The Principle of Proliferation against the argument by elimination. The case of the social sciences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-6746.2019.3.35261Keywords:
Principle of Proliferation .Interdependent evaluation. Argument by elimination. Relative meritsAbstract
In order to criticize the defense of the Principle of Proliferation made by Feyerabend we will evaluate to what extent the social sciences benefit from the fact that they shelter a considerable diversity of theories and methodologies. In spite of being a reality in social disciplines, proliferation is never seen as capable of increasing the testing of a theory by contrasting it with alternatives. Social scientists disbelieve that there
are potential falsifiers to a theory that only other theories are able to locate. Having to deal with explanatory diversity, the social sciences come into conflict with the thesis that, by virtue of each theory having access only to certain facts, disregarding alternative theories implies let the facts they locate off lightly. The multiplication of theories has been fought by means of the argument by elimination whereby the social
theories already formulated are scrutinized with the aim of demonstrating their flaws and pointing out an alternative to them as the only acceptable because it is the only survivor to rigorous empirical evaluation. We will point out the reasons why social scientists make a massive use of the argument by elimination against duplication or multiplication theories. Considering that social theories do not test each other, proliferation
is deprived of the epistemic advantages attributed to it by Feyerabend. Even if reciprocal testing is possible it is useless because if there are facts located only by certain theory they do not serve to evaluate other theories.
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