunity of, and the financial means for, dedicating our attention to an internationally active
topic in philosophy. Our supervisor, Prof. Dr. Marco Antonio Caron Ruffino, deserves special gratitude for the
generous amount of time spent reviewing my ideas and writings. The advisor’s early background in physics aided
us in constructing a more realistic picture of science despite our distance from practicing laboratories and the real-
time development of scientific theories. Finally, we should thank the many scientists and philosophers at the
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) who have discussed the nature of simplicity, ad hocness, and
scientific explanation with us in seminars and informal conversations.

20