On the Evidential Import of Unification

Abstract

There are two senses in which a hypothesis may be said to unify evidence: (1) ability to increase the mutual information of a set of evidence statements; (2) explanation of commonalities in phenomena by positing a common origin. On Bayesian updating, only Mutual Information Unification contributes to incremental support. Defenders of explanation as a confirmatory virtue that makes independent contribution must appeal to some relevant difference between humans and Bayesian agents. I argue that common origin unification has at best a limited heuristic role in confirmation. Finally, Reichenbachian common cause hypotheses are shown to be instances of Mutual Information Unification.