The “Structure” of the “Strategy”: Looking at the Matthewson-Weisberg Trade-off and Its Justificatory Role for the Multiple-Models Approach

Abstract

The multiple-models approach, which has its origins in Levins’s work, is gaining broader acceptance among philosophers. Levins asserted that there is a trade-off between modeling desiderata, which justified the multiple-models approach through two separate justificatory paths. Some attention has been paid to the trade-off thesis, culminating in a paper by Matthewson and Weisberg. However, no attention has been paid to how the trade-off is supposed to justify the multiple-models approach. I argue that a trade-off between generality and precision cannot support one of Levins’s justificatory paths, and I consider what that might mean for the multiple-models approach.