About this topic
Summary The Quine-Duhem thesis is a form of the thesis of the underdetermination of theory by empirical evidence.  The basic problem is that individual theoretical claims are unable to be confirmed or falsified on their own, in isolation from surrounding hypotheses.  For this reason, the acceptance or rejection of a theoretical claim is underdetermined by observation.  The thesis can be interpreted in a more radical form that tends to be associated with the epistemic holism of Willard V. O. Quine or in a more restricted form associated with Pierre Duhem.  It is primarily an epistemic thesis about the relation between evidence and theory, though in Quine's case it also has semantic overtones connected with his rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction.
Key works The two main references are Quine 1951, reprinted as Quine 1953, and Duhem 1954.  Relevant extracts of both Quine and Duhem may be found in Curd & Cover 1998.
Introductions Ariew 1984; Ariew 2008; Gillies 1993; Hylton 2010; Krips 1982; Vuillemin 1979
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  1. Reinterpreting Relativity: Using the Equivalence Principle to Explain Away Cosmological Anomalies.Marcus Arvan - manuscript
    According to the standard interpretation of Einstein’s field equations, gravity consists of mass-energy curving spacetime, and an additional physical force or entity—denoted by Λ (the ‘cosmological constant’)—is responsible for the Universe’s metric-expansion. Although General Relativity’s direct predictions have been systematically confirmed, the dominant cosmological model thought to follow from it—the ΛCDM (Lambda cold dark matter) model of the Universe’s history and composition—faces considerable challenges, including various observational anomalies and experimental failures to detect dark matter, dark energy, or inflation-field candidates. This (...)
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  2. Lowe hanging fruit? Underdeterminism and the evaluation of libertarianism.Terence Rajivan Edward - manuscript
    I respond to Dan Lowe’s charge that libertarianism, or the most defensible version, involves an unacceptable “asymmetry of value.” I argue that there is an inconsistency between Lowe’s approach to counterexamples and his eventual objection.
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  3. Evidential Equivalence.Ioannis Votsis - manuscript
    In this article I probe the consequences and limits of the underdetermination thesis and the empirical equivalence thesis, using Laudan and Leplin's fecund article as a springboard. Although a realist at heart, my primary intention is not to undermine the anti-realist arguments but rather to try to precisify the challenge the realist, and more generally the participant in the scientific realism debate, faces.
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  4. From analytic pragmatism to historical materialism: Frankfurt school critical theory and the Quine‐Duhem thesis.Jacob McNulty - 2023 - European Journal of Philosophy 31 (3):576-599.
    My aim in this paper is to explore an affinity between early critical theory and analytical philosophy. The affinity is in a fairly unexpected area: philosophy of science. I argue that early critical theory embraces a view of science which is a natural if somewhat unfamiliar extension of the pragmatist one defended by Quine. In particular, I argue that Horkheimer has a version of the Quine-Duhem thesis (“underdetermination of theory choice by the evidence”). How do the Frankfurt and analytical versions (...)
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  5. Explanatory Optimism about the Hard Problem of Consciousness.Josh Weisberg - 2023 - Routledge. Edited by Josh Weisberg.
    Explanatory Optimism about the Hard Problem of Consciousness argues that despite the worries of explanatory pessimists, consciousness can be fully explained in “easy” scientific terms. The widespread intuition that consciousness poses a hard problem is plausibly based on how consciousness appears to us in first-person access. The book offers a debunking argument to undercut the justificatory link between the first-person appearances and our hard problem intuitions. -/- The key step in the debunking argument involves the development and defense of an (...)
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  6. Realtà e rappresentazione : alle origini della Théorie physique (scritti 1892-1896).Jean-François Stoffel, Pierre Duhem, Stefano Bordoni & Mirella Fortino - 2022 - Rome, Italie: Aracne.
    Fra il 1892 e il 1896, lo scienziato francese Pierre Duhem pubblicò, nella «Revue des questions scientifiques», sette articoli che, per la prima volta, fecero conoscere la sua concezione della scienza a un pubblico più vasto. L’accoglienza reticente, persino ostile, che è stata loro riservata lo indurrà, già in questo breve lasso di tempo, a fare evolvere la sua concezione. Otto anni dopo sarà pubblicata la sua famosa «Théorie physique : son objet, sa structure», in cui sono integrati molti di (...)
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  7. Introduction à la lecture des célèbres articles duhémiens de la Revue des questions scientifiques (1892-1896).Jean-François Stoffel & Fabio Rodrigo Leite - 2022 - Rome, Italie: Aracne.
    Si la plupart des sept articles que Pierre Duhem fit paraître dans la «Revue des questions scientifiques» entre 1892 et 1896 ont déjà fait l’objet d’excellents commentaires spécifiques, il demeure assez difficile de percevoir ce qui pourrait rendre compte tout à la fois de leur enchaînement, de la grande diversité des thématiques dont ils témoignent, et des évolutions conceptuelles qui s’y manifestent. Constatant que ces articles suscitèrent des critiques aussi vives qu’inattendues, l’auteur du présent volume, destiné à accompagner leur lecture, (...)
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  8. Falsifiability and the Duhem Problem.Danny Frederick - 2020 - In Against the Philosophical Tide. Yeovil: Critias Publishing. pp. 15-19.
    It is often claimed that the Duhem problem shows that the notion of falsifiability is inapplicable to scientific theories. I explain why the claim is false.
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  9. Fault-Tracing: Against Quine-Duhem: A Defense of the Objectivity of Scientific Justification.Sam Mitchell - 2020 - Berlin: De Gruyter.
    The Quine-Duhem thesis states that we always have a choice about how praise or blame are distributed in cases of scientific justification. But in many scientific examples, there is simply no room to doubt that a particular hypothesis is responsible for a refutation or established by the observations. Fault Tracing gives a theory of independent justification from different sets of evidence. Using both real and artificial examples, it shows how to play independently established hypotheses against each other to determine whether (...)
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  10. How to Do Things with Theory: The Instrumental Role of Auxiliary Hypotheses in Testing.Corey Dethier - 2019 - Erkenntnis 86 (6):1453-1468.
    Pierre Duhem’s influential argument for holism relies on a view of the role that background theory plays in testing: according to this still common account of “auxiliary hypotheses,” elements of background theory serve as truth-apt premises in arguments for or against a hypothesis. I argue that this view is mistaken. Rather than serving as truth-apt premises in arguments, auxiliary hypotheses are employed as “epistemic tools”: instruments that perform specific tasks in connecting our theoretical questions with the world but that are (...)
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  11. Aspectos da Filosofia da Ciência de Pierre Duhem: Variedades de Subdeterminação Empírica e a Função do Bom Senso na escolha entre Teorias.Alexander Maar - 2018 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 74 (1):59-84.
    As a philosopher of science, Pierre Duhem is most often remembered as the earliest contributor to what became known as the Duhem-Quine thesis. This thesis casts doubt on our ability to isolate and test theories, and to choose between empirically equivalent rivals. By extension, it offers important criticism of the rationality of deductivist science. In contrast with the vast literature produced during the 20th century addressing the problem of empirical underdetermination of theories, little has been said on the viability of (...)
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  12. Evidential holism.Joe Morrison - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (6):e12417.
    Evidential holism begins with something like the claim that “it is only jointly as a theory that scientific statements imply their observable consequences.” This is the holistic claim that Elliott Sober tells us is an “unexceptional observation”. But variations on this “unexceptional” claim feature as a premise in a series of controversial arguments for radical conclusions, such as that there is no analytic or synthetic distinction that the meaning of a sentence cannot be understood without understanding the whole language of (...)
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  13. Algunas relaciones entre el holismo de la confirmación y el holismo semántico: estudio de caso.Santiago Ginnobili - 2016 - Metatheoria 6 (1):95-106.
    La tesis del holismo de la confirmación aparece por primera vez presentada de manera explícita y extensa en los escritos de Duhem. Años después, es defendida por Quine, pero no en base a la discusión de teorías científicas particulares, sino en relación con su posición semántica. Desde entonces las relaciones entre el holismo semántico y el holismo de la contrastación han sido discutidas, aunque generalmente de un modo algo despegado del análisis de teorías específicas y sus relaciones. Pretendo mostrar a (...)
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  14. Objectivity. Polity Press, 2015. Introduction and T. of Contents.Guy Axtell - 2015 - Polity; Wiley.
    “Objectivity” is an important theoretical concept with diverse applications in our collective practices of inquiry. It is also a concept attended in recent decades by vigorous debate, debate that includes but is not restricted to scientists and philosophers. The special authority of science as a source of knowledge of the natural and social world has been a matter of much controversy. In part because the authority of science is supposed to result from the objectivity of its methods and results, objectivity (...)
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  15. Confirmation versus Falsificationism.Ray Scott Percival - 2015 - In Robin L. Cautin & Scott O. Lilienfeld (eds.), Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology.
    Confirmation and falsification are different strategies for testing theories and characterizing the outcomes of those tests. Roughly speaking, confirmation is the act of using evidence or reason to verify or certify that a statement is true, definite, or approximately true, whereas falsification is the act of classifying a statement as false in the light of observation reports. After expounding the intellectual history behind confirmation and falsificationism, reaching back to Plato and Aristotle, I survey some of the main controversial issues and (...)
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  16. Theory-Ladenness Special Issue: Introduction.Ioannis Votsis, Michela Tacca & Gerhard Schurz - 2015 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 46 (1):83-86.
    Are sensory experiences, perceptual beliefs and observation reports faithful encoders of truthful information about the world? The theory-ladenness thesis poses an important challenge to answering this question in the affirmative. Roughly the thesis holds that theoretical factors affect the content of those experiences, beliefs and reports. In other words, it holds that their content is laden with theory. Theoretical factors here are construed broadly so as to include scientific theories, beliefs and cognitive processes. Two crucial questions arise in relation to (...)
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  17. Bridging a Fault Line: On underdetermination and the ampliative adequacy of competing theories.Guy Axtell - 2014 - In Abrol Fairweather (ed.), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized. Synthese Library. pp. 227-245.
    This paper pursues Ernan McMullin‘s claim ("Virtues of a Good Theory" and related papers on theory-choice) that talk of theory virtues exposes a fault-line in philosophy of science separating "very different visions" of scientific theorizing. It argues that connections between theory virtues and virtue epistemology are substantive rather than ornamental, since both address underdetermination problems in science, helping us to understand the objectivity of theory choice and more specifically what I term the ampliative adequacy of scientific theories. The paper argues (...)
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  18. From water to the stars: a reinterpretation of Galileo’s style.Louis Caruana - 2014 - In P. Lo Nostro & B. Ninham (eds.), Aqua Incognita: why ice floats on water and Galileo 400 years on. Ballart-Australia: Connor Court. pp. 1-17.
    The clash between Galileo and the Catholic Inquisition has been discussed, studied, and written about for many decades. The scientific, theological, political, and social implications have all been carefully analysed and appreciated in all their interpretative fruitfulness. The relatively recent trend in this kind of scholarship however seems to have underestimated the fact that Galileo in this debate, as in his earlier debates, showed a particular style marked by overconfidence. If we keep in mind the Lakatosian account of scientific development, (...)
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  19. Theory-Laden observations and empirical equivalence of theories.Lukáš Bielik - 2013 - Filozofia 68 (7).
  20. Photographic Evidence and the Problem of Theory-Ladenness.Nicola Mößner - 2013 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 44 (1):111–125.
    Scientists use visualisations of different kinds in a variety of ways in their scientific work. In the following article, we will take a closer look at the use of photographic pictures as scientific evidence. In accordance with Patrick Maynard’s thesis, photography will be regarded as a family of technologies serving different purposes in divergent contexts. One of these is its ability to detect certain phenomena. Nonetheless, with regard to the philosophical thesis of theory-ladenness of observation, we encounter certain reservations concerning (...)
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  21. The Epistemic Requirement of Scientific Realism in the Light of the Duhem-Quine Thesis.Milos Taliga - 2013 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 20:178-195.
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  22. Popper's Critical Rationalism: A Philosophical Investigation.Monica Aufrecht - 2012 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26 (2):223-225.
  23. Duhem–Quine virtue epistemology.Abrol Fairweather - 2012 - Synthese 187 (2):673-692.
    The Duhem-Quine Thesis is the claim that it is impossible to test a scientific hypothesis in isolation because any empirical test requires assuming the truth of one or more auxiliary hypotheses. This is taken by many philosophers, and is assumed here, to support the further thesis that theory choice is underdetermined by empirical evidence. This inquiry is focused strictly on the axiological commitments engendered in solutions to underdetermination, specifically those of Pierre Duhem and W. V. Quine. Duhem resolves underdetermination by (...)
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  24. The epistemic value of good sense.Abrol Fairweather - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43 (1):139-146.
  25. Evidential Holism and Indispensability Arguments.Joe Morrison - 2012 - Erkenntnis 76 (2):263-278.
    The indispensability argument is a method for showing that abstract mathematical objects exist. Various versions of this argument have been proposed. Lately, commentators seem to have agreed that a holistic indispensability argument will not work, and that an explanatory indispensability argument is the best candidate. In this paper I argue that the dominant reasons for rejecting the holistic indispensability argument are mistaken. This is largely due to an overestimation of the consequences that follow from evidential holism. Nevertheless, the holistic indispensability (...)
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  26. Experimental Knowledge in Cognitive Neuroscience.Emrah Aktunc - 2011 - Dissertation, Virginia Tech
    This is a work in the epistemology of functional neuroimaging (fNI) and it applies the error-statistical (ES) philosophy to inferential problems in fNI to formulate and address these problems. This gives us a clear, accurate, and more complete understanding of what we can learn from fNI and how we can learn it. I review the works in the epistemology of fNI which I group into two categories; the first category consists of discussions of the theoretical significance of fNI findings and (...)
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  27. Underdetermination as an epistemological test tube: expounding hidden values of the scientific community.Martin Carrier - 2011 - Synthese 180 (2):189 - 204.
    Duhem—Quine underdetermination plays a constructive role in epistemology by pinpointing the impact of non-empirical virtues or cognitive values on theory choice. Underdetermination thus contributes to illuminating the nature of scientific rationality. Scientists prefer and accept one account among empirical equivalent alternatives. The non-empirical virtues operating in science are laid open in such theory choice decisions. The latter act as an epistemological test tube in making explicit commitments to how scientific knowledge should be like.
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  28. Is Popper’s ‘Criterion of Demarcation’ outmoded?Sebastian Boţic - 2010 - Cultura 7 (1):41-53.
    This paper is concerned with the ′criterion of demarcation′ that Karl Popper put forward, while trying to show that it can be safely said that it is still standing. In doing so, I turn to two main objections to it: a Lakatos-Kuhn vision on the growth of science, and the famous Quine-Duhem thesis. The point that I hopefully made here is that the basic message of this prescriptive method is as respectful as ever, and, although not the subject of this (...)
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  29. Just how controversial is evidential holism?Joe Morrison - 2010 - Synthese 173 (3):335-352.
    This paper is an examination of evidential holism, a prominent position in epistemology and the philosophy of science which claims that experiments only ever confirm or refute entire theories. The position is historically associated with W.V. Quine, and it is at once both popular and notorious, as well as being largely under-described. But even though there’s no univocal statement of what holism is or what it does, philosophers have nevertheless made substantial assumptions about its content and its truth. Moreover they (...)
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  30. Defending underdetermination or why the historical perspective makes a difference.Wolfgang Pietsch - 2010 - In Henk W. de Regt (ed.), Epsa Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009. Springer. pp. 303--313.
    The old antagonism between the Quinean and the Duhemian view on underdetermination is reexamined. In this respect, two theses will be defended. First, it is argued that the main differences between Quine's and Duhem's versions of underdetermination derive from a different attitude towards the history of science. While Quine considered underdetermination from an ahistorical, a logical point of view, Duhem approached it as a distinguished historian of physics. On this basis, a logical and a historical version of the underdetermination thesis (...)
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  31. Corroboration and auxiliary hypotheses: Duhem’s thesis revisited.Darrell Patrick Rowbottom - 2010 - Synthese 177 (1):139-149.
    This paper argues that Duhem’s thesis does not decisively refute a corroboration-based account of scientific methodology (or ‘falsificationism’), but instead that auxiliary hypotheses are themselves subject to measurements of corroboration which can be used to inform practice. It argues that a corroboration-based account is equal to the popular Bayesian alternative, which has received much more recent attention, in this respect.
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  32. The discovery of argon: A case for learning from data?Aris Spanos - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (3):359-380.
    Rayleigh and Ramsay discovered the inert gas argon in the atmospheric air in 1895 using a carefully designed sequence of experiments guided by an informal statistical analysis of the resulting data. The primary objective of this article is to revisit this remarkable historical episode in order to make a case that the error‐statistical perspective can be used to bring out and systematize (not to reconstruct) these scientists' resourceful ways and strategies for detecting and eliminating error, as well as dealing with (...)
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  33. Learning from error, severe testing, and the growth of theoretical knowledge.Deborah G. Mayo - 2009 - In Deborah G. Mayo & Aris Spanos (eds.), Error and Inference: Recent Exchanges on Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science. Cambridge University Press. pp. 28.
  34. Duhemian Themes in Expected Utility Theory.Philippe Mongin - 2009 - In Anastasios Brenner and Jean Gayon (ed.), French Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Springer. pp. 303-357.
    This monographic chapter explains how expected utility (EU) theory arose in von Neumann and Morgenstern, how it was called into question by Allais and others, and how it gave way to non-EU theories, at least among the specialized quarters of decion theory. I organize the narrative around the idea that the successive theoretical moves amounted to resolving Duhem-Quine underdetermination problems, so they can be assessed in terms of the philosophical recommendations made to overcome these problems. I actually follow Duhem's recommendation, (...)
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  35. The Crux of Crucial Experiments: Duhem's Problems and Inference to the Best Explanation.Marcel Weber - 2009 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (1):19-49.
    Going back at least to Duhem, there is a tradition of thinking that crucial experiments are impossible in science. I analyse Duhem's arguments and show that they are based on the excessively strong assumption that only deductive reasoning is permissible in experimental science. This opens the possibility that some principle of inductive inference could provide a sufficient reason for preferring one among a group of hypotheses on the basis of an appropriately controlled experiment. To be sure, there are analogues to (...)
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  36. Pierre Duhem.Roger Ariew - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  37. Observation.A. Kukla - 2008 - In Martin Curd & Stathis Psillos (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science. Routledge.
  38. “Plausible insofar as it is intelligible”: Quine on underdetermination.Rogério Passos Severo - 2008 - Synthese 161 (1):141-165.
    Quine’s thesis of underdetermination is significantly weaker than it has been taken to be in the recent literature, for the following reasons: (i) it does not hold for all theories, but only for some global theories, (ii) it does not require the existence of empirically equivalent yet logically incompatible theories, (iii) it does not rule out the possibility that all perceived rivalry between empirically equivalent theories might be merely apparent and eliminable through translation, (iv) it is not a fundamental thesis (...)
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  39. Comparative Bayesian Confirmation and the Quine–Duhem Problem: A Rejoinder to Strevens.Branden Fitelson & Andrew Waterman - 2007 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (2):333-338.
    By and large, we think is a useful reply to our original critique of his article on the Quine–Duhem problem. But, we remain unsatisfied with several aspects of his reply. Ultimately, we do not think he properly addresses our most important worries. In this brief rejoinder, we explain our remaining worries, and we issue a revised challenge for Strevens's approach to QD.
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  40. IBE and EBI: on explanation before inference.Johannes Persson - 2007 - In Johannes Persson & Petri Ylikoski (eds.), Rethinking Explanation. Springer. pp. 252--137.
    Inference to the best explanation is theoretically interesting in that it promises to throw new light on what an explanation is. IBE challenges the standard view of the relation between inference and explanation. But sometimes it seems that previous explanation is more independent of inference than IBE suggests. Sometimes we have explanation before inference which is not IBE. This chapter examines the possibility that the latter is the rule rather than the exception.
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  41. The Ethics and Science of Placebo-Controlled Trials: Assay Sensitivity and the Duhem–Quine Thesis.James Anderson - 2006 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 31 (1):65 – 81.
    The principle of clinical equipoise requires that, aside from certain exceptional cases, second generation treatments ought to be tested against standard therapy. In violation of this principle, placebo-controlled trials (PCTs) continue to be used extensively in the development and licensure of second-generation treatments. This practice is typically justified by appeal to methodological arguments that purport to demonstrate that active-controlled trials (ACTs) are methodologically flawed. Foremost among these arguments is the so called assay sensitivity argument. In this paper, I take a (...)
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  42. The development of the Neurath principle: unearthing the Romantic link.Gábor Á Zemplén - 2006 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 37 (4):585-609.
    Otto Neurath’s thoroughgoing anti-foundationalism is connected to the recognition that protocol sentences are not inviolable, that is they are fallible and their choice cannot be determined: ‘Poincaré, Duhem and others have adequately shown that even if we have agreed on the protocol statements, there is a not limited number of equally applicable, possible systems of hypotheses. We have extended this tenet of the uncertainty of systems of hypotheses to all statements, including protocol statements that are alterable in principle’. Later historiography (...)
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  43. What is the best empirically equivalent theory?: Reply to Igor Douven.Theo A. F. Kuipers - 2005 - Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 83 (1):310-313.
  44. Intension and representation: Quine’s indeterminacy thesis revisited.Itay Shani - 2005 - Philosophical Psychology 18 (4):415 – 440.
    This paper re-addresses Quine's indeterminacy of translation/inscrutability of reference thesis, as a problem for cognitive theories of content. In contradistinction with Quine's behavioristic semantics, theories of meaning, or content, in the cognitivist tradition endorse intentional realism, and are prone to be unsympathetic to Quine's thesis. Yet, despite this fundamental difference, I argue that they are just as vulnerable to the indeterminacy. I then argue that the vulnerability is rooted in a theoretical commitment tacitly shared with Quine, namely, the commitment to (...)
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  45. The bayesian treatment of auxiliary hypotheses: Reply to Fitelson and Waterman.Michael Strevens - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (4):913-918.
    Bayesian treatment of auxiliary hypotheses rests on a misinterpretation of Strevens's central claim about the negligibility of certain small probabilities. The present paper clarifies and proves a very general version of the claim. The project Clarifications The negligibility argument Generalization and proof.
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  46. Duhem's Problem and its Solutions.Zhao Xiaofen - 2005 - Modern Philosophy 1:017.
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  47. Review essay on dynamics of reason by Michael Friedman. [REVIEW]Marc Lange - 2004 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (3):702–712.
    The first half of this book consists of Michael Friedman’s Kant Lectures in essentially the form in which they were delivered at Stanford University in 1999. In the second half, “Fruits of Discussion,” Friedman elaborates, refines, and defends the central ideas of these lectures. Taken together, these halves form an eminently readable, slim, yet rich and ambitious volume. It proves our fullest account to date not only of Friedman’s neo-Kantian, historicized, dynamical conception of relativized a priori principles of mathematics and (...)
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  48. La observación científica en el proceso de contrastación de hipótesis Y teorías (scientific observation in the process of testing hypotheses and theories).Juan Vázquez - 2004 - Theoria 19 (1):77-95.
    En este trabajo se plantea, en primer lugar, la conveniencia de distinguir en el proceso de la contrastación empirica de hipótesis y teorías entre observación cientifíca y percepción y, en segundo lugar, se muestra como el munda procesado a través de la percepción se erige en base o soporte empírico del conocimiento científico. Una de las consecuencias del trabajo es que Ia tesis de “la carga teórica" de Ia observación ha sido mal planteada, al dar par sentado que esa carga (...)
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  49. Pragmatism in economic methodology: The Duhem-Quine thesis revisited. [REVIEW]Thomas A. Boylan & Paschal F. O'Gorman - 2003 - Foundations of Science 8 (1):3-21.
    Contemporary developments in economicmethodology have produced a vibrant agenda ofcompeting positions. These include, amongothers, constructivism, critical realism andrhetoric, with each contributing to the Realistvs. Pragmatism debate in the philosophies of thesocial sciences. A major development in theneo-pragmatist contribution to economicmethodology has been Quine's pragmatic assaulton the dogmas of empiricism, which are nowclearly acknowledged within contemporaryeconomic methodology. This assault isencapsulated in the celebrated Duhem-Quinethesis, which according to a number ofcontemporary leading philosophers of economics,poses a particularly serious methodologicalproblem for economics. This problem, (...)
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  50. Underdetermination and the Claims of Science.P. D. Magnus - 2003 - Dissertation, University of California, San Diego
    The underdetermination of theory by evidence is supposed to be a reason to rethink science. It is not. Many authors claim that underdetermination has momentous consequences for the status of scientific claims, but such claims are hidden in an umbra of obscurity and a penumbra of equivocation. So many various phenomena pass for `underdetermination' that it's tempting to think that it is no unified phenomenon at all, so I begin by providing a framework within which all these worries can be (...)
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