Abstract
The connection between unification and confirmation has been underappreciated. Although seminal works in the literature allude to this connection, they typically fail to provide critical details. Moreover, in the same works the burden of analysing the concept of unification falls on the concepts of understanding and explanation. I argue that the prospects of this approach appear bleak as the latter concepts, at least as they are traditionally construed, are opaque and not readily amenable to an objective treatment. As an alternative, I shift the entire burden of the analysis to confirmational concepts, offering not just a novel account of unification but, more importantly, something that has been virtually missing from the literature, namely a quantitative measure.
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Notes
- 1.
As one referee rightly indicated, there is an abundance of proposed measures of coherence that may be profitable in this context. For a cursory discussion of the similarities and differences between coherence and unification the reader may consult Votsis (2015, §8).
- 2.
I have alluded to such a modification in Votsis (2016, p. 309, f14).
- 3.
Though there may be something to be said about judging the strength of these connections also via the number of atomic propositions that satisfy condition (2) for each specific pair.
- 4.
Myrvold briefly discusses and dismisses the danger posed by ‘irrelevant conjunction’ type scenarios – see (p. 410, f6). For a sustained critique see Lange (2004), where it is claimed that Myrvold’s account is in some cases too easy and in others too difficult to satisfy.
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Votsis, I. (2017). Unification through Confirmation. In: Massimi, M., Romeijn, JW., Schurz, G. (eds) EPSA15 Selected Papers. European Studies in Philosophy of Science, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53730-6_8
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