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Refusing the Devil's Bargain: What Kind of Underdetermination Should We Take Seriously?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

P. Kyle Stanford
P. Kyle Stanford*
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Program in Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697–5100; email: stanford@uci.edu.
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Abstract

Advocates have sought to prove that underdetermination obtains because all theories have empirical equivalents. But algorithms for generating empirical equivalents simply exchange underdetermination for familiar philosophical chestnuts, while the few convincing examples of empirical equivalents will not support the desired sweeping conclusions. Nonetheless, underdetermination does not depend on empirical equivalents: our warrant for current theories is equally undermined by presently unconceived alternatives as well-confirmed merely by the existing evidence, so long as this transient predicament recurs for each theory and body of evidence we consider. The historical record supports the claim that this recurrent, transient underdetermination predicament is our own.

Type
Metaphysics and Methodology of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 68 , Issue S3: No. 3 Supplement: Proceedings of the 2000 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 2001 , 2001 , pp. S1 - S12
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 2001

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Footnotes

‡

My thanks to David Malament, Jeff Barrett, Philip Kitcher, Pen Maddy, Baron Reed, the members of my Winter 1999 Realism seminar, and several anonymous reviewers from the National Science Foundation for helpful comments and discussion of the material in this paper, as well as to members of audiences at the Claremont Colleges and at meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association and the British Society for the Philosophy of Science. Thanks also to the University of California at Irvine for supporting this work with a Career Development Award.

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