The Problem-Ladenness of Theory
Publication Date
1-1-2024
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Computational Brain and Behavior
DOI
10.1007/s42113-024-00219-3
Abstract
The cognitive sciences are facing questions of how to select from competing theories or develop those that suit their current needs. However, traditional accounts of theoretical virtues have not yet proven informative to theory development in these fields. We advance a pragmatic account by which theoretical virtues are heuristics we use to estimate a theory’s contribution to a field’s body of knowledge and the degree to which it increases that knowledge’s ability to solve problems in the field’s domain or problem space. From this perspective, properties that are traditionally considered epistemic virtues, such as a theory’s fit to data or internal coherence, can be couched in terms of problem space coverage, and additional virtues come to light that reflect a theory’s alignment with problem-having agents and the context in a societally embedded scientific system. This approach helps us understand why the needs of different fields result in different kinds of theories and allows us to formulate the challenges facing cognitive science in terms that we hope will facilitate their resolution through further theoretical development.
Funding Sponsor
Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies
Keywords
Cognitive science, Pragmatism, Problems, Scientific theories
Department
Linguistics and Language Development
Recommended Citation
Daniel Levenstein, Aniello De Santo, Saskia Heijnen, Manjari Narayan, Freek J.W. Oude Maatman, Jonathan Rawski, and Cory Wright. "The Problem-Ladenness of Theory" Computational Brain and Behavior (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42113-024-00219-3
