A comment on Paul Schoemaker's target article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14 (1991), p. 205-215, "The Quest for Optimality: A Positive Heuristic of Science?" (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00066140). This comment argues that the optimizing model of decision leads to an infinite regress, once internal costs of decision (i.e., information and computation costs) are duly taken into account.

A pair of arguments suggests that self-control is not properly conceptualized on the pattern/act/preference model Rachlin proposes. The first concerns the irrational following of personal rules. The second concerns scenarios in which behavioral patterns an agent deems good come into conflict.

Statistical procedures can be applied to episodes in the history of science in order to weight attributes to predict short-term survival of theories; an asymptotic method is used to show that short-term survival is a valid proxy for ultimate survival; and a theoretical argument is made that ultimate survival is a valid proxy for objective truth. While realists will appreciate this last step, instrumentalists do not need it to benefit from the actuarial procedures of cliometric metatheory. Introduction A plausible proxy (...) for Peircean consensus Assessing the validity of theory attributes as predictors of theory survival 3.1 Linear discriminant function 3.2 Factor analysis 3.3 Taxometric analysis Verisimilitude index Satisfying both instrumentalists and realists Recapitulation Implementation of cliometric metatheory * Correspondence about this article may be addressed to Leslie Yonce at pemeehle{at}umn.edu' + u + '@' + d + ''//--> This article had been completed by Paul Meehl at the time of his death on 14 February 2003. His wife, Leslie J. Yonce, is grateful to Keith Gunderson (University of Minnesota, Center for Philosophy of Science) and Niels G. Waller (Psychology Department, Vanderbilt University) for advice with some final editing details. (shrink)

The operationalization of scienti?c notions is instrumental in enabling experimental evidence to bear on scienti?c propositions. Conceptual change should thus translate into operationalization change. This article describes some important experimental works in the psychology of concepts since the beginning of the twentieth century. It is argued that since the early days of this ?eld, psy- chologists.