ABSTRACT
Here is a purely hypothetical, example from Field that makes the same point: Presumably our empirical methodology includes a bias for simplicity. We recognize that insofar as we can account for all past and present observations by our present body of theory T, we could account for it equally well by an alternative T* according to which T holds until Jan 1 [2016], after which Aristotelian physics, Lamarckian biology, etc., take over. Why do we rule out T*, and base our predictions instead on the approximate truth of T? ...presumably it’s that T is a vastly simpler way of accommodating our evidence than is T*. But now it might seem that our methodology of choosing the simpler is empirically revisable (either by revising the principle ‘choose the simpler’ or by revising the simplicity judgments that give this slogan its content). Suppose we had evidence that in each past year on New Year’s day, the laws of nature drastically changed; that would seem like good inductive evidence that they’d change on New Years in [2016] too. Doesn’t this show that our empirical methodology...is itself empirically revisable?
