Prof Stephan Hartmann "What Is a Scientific Theory? A Bayesian Network Account"

I propose a Bayesian network account of what a scientific theory is and compare it with the syntactic and the semantic view discussed in the philosophy of science literature. On my account, theories are networks of interrelated models, each of which accounts for a phenomenon with a probability distribution defined over all model and phenomena variables. This approach raises a variety of philosophical questions, e.g. concerning the relation between theories and laws of natures and the role of abstract theory that I will address.