Underdetermination. An Essay on Evidence and the Limits of Natural Knowledge is a wide-ranging study of the thesis that scientific theories are systematically "underdetermined" by the data they account for. This much-debated thesis is a thorn in the side of scientific realists and methodologists of science alike and of late has been vigorously attacked. After analyzing the epistemological and ontological ascpects of the controversy in detail, and reviewing pertinent logical facts and selected scientific cases, Bonk carefully examines the merits of arguments for and against the thesis. Along the way, he investigates methodological proposals and recent theories of confirmation, which promise to discriminate among observationally equivalent theories on evidential grounds. He explores sympathetically but critically W.V.Quine and H. Putnam s arguments for the thesis, the relationship between indeterminacy and underdetermination, and possibilities for a conventionalist solution.
Author(s): Thomas Bonk
Series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 261
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 304
Contents......Page 11
1.1 Aspects of Underdetermination......Page 13
1.2 Significance of the Thesis......Page 20
1.3 Quine, Realism, and Underdetermination......Page 33
1.4 No Quick Solutions......Page 40
1.5 Three Responses and Strategies......Page 50
2.1 Logical Equivalence, Interdefinability, and Isomorphism......Page 57
2.2 Theorems of Ramsey and Craig......Page 64
2.3 From Denotational Vagueness to Ontological Relativity......Page 70
2.4 Semantic Arguments......Page 73
2.5 Physical Equivalence......Page 80
2.6 Underdetermination of Geometry......Page 94
3.1 Deductivism Revisited......Page 100
3.2 Quine on Method and Evidence......Page 113
3.3 Instance Confirmation and Bootstrapping......Page 123
3.4 Demonstrative Induction......Page 130
3.5 Underdetermination and Inter-theory Relations......Page 137
4.1 Constructivism......Page 151
4.2 Things versus Numbers......Page 157
4.3 Squares, Balls, Lines, and Points......Page 171
4.4 Algorithms......Page 177
5.1 Ambiguity......Page 186
5.2 Conventionalism: Local......Page 189
5.3 Conventionalism: Global......Page 198
5.4 Verification and Fictionalism......Page 205
6.1 Underdetermination of Translation......Page 215
6.2 Indeterminacy versus Underdetermination......Page 223
6.3 Empirical Investigations of Cognitive Meaning......Page 238
6.4 Indeterminacy and the Absence of Fact......Page 246
6.5 Quine's Pragmatic Interpretation of Underdetermination......Page 260
Bibliography......Page 267
D......Page 286
H......Page 287
P......Page 288
R......Page 289
W......Page 290
