Abstract
The paper explicates ‘unique events’ and investigates their epistemology. Explications of ‘unique events’ as individuated, different, and emergent are philosophically uninteresting. Unique events are topics of why-questions that radically underdetermine all their potential explanations. Uniqueness that is relative to a level of scientific development is differentiated from absolute uniqueness. Science eliminates relative uniqueness by discovery of recurrence of events and properties, falsification of assumptions of why-questions, and methodological simplification e.g. by explanatory methodological reduction. Finally, an overview of contemporary philosophical disputes that hinge on issues of uniqueness emphasizes its philosophical significance.
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Tucker, A. Unique Events: The Underdetermination of Explanation. Erkenntnis 48, 61–83 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005315532171
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005315532171