Abstract

The pessimistic induction and the problem of underdetermination in the philosophy of science have a rich history. In their recent incarnation as the problem of unconceived alternatives, most fully articulated by Kyle Stanford (2010) in Exceeding Our Grasp, the induction is more specific and underdetermination is construed more epistemically than is typical…The problem is not that there are empirically equivalent alternatives, that is, alternative between which no empirical evidence could ever distinguish. The problem is that multiple radically different alternative that are empirically inequivalent might be equally well-confirmed by current evidence, and we might fail to even conceive one or more of those alternatives… In “Of German Tanks and Scientific Theories: Estimating the Number of Unconceived Alternatives,” Burkay Ozturk (2016) challenges Stanford on a distinct front. By applying a method of statistical estimation to scientific alternatives, Ozturk argues that the possibility space within which the alternatives are located allows for probable knowledge. The particular frequentist estimation method Ozturk employs requires that we assume the alternative pool is finite, which seems to be both false and wildly implausible. At first glance. I argue in this comment that Ozturk’s postulate of finitude is actually defensible in circumstances that might actually hold for ordinary scientific contexts.