Draft. Forthcoming in Synthèse. Send comments to jpzb@fsof.uned.es WHY ARE GOOD THEORIES GOOD? Reflections on epistemic values, confirmation, and formal epistemology.

attempt to unify inductivist and hypothetico-deductivist intuitions on confirmation by means of a single measure are examined and compared with previous work on the theory of verisimilitude or truthlikeness. The idea of connecting ‘the logic of confirmation ’ with ‘the logic of acceptability ’ is also critically discussed, and it is argued that ‘acceptability ’ takes necessarily into account some pragmatic criteria, and that at least two normative senses of ‘acceptability ’ must be distinguished: ‘acceptable ’ in the sense of ‘being allowed to accept’, and ‘acceptable ’ in the sense of ‘being obliged to accept’. Lastly, some connections of confirmation theory with naturalism, intertheoretic reduction, and explanation vs. understanding are explored