Scientific Pluralism, Consistency Preservation, and Inconsistency Toleration

• Main Author: Otávio Bueno
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Associazione Culturale Humana.Mente 2018-05-01
• Series: Humana.Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies
• Subjects: Scientific disunity; inconsistent scientific theories; inconsistency-toleration
• Online Access: http://www.humanamente.eu/index.php/HM/article/view/39

Scientific (disunity) pluralism is the view according to which there is a plurality of scientific domains and of scientific theories, and these theories are empirically adequate relative to their own respective domains. Scientific monism is the view according to which there is a single domain to which all scientific theories apply. How are these views impacted by the presence of inconsistent scientific theories (in particular, theories that are inconsistent with one another)? There are (A) consistency-preservation strategies and (B) inconsistency-toleration strategies. Among the former, two prominent strategies can be articulated: (A1) Compartmentalization and (A2) Information restriction. Among the inconsistency-toleration strategies, we have: (B1) Paraconsistent compartmentalization and (B2) Dialetheism. In this paper, I critically assess the adequacy of each of these four views.