Óscar Monroy: 'Ideology and the commitments of abductive methodology'
Chair: Evie Moss
Abstract: In contemporary philosophy, we often follow an abductive methodology characterized by the assessment of different theories based on their theoretical virtues. One such virtue is simplicity, which is an aggregate of different more concrete virtues. One of the most popular iterations of simplicity is ontological parsimony, according to which theories that posit fewer objects are better in some sense. There is also the neighbouring, underexplored virtue of ideological parsimony, according to which theories that posit fewer primitive concepts are better in some sense. I argue two things. First, that ideology is central to our abductive methodology, not only because of ideological parsimony, but because of ideology's relationship to other theoretical virtues. This is controversial due to the scarce discussion around theoretical ideology in general. Second, I argue that to make sense of ideology's importance in theory choice, we most endorse realism about metaphysical structure. This should be surprising, considering that we are inferring a disputed metaphysical thesis from methodology alone. Some objections and alternatives are explored.
