Abstract
Nelson Goodman has constructed two theories of simplicity: one of predicates; one of hypotheses. I offer a simpler theory by generalization and abstraction from his. Generalization comes by dropping special conditions Goodman imposes on which unexcluded extensions count as complicating and which excluded extensions count as simplifying. Abstraction is achieved by counting only nonisomorphic models and subinterpretations. The new theory takes into account all the hypotheses of a theory in assessing its complexity, whether they were projected prior to, or result from, projection of a given hypothesis. It assigns simplicity post-projection priority over simplicity pre-projection. It better orders compound conditionals than does the theory of simplicity of hypotheses, and it does not inherit an anomaly of the theory of simplicity of predicates — its failure to order the ordering relations. Drop Goodman's special conditions, and the problems fall away with them.
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References
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The Center for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh lent support to this work Fall, 1989. I am grateful to Jan von Plato for a comment on work I presented there and to Gerald Massey for extensive discussion. I attended a seminar on artificial science led by Kevin Kelly and John Norton at Carnegie-Mellon University.
I thank Jane McIntyre, Nicholas Moutafakis, Lee Werth, and colleagues in Philosophy at Cleveland State University. Brian Scott, a colleague in Mathematics, carefully reviewed the manuscript and corrected an important technical error in the ordering of dyadic relations. I am grateful to Victoria Knight for her love of simplicity and contributions to the simplicity of this manuscript.
I thank the editorial staff and reviewers of Synthese for suggestions that led to corrections and improvements.
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Richmond, S.A. A simplification of the theory of simplicity. Synthese 107, 373–393 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413842
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413842