Abstract
The theoretical virtue of parsimony values the minimizing of theoretical commitments, but theoretical commitments come in two kinds: ontological and ideological. While the ontological commitments of a theory are the entities it posits, a theory’s ideological commitments are the primitive concepts it employs. Here, I show how we can extend the distinction between quantitative and qualitative parsimony, commonly drawn regarding ontological commitments, to the domain of ideological commitments. I then argue that qualitative ideological parsimony is a theoretical virtue. My defense proceeds by demonstrating the merits of qualitative ideological parsimony and by showing how the qualitative conception of ideological parsimony undermines two notable arguments from ideological parsimony: David Lewis’ defense of modal realism and Ted Sider’s defense of mereological nihilism.
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Notes
On the abductive response to skepticism, see Vogel (1990).
It is not obvious that the existence of a divine being would support (Parsimony). One might, for example, draw a contrary, broadly Leibnizian conclusion that reality is maximally rather than minimally populated.
(Parsons (1976), p. 660).
See Quine (1953a).
On Quinean meta-ontology and ontological commitment, see Van Inwagen (1998).
My thanks here to an anonymous referee for noting this concern about scientific commitments.
I omit complications about the restrictions of a Quinean regimentation in first-order logic. As will be clear, some of theories of interest here invoke modal operators and are therefore anathema to the Quinean, but the core Quinean notion of ontological commitment is all that will be required for what follows.
(Quine (1951), p. 14).
Not all accounts of the representational power of theories admit something like the distinction between ideology and ontology. For example, algorithmic information-theoretic approaches to model selection suggest at least one understanding of “representational power” where representational power, given a compressible body of data and fixed language, is determined by the minimal description length that outputs the data in question. On algorithmic complexity, see Li and Vitanyi (1997). Notably, this construal of representational power provides a prima facie rationale for parsimony within the context of model selection. Here, I assume the Quinean conception of theories and the corresponding understanding of representational power.
As (Quine (1951), p. 14) puts it, “As a subdivision of ideology there is the question of what ideas are fundamental or primitive for a theory, and what ones derivative.”
Quine (1953b) defends eliminativism. On modalism, see Melia (1992). Note that a defender of possible worlds is not a modalist in the relevant sense. The modalist eschews quantification over possible worlds of any kind, using only primitive modal operators to express modal claims. For present purposes, I set aside concerns about the ontological status of facts.
Is there an analogue of fundamental rather than derivative ideological commitments in terms of ontological commitments? Perhaps. Some philosophers have argued that ontological commitments only contribute to the cost of a theory if they are fundamental rather than merely derivative ontological commitments. See Schaffer (2010) for discussion. Here, I assume a “flat” Quinean conception of ontology: no objects are more or less fundamental than other objects even while objects instantiate more or less fundamental properties.
Here, the ‘O’ in O-Parsimony and ‘I’ in I-Parsimony stand for ‘ontological’ and ‘ideological’, respectively.
See Cortens and O’Leary-Hawthorne (1995) for discussion.
See Sider (2006) for discussion of the ideological and ontological solutions to the puzzle of how bare particulars are unified with their properties.
See Lewis (1983) for discussion of the analytic options regarding the concept of natural properties.
This does not require that there is some fixed value we can assign to commitments—it would, after all, be surprising to learn that, any primitive concept is equal in value to any collection of thirteen objects—but, rather, that both ontology and ideology figure equally into the evaluation of theories.
(Benacerraf et al. (1966), p. 35) express the opposing skeptical view rather succinctly: “It is hard enough to believe that the natural world is so nicely arranged that what is simplest, etc., by our lights is always the same as what is true (or, at least, generally the same as what is true); why should one believe that the universe of sets... is so nicely arranged that there is a pre-established harmony between our feelings of simplicity, etc., and truth?” (Italics from original.)
Here, ‘N’ in NO-Parsimony and ‘K’ in KO-Parsimony stand for ‘quantitative and ‘qualitative’, respectively. Since ‘Q’ won’t do the trick, I’ve opted for ‘N’ and ‘K’ with ‘number’ and ‘kind’ in mind.
I assume here that neither murderer nor set is a natural kind. While controversial, I take it that a necessary condition for kindhood is figuring into the qualitative features of the world that are tracked by the natural sciences.
Here, I omit a range of complications for the proposed analyses of both intrinsicality and duplication. While important, my primary aim here is illustrative in nature. I therefore assume that these proposals are unproblematic. On an alternative strategy for analyzing intrinsicality, see Trogdon (2009).
As Lewis (1983) and others have suggested, a primitive concept of naturalness might serve as an additional primitive that allows for the analysis of duplication and therefore intrinsicality. Again, for the sake of illustration, I set aside this complication.
Sider (2011) cites the question of whether our mereological theory ought to take overlap or parthood as primitive. I take the present considerations to apply equally well to that case.
As (Sider (2011), p.13) says, “Should our fundamental logical theory take conjunction and negation, or instead, disjunction and negation as primitive? In such cases it’s hard to see how to choose, and indeed, hard to believe there could be a single correct choice.” See also Sider’s discussion of the universal and existential quantifiers.
See (Sider (2011), p.13).
Unsurprisingly, some will believe this example to be genuinely substantial, if so, I encourage them to consider whether any of the debates they hold to be insubstantial can be resolved in the manner I suggest.
This ranking should capture not only an ordering of properties, but also the metric structure of these properties (e.g., how far apart certain more or less natural properties are from one another). Here, I set aside the requirement of supplying a metric structure to naturalness and focus on the categorical and comparative naturalness primitives only. See Eddon (forthcoming) for discussion.
See Sider (forthcoming) for discussion.
See Sider (2011) for discussion of absolutist and comparativist views of structure.
I omit discussion of the “moving gap” view, according to which only past and future entities exist, and the present is distinguished from other times by virtue of its nonexistence. I am sincerely hopeful no one will be troubled by this omission.
See Bricker (2006) for a defense of modal realism without appeal to theoretical virtues as a source of epistemic reasons.
Here, I take the relevant concept of modality to include at least the operators of modal logic, but I leave open what precisely this concept of modality subsumes.
Fine cites a range of other properties that the modal view errantly deems essential to Socrates: being distinct from the Eiffel Tower, being such that \(1+2=3\), and being such that Plato is essentially human.
In defense of island universes, see Bricker (1996).
Lewis (1986) holds that the isolation and unification of worlds is determined by either spatiotemporal or what he calls “analogically spatiotemporal relations.” See Bricker (1996) for a defense of an extended conception of isolation and unification that appeals to external relations (i.e., relations that fail to supervene upon the intrinsic natures of their relata).
On absolute actuality, see Bricker (2006).
(KI-Parsimony) also has consequences for another modal metaphysical thesis: modalism, according to which there are no possible worlds and modal operators are irreducible primitives required to express modal facts. A powerful objection to modalism holds that the theory is untenable because, in order to match the expressive power of views that quantify over possible worlds, the modalist requires a plurality of distinct, individually indexed actuality operators. For ersatzist actualists, this commitment is taken to either undermine the theory or show it to be a mere notational variant of views that accept abstract possible worlds. But, if (KI-Parsimony) is true, there is good reason to believe that all these actuality operators are of a common kind, so modalism is on equal footing with (and perhaps superior to) standard forms of ersatz actualism, which help themselves to primitive modality as well as abstract entities that play the role of possible worlds.
Strictly speaking, the view Sider defends cannot be stated using mereological vocabulary since Sider rejects commitment to the ideology of mereology. Here, I omit these particular complications. On nihilism, see Dorr and Rosen (2001) and Liggins (2008). Here, I focus my attention on those forms of nihilism, which identify mereological atoms with microphysical objects. See Schaffer (2007) for discussion of monistic mereological nihilism.
Competitors to nihilism include universalism, according to which any objects compose a further object, as well as organicism, according to which only organic objects have proper parts, and brutalism, according to which there is no reductive account of the conditions under which composition occurs. See Rea (1998) for a defense of universalism. See Van Inwagen (1990) for a defense of organicism. See Markosian (1998) for a defense of brutalism.
Sider (forthcoming).
For a dissenting opinion, see Cameron (2007b).
On the topic-neutral nature of mereology, see (Lewis (1991), pp. 72–87).
Defenders of the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles might lay claim to an analysis of identity, but, while individual identity may admit of analysis in terms of shared properties, this merely pushes the bump in the rug, since an analysis of property identity is still required.
For discussion of various interpretations of “composition as identity,” see Cotnoir (forthcoming).
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Acknowledgments
For helpful comments and discussion, thanks to Marc Alspector-Kelly, Phil Bricker, Ben Caplan, Ed Ferrier, Barak Krakauer, Chris Meacham, and Alex Skiles.
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Cowling, S. Ideological parsimony. Synthese 190, 3889–3908 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-012-0231-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-012-0231-7