Circles without Circularity

Abstract

My concern in this paper is to contribute to the clarification of the possible impact that the use of theory-laden data might have on the testability of theories. There is one faction in modern philosophy of science that does not recognize any difficulty in this matter. Testing is a kind of bootstrap operation which can proceed without firm evidential ground. Another faction holds that theory-ladenness imposes severe restrictions on testability. Robert Butts aligns himself more with the second party. Reminding us of Duhem’s insight that physical hypotheses are not testable in isolation but only in the context of various other physical laws, he concludes that any piece of a theoretical framework can be saved at will in the face of whatever experimental outcome. Because, in addition, the meaning of observation terms is determined by their theoretical interrelations there is no theory-independent evidential standard against which a theory could be conclusively checked. Accordingly, he contends:

Conventionalism, though forced upon us by Duhem’s thesis, leaves us with the stark realization that theory determines observational meaning, that no independent source of the meaning of observation terms is available, and that testing as ‘consulting the facts’ plays a relatively less distinguished role in science than we would have wished (Butts 1976, p. 48).