Richard Woodward (University of Hamburg)
April 14 MON — 12.30-14.30
Sala Riunioni — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Ontological Parsimony
Abstract: It is familiar that ontology matters to theory choice: more parsimonious theories should be preferred to less parsimonious ones. But as David Lewis pointed out, this Ockhamist principle can be understood in two ways, depending on whether parsimony is understood in quantitative or qualitative terms. The distinction between quantitative and qualitative parsimony is then used by Lewis to argue that his own theory of reality is in fact more parsimonious than one might suspect. Whether Lewis's argument is cogent remains a vexed question in the extant literature, and I shall argue that that once qualitative parsimony is properly understood, Lewis should concede that his defence fails and that his own theory is as qualitatively unparsimonious as any consistent theory could be.