By Thomas Bonk
Underdetermination. An Essay on facts and the boundaries of ordinary wisdom is a wide-ranging examine of the thesis that medical theories are systematically "underdetermined" through the knowledge they account for. This much-debated thesis is a thorn within the aspect of clinical realists and methodologists of technological know-how alike and of past due has been vigorously attacked. After examining the epistemological and ontological ascpects of the talk intimately, and reviewing pertinent logical proof and chosen medical situations, Bonk rigorously examines the advantages of arguments for and opposed to the thesis. alongside the best way, he investigates methodological proposals and up to date theories of affirmation, which promise to discriminate between observationally identical theories on evidential grounds. He explores sympathetically yet significantly W.V.Quine and H. Putnam s arguments for the thesis, the connection among indeterminacy and underdetermination, and chances for a conventionalist answer.
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Extra resources for Underdetermination: An Essay on Evidence and the Limits of Natural Knowledge
Example text
Those who see no compelling case for the underdetermination of theories, must have such ‘methodological principles or criteria’ in mind; I review some salient proposals in chapter 3. The appeal to cases by proponents of underdetermination is sometimes countered by the remark that although there are cases of underdetermination, there are no “good” or philosophically “interesting” examples. , are dismissed wholesale as “logico-semantical” trickery (L. Laudan). I am sympathetic. Yet, on the other end of the spectrum of cases are both current quantum theory and general relativity theory, which appear to be empirically underdetermined with well-known alternatives.
Consider the sceptical hypothesis ‘There might be unicorns’, which might be taken to throw doubt on current taxonomy. However, if there were any unicorns (on earth) scientists would very likely have found by now some evidence for their existence. They have not, so the sceptical hypothesis is likely false. Similarly, if there were ‘accessible’ alternatives to any scientific theory, the reason goes, scientists would very likely have discovered them by now. We have not, hence this sceptical thesis is likely false (Douven, 1996, p.
A Humean Predicament? 13 In the previous section I have examined the apparent tension between realism and what I have called empirically irresolvable conflict or strong underdetermination. Quine is one thinker who denies that there is a significant tension. Quine subscribed to a realist view of physical – and abstract – objects (Quine, 1966, pp. 228–230). He is also the thinker who harnessed empirical underdetermination in many ways to derive much discussed claims regarding ontology and the non-intelligibility of traditional sentence meaning.