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On the Incommensurability of Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jaakko Hintikka
Jaakko Hintikka*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Florida State University
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Abstract

The commensurability of two theories can be defined (relative to a given set of questions) as the ratio of the total information of their shared answers to the total information of the answers yielded by the two theories combined. Answers should be understood here as model consequences (in the sense of the author's earlier papers), not deductive consequences. This definition is relative to a given model of the joint language of the theories, but can be generalized to sets of models. It turns out to capture also the idea of incommensurability as conceptual alienation. Incommensurability so defined does not imply incomparability.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 25 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This work has made possible by NSF Grant #IST-8310936 (Information Science and Technology).

References

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