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  1. Theory Choice and Social Choice: Kuhn Vindicated.Michael Morreau - 2015 - Mind 124 (493):239-262.
    In a recent article, Okasha challenges Kuhn’s claim that there is no ‘neutral’ algorithm for theory choice. He argues using Arrow’s ‘impossibility’ theorem that — except under certain favourable conditions concerning the measurability and comparability of theoretical values — there are no theory choice algorithms at all, neutral or otherwise. But Okasha’s argument does not apply to important theory choice problems, among them the case of Copernican and Ptolemaic astronomy that much occupied Kuhn. The reason is that Kuhn’s choice criteria (...)
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  • A Matter of Kuhnian Theory-Choice? The GWS Model and the Neutral Current.Samuel Schindler - 2014 - Perspectives on Science 22 (4):491-522.
    In a widely received paper on theory choice, Kuhn made three central claims. First, as a matter of empirical fact, different theories tend to score differently with regard to what Kuhn considered to be the standard set of theoretical virtues, i.e., empirical accuracy, internal and external consistency, scope, simplicity, and fertility. Whereas some theories will for instance be more empirically accurate than others, other theories will have greater external coherence with our background theories. Second, hardly ever does a theory’s being (...)
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  • The limitations of the Arrovian consistency of domains with a fixed preference.James Nguyen - 2019 - Theory and Decision 87 (2):183-199.
    In this paper I investigate the properties of social welfare functions defined on domains where the preferences of one agent remain fixed. Such a domain is a degenerate case of those investigated, and proved Arrow consistent, by Sakai and Shimoji :435–445, 2006). Thus, they admit functions from them to a social preference that satisfy Arrow’s conditions of Weak Pareto, Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives, and Non-dictatorship. However, I prove that according to any function that satisfies these conditions on such a domain, (...)
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  • Radical Interpretation and The Aggregation Problem.Anandi Hattiangadi - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (2):283-303.
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
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  • Normative Uncertainty as a Voting Problem.William MacAskill - 2016 - Mind 125 (500):967-1004.
    Some philosophers have recently argued that decision-makers ought to take normative uncertainty into account in their decisionmaking. These philosophers argue that, just as it is plausible that we should maximize expected value under empirical uncertainty, it is plausible that we should maximize expected choice-worthiness under normative uncertainty. However, such an approach faces two serious problems: how to deal with merely ordinal theories, which do not give sense to the idea of magnitudes of choice-worthiness; and how, even when theories do give (...)
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  • Constraints on Rational Theory Choice.Seamus Bradley - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (3):639-661.
    ABSTRACT In a recent article, Samir Okasha presented an argument that suggests that there is no rational way to choose among scientific theories. This would seriously undermine the view that science is a rational enterprise. In this article, I show how a suitably nuanced view of what scientific rationality requires allows us to sidestep this argument. In doing so, I present a new argument in favour of voluntarism of the type favoured by van Fraassen. I then show how such a (...)
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  • Confirmational Holism and Theory Choice: Arrow Meets Duhem.Eleonora Cresto & Diego Tajer - 2020 - Mind 129 (513):71-111.
    In a recent paper Samir Okasha has suggested an application of Arrow’s impossibility theorem to theory choice. When epistemic virtues are interpreted as ‘voters’ in charge of ranking competing theories, and there are more than two theories at stake, the final ordering is bound to coincide with the one proposed by one of the voters, provided a number of seemingly reasonable conditions are in place. In a similar spirit, Jacob Stegenga has shown that Arrow’s theorem applies to the amalgamation of (...)
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  • Evaluating competing theories via a common language of qualitative verdicts.Wulf Gaertner & Nicolas Wüthrich - 2016 - Synthese 193 (10).
    Kuhn claimed that several algorithms can be defended to select the best theory based on epistemic values such as simplicity, accuracy, and fruitfulness. In a recent paper, Okasha :83–115, 2011) argued that no theory choice algorithm exists which satisfies a set of intuitively compelling conditions that Arrow had proposed for a consistent aggregation of individual preference orderings. In this paper, we put forward a solution to avoid this impossibility result. Based on previous work by Gaertner and Xu, we suggest to (...)
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  • On Arrow’s Theorem and Scientific Rationality: Reply to Morreau and Stegenga.Samir Okasha - 2015 - Mind 124 (493):279-294.
    In a recent article I compared the problem of theory choice, in which scientists must choose between competing theories, with the problem of social choice, in which society must choose between competing social alternatives. I argued that the formal machinery of social choice theory can be used to shed light on the problem of theory choice in science, an argument that has been criticized by Michael Morreau and Jacob Stegenga. This article replies to Morreau’s and Stegenga’s criticisms.
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  • Objectivity, Ambiguity, and Theory Choice.James Nguyen & Alexandru Marcoci - 2019 - Erkenntnis 84 (2):343-357.
    Kuhn argued that scientific theory choice is, in some sense, a rational matter, but one that is not fully determined by shared objective scientific virtues like accuracy, simplicity, and scope. Okasha imports Arrow’s impossibility theorem into the context of theory choice to show that rather than not fully determining theory choice, these virtues cannot determine it at all. If Okasha is right, then there is no function (satisfying certain desirable conditions) from ‘preference’ rankings supplied by scientific virtues over competing theories (...)
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