Rationally warranted promise: the virtue-economic account of pursuit-worthiness.
Pursuing a scientific idea is often justified by the promise associated with it. Philosophers of science have proposed various ways of unpacking this idea of promise, including more specific indicators. Economic models in particular emphasise the trade-off between an idea’s benefits and its costs. T...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 206; no. 2; pp. 1 - 34 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Aug2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=186937640&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 186937640 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2025 vid: 206 iid: 2 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 186937640 10.1007/s11229-025-05077-5 ppf: 1 ppct: 33 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.5MB tig: atl: Rationally warranted promise: the virtue-economic account of pursuit-worthiness. aug: au: Duerr, Patrick M. Fischer, Enno affil: https://ror.org/03a1kwz48 von Weizsäcker Centre for Foundations of Science, University of Tübingen, Doblerstraße 33, 72074, Tübingen, Germany https://ror.org/042aqky30 Institute of Philosophy, Dresden University of Technology, Zellescher Weg 17, 01069, Dresden, Germany sug: keyword: Economics Applied Economics Philosophy and Religious Studies Philosophy Kuhn Laudan Pursuit-worthiness Reflective equilibrium Research heuristics Theoretical virtues Theory choice ab: Pursuing a scientific idea is often justified by the promise associated with it. Philosophers of science have proposed various ways of unpacking this idea of promise, including more specific indicators. Economic models in particular emphasise the trade-off between an idea’s benefits and its costs. Taking up this Peirce-inspired idea, we spell out the metaphor of such a cost-benefit analysis for scientific ideas. It fruitfully urges a set of salient meta-methodological questions that accounts of scientific pursuit-worthiness ought to address. In line with such a meta-methodological framework, we also articulate and explore an appealing and auspicious concretisation—what we shall dub “the virtue-economic account of pursuit-worthiness”: cognitive benefits and costs of an idea, we suggest, should be characterised in terms of an idea’s theoretical virtues, such as empirical adequacy, explanatory power, or coherence. Assessments of pursuit-worthiness are deliberative judgements in which scientifically competent evaluators weigh and compare the prospects of such virtues, subject to certain rationality constraints that ensure historical and contemporary scientific circumspection, coherence and systematicity. The virtue-economic account, we show, sheds new light on the normativity of scientific pursuit, methodological pluralism in science, and the rationality of historical science. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2025. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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