Promising Stabs in the Dark: Theory Virtues and Pursuit-Worthiness in the Dark Energy Problem

Understand

This paper argues that we ought to conceive of the Dark Energy problem -- the question of how to account for observational data, naturally interpreted as accelerated expansion of the universe -- as a crisis of underdetermined pursuit-worthiness.

• Not only are the various approaches to the Dark Energy problem evidentially underdetermined; at present, no compelling reasons single out any of them as more likely to be true than the other.
• More vexingly for working scientists, none of the approaches stands out as uncontroversially preferable over its rivals in terms of its rationally warranted promise, i.e.~the reasons to further work on, explore, and develop it.
• We demonstrate this claim by applying a Peircean economic model of pursuit-worthiness in terms of a cognitive cost/benefit estimate -- with the instantiation of theory virtues as key indicators of cognitive gains -- to the four main Dark Energy proposals (the cosmological constant approach, modified gravity, quintessence, and inhomogeneous cosmologies).