Underdetermination in Science: os limites heurísticos das teorias científicas

Underdetermination in Science
Saturday-Sunday, 21-22 March 2009
Center for Philosophy of Science
817 Cathedral of Learning
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh , PA USA

Getting Real: Underdetermination and the Hypothesis of Organic Fossil Origins

Kyle Stanford
Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science
University of California, Irvine

Abstract: In this talk I will examine the historical fortunes of a particular scientific hypothesis to begin exploring just when the historical record of recurrent, transient underdetermination should and should not lead us to take what I have called the problem of unconceived alternatives as a serious threat to realism about our best scientific theories. I will argue that although the hypothesis that fossil objects are the remains of once-living creatures has been vulnerable to the problem for most of its scientific career, it does not remain so at present, and that this is because the hypothesis now rests most centrally on a kind of straightforward inductive projection rather than on evidence that is fundamentally abductive in character. I will conclude by trying to draw some more general lessons from this case, perhaps most importantly that we should expect to be better able to resist the challenge from unconceived alternatives and recurrent, transient underdetermination in so-called "historical" sciences like geology and evolutionary biology, where we should most frequently expect to be able to accumulate evidence of this projective variety.

Resisting Underdetermination: Caught between the Data and the Deep Blue Sea

David Harker
Dept of Philosophy and Humanities
East Tennessee State University

Abstract: One way in which the scope of underdetermination theses might be restricted starts by drawing a distinction between the fundamental assumptions of scientific theories and what we might call ‘middle level regularities’. In this paper I take Stanford’s (2006) examples from 19th century developmental biology and argue that although Stanford seems right that an important kind of underdetermination exists at the level of fundamental claims, a significant realist thesis might still be defended if we attend to less general claims made by Darwin, Galton and Weismann.

Underdetermination, methodological practices, and the case of John Snow

Dana Tulodziecki
Dept of Philosophy
University of Missouri , Kansas City

Abstract: My talk will be guided by the idea that there are some familiar scientific practices that are epistemically significant. I will argue that we can test for the success of these practices empirically by examining cases in the history of science. Specifically, I will reconstruct one particular episode in the history of medicine – John Snow's reasoning concerning the infectiousness of cholera – and offer this case as a concrete example of the sort of empirical research that needs to be done in order to discover what kinds of methodological practices and rules are actually of epistemic interest. Analysing this case, I will explain how it (and other cases like it) can help us resolve specific cases of underdetermination. After exploring some possible anti-realist responses to this argument, I will conclude that, while the anti-realist is (more or less legitimately) able to construct underdetermination scenarios on a case-by-case basis, he will likely have to abandon the strategy of using algorithms to do so, thus losing the much needed guarantee that there will always be rival cases of the required kind.

Must Evidence Underdetermine Theory?

John D. Norton
Dept. of HPS and Center for Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburgh

Abstract: While it is sometimes taken as a truism of inductive inference that evidence necessarily leaves theory underdetermined, this underdetermination is usually recovered from an impoverished and simple-minded version of hypothetico-deductive. None of the major accounts of inductive inference support it. The favored strategy of supporting underdetermination by the display of observationally equivalent theories is self-defeating. If the observational equivalence can be demonstrated by arguments brief enough to fit in a journal article, we cannot preclude the possibility that the theories are merely variant formulations of the same theory. A variant of this response can also evade "underdetermination by grue."

Can We Know the Structure of Our Universe?

John Manchak
Dept of Logic and Philosophy of Science
University of California, Irvine

Abstract: Within the framework of general relativity, I hope to illustrate a rather precise sense in which every cosmological model of our universe is empirically underdetermined. It seems that no amount of observational data we could ever (even in principle) accumulate, can force one and only one cosmological model upon us. Additionally, I aim show that even if one assumes (as do the cosmologists) a principle of uniformity – that the physical laws we determine locally are applicable throughout the universe – these general epistemological difficulties remain.

The Identical Rivals response to underdetermination

P. D. Magnus
Dept of Philosophy
State University of New York, Albany

Abstract: The underdetermination of theory by data obtains when, inescapably, evidence is insufficient to allow scientists to decide responsibly between rival theories. One response to would-be underdetermination is to deny that the rival theories are distinct theories at all, insisting instead that they are just different formulations of the same underlying theory; we call this the identical rivals response.

An argument adapted from John Norton suggests that the response is presumptively always appropriate, while another from Larry Laudan and Jarrett Leplin suggests that the response is never appropriate.

Arguments from Einstein for the special and general theories of relativity may fruitfully be seen as instances of the identical rivals response; since Einstein's arguments are generally accepted, the response is at least sometimes appropriate. But when is it appropriate? We attempt to steer a middle course between Norton's view and that of Laudan and Leplin: the identical rivals response is appropriate when there is good reason for adopting a parsimonious ontology. Although in simple cases the identical rivals response need not involve any ontological difference between the theories, in actual scientific cases it typically requires treating apparent posits of the various theories as mere verbal ornaments or computational conveniences. Since these would-be posits are not now detectable, there is no reliable way to decide whether we should eliminate them or not. As such, there is no rule for deciding whether the identical rivals response is appropriate or not. Nevertheless, there are considerations that suggest for and against the response; we conclude by suggesting two of them.

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Discussant

Greg Frost-Arnold, Dept of Philosophy, University of Nevada, Los Vegas
Program Committee

John D. Norton, Dept of HPS and Center for Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburgh

Kyle Stanford, Dept of Logic and Philosophy of Science
University of California, Irvine

Sponsor
Center for Philosophy o Center for Philosophy of Science – Pitt University