What attitude should we take toward a scientific theory when it competes with other scientific theories? This question elicited different answers from instrumentalists, logical positivists, constructive empiricists, scientific realists, holists, theory-ladenists, antidivisionists, falsificationists, and anarchists in the philosophy of science literature. I will summarize the diverse philosophical responses to the problem of underdetermination, and argue that there are different kinds of underdetermination, and that they should be kept apart from each other because they call for different responses.

Looking back on it, it seems almost incredible that so many equally educated, equally sincere compatriots and contemporaries, all drawing from the same limited stock of evidence, should have reached so many totally different conclusions---and always with complete certainty.

Bayesian probability is normally defined over a fixed language or eventspace. But in practice language is susceptible to change, and thequestion naturally arises as to how Bayesian degrees of belief shouldchange as language changes. I argue here that this question poses aserious challenge to Bayesianism. The Bayesian may be able to meet thischallenge however, and I outline a practical method for changing degreesof belief over changes in finite propositional languages.

According to the thesis of epistemic conservatism it would be unreasonable to change one's beliefs in the absence of any good reasons. Although it is claimed that epistemic conservatism has informed and resolved a number of positions and problems in epistemology, it is difficult to identify a single representative view of the thesis. This has resulted in advancing a series of disparate and largely unconnected arguments to establish conservatism. In this paper, I begin by casting doubt on the claim of (...) widespread and genuine applications of the conservative policy. I then distinguish between three main varieties of epistemic conservatism, namely, differential, perseverance and generation conservatism Having evaluated various arguments that have been offered or may be considered on behalf of the conservative thesis, I close by concluding that those versions of the thesis that survive critical scrutiny fail to live up to the aspirations of the thesis as a substantive canon of rationality, that to the extent that principles of conservatism are epistemically promising, they are not plausible. While to the extent that they are plausible, they are not of much epistemic interest. (shrink)

There are two ways that we might respond to the underdetermination of theory by data. One response, which we can call the agnostic response, is to suspend judgment: "Where scientific standards cannot guide us, we should believe nothing". Another response, which we can call the fideist response, is to believe whatever we would like to believe: "If science cannot speak to the question, then we may believe anything without science ever contradicting us". C.S. Peirce recognized these options and suggested evading (...) the dilemma. It is a Logical Maxim, he suggests, that there could be no genuine underdetermination. This is no longer a viable option in the wake of developments in modern physics, so we must face the dilemma head on. The agnostic and fideist responses to underdetermination represent fundamentally different epistemic viewpoints. Nevertheless, the choice between them is not an unresolvable struggle between incommensurable worldviews. There are legitimate considerations tugging in each direction. Given the balance of these considerations, there should be a modest presumption of agnosticism. This may conflict with Peirce's Logical Maxim, but it preserves all that we can preserve of the Peircean motivation. (shrink)

Observational discrepancies in galactic rotation curves and cluster dispersion data have been interpreted to imply the existence of dark matter. Numerous efforts at its detection, however, have failed to turn up any positive result. As a dynamical theory is always operative on the assumed mass distribution to predict kinematic observations, some scientists see the discrepancy as telling against General Relativity. Among the many theories that seek to modify gravity, those that are built on Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), or yield MOND (...) behaviour at appropriate scales, achieve remarkable empirical success without assuming dark matter. The continued non-detection of dark matter and the empirical success of MOND supports the claim that the current evidential and theoretical context underdetermines General Relativity. In this article, I clarify the kind of underdetermination that can be said to threaten General Relativity. Specifically, I argue that the present evidential and theoretical context increase the possibility of an unconceived alternative to GR which would be just as well supported by the available evidence. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering has been linked by Herman Cappelen to a position called “representational skepticism”, described as one’s refusal to uncritically take over the conceptual representations one is handed. This position is contrasted with an uncritical attitude, called “representational complacency”. Arguably, neither position, or a hybrid of the two, is rationally sustainable. This paper therefore proposes an alternative option, called “critical concept conservatism”, stating that having a concept makes it rational (in a suitable sense of “rational”) for one to retain it, (...) unless there are grounds to question it. Critical concept conservatism avoids the drawbacks of skepticism and complacency; plus, it is independently supported by both positive and negative considerations. Furthermore, it complies with the demanding attitude towards conceptual representations that a conceptual engineer would be expected to have. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway has been influential in promoting engagement with pragmatist and naturalist perspectives from classical and contemporary American philosophy. This book reflects on Hookway’s work on the American philosophical tradition and its significance for contemporary discussions of the understanding of mind, meaning, knowledge, and value. -/- Hookway’s original and extensive studies of Charles S. Peirce have made him among the most admired and frequently referenced of Peirce’s interpreters. His work on classical American pragmatism has explored the philosophies of William James, (...) John Dewey, and Josiah Royce, and examined the influence of pragmatist ideas outside of the United States. Additionally, Hookway has participated in a number of celebrated exchanges with some of the most high-profile figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy, including Karl-Otto Apel, Philip Pettit, Hilary Putnam, and W.V.O. Quine, through which his treatments of a large range of topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language have been developed and promoted. The chapters in this book—which include contributions from several of Hookway’s former students and colleagues—include studies of Hookway’s engagement with the works of Peirce, James, and Dewey, his contributions to virtue epistemology, and his discussions of hope and pragmatist metaphysics. -/- Pragmatic Reason will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, and epistemology. (shrink)

This paper provides an exposition of the structuralist approach to underdetermination, which aims to resolve the underdetermination of theories by identifying their common theoretical structure. Applications of the structuralist approach can be found in many areas of philosophy. I present a schema of the structuralist approach, which conceptually unifies such applications in different subject matters. It is argued that two classic arguments in the literature, Paul Benacerraf’s argument on natural numbers and W. V. O. Quine’s argument for the indeterminacy of (...) translation, can be analyzed as instances of the structuralist schema. These two applications illustrate different kinds of conclusions that can be drawn through the structuralist approach; Benacerraf’s argument shows that we can derive an ontological conclusion about the given subject matter, while Quine’s structuralist approach leads to a semantic conclusion about how to determine linguistic meanings given radical translation. Then, as a case study, I review a recent debate in metaphysics between Shamik Dasgupta, Jason Turner, and Catharine Diehl to consider the extent to which different instances of the structuralist schema are conceptually unified. Both sides of the debate can be interpreted as utilizing the structuralist approach; one side uses the structuralist approach for an ontological conclusion, while the other side relies on a semantic conclusion. I argue that this has a strong dialectical consequence, which sheds light on the conceptual unity of the structuralist approach. (shrink)

Epistemic conservatism maintains that some beliefs are immediately justified simply because they are believed. The intuitive implausibility of this claim sets the burden of proof against it. Some epistemic conservatives have sought to lessen this burden by limiting its scope, but I show that they cannot remove it entirely. The only hope for epistemic conservativism is to appeal to its theoretical fruit. However, such a defense is undercut by the introduction of phenomenal conservatism, which accomplishes the same work from a (...) more intuitive starting point. Thus, if one opts for conservatism, better to choose the phenomenal kind. (shrink)

In an earlier article on this journal I argued that the problem of empirical underdetermination can for the largest part be solved by theoretical virtues, and for the remaining part it can be tolerated. Here I confront two further challenges to scientific realism based on underdetermination. First, there are four classes of theories which may seem to be underdetermined even by theoretical virtues. Concerning them I argue that (i) theories produced by trivial permutations and (ii) “equivalent descriptions” are compatible with (...) the truth of standard theories; instead (iii) “as if” versions of standard theories are much worse from the point of view of theoretical virtues; finally (iv) mathematically intertranslatable theories either may become empirically decidable in the future, or can be discriminated by theoretical virtues, or realists may simply plead ignorance about their claims. Secondly, I consider Stanford’s underdetermination with respect unconceived alternatives, arguing that it essentially relies on the pessimistic meta-induction from the falsity of all past theories. Therefore, it can be resisted by (a) considering the radical advancement of present with respect to past science, and (b) arguing with selective realism that past successful theories, even if false, always included some true components. (shrink)

When we get evidence that tells us our belief-forming mechanisms may not be reliable this presents a thorny set of questions about whether and how to revise our original belief. This article analyzes aspects of the problem and a variety of approaches to its solution.

Underdetermination of theory choice claims that empirical evidence fails to provide sufficient grounds for choosing a theory over its rivals. We explore the epistemological and methodological significance of this thesis by utilising a classificatory scheme to situate three arguments that purport to establish its plausibility. Proponents of these three arguments, W.V.O Quine, John Earman, and Kyle Stanford, use different premises to arrive at the conclusion that theory choice is empirically underdetermined and their classification along the proposed schema brings out the (...) variety in underdetermination arguments and the historical trajectory of the thesis. Although the epistemological significance of underdetermination—it is seen as undermining the doctrine of scientific realism—is widely discussed in the literature, Quine understood the acceptance of the thesis as interrogating the attitude one is justified in adopting towards rival theories. We argue that sticking with one’s own theory in the face of underdetermination leads to a distinct type of disagreement, which we present as the methodological significance of underdetermination. The examination of the methodological significance of underdetermination allows us to propose weak underdetermination as a philosophically interesting variant of underdetermination. (shrink)

Since the early 20th century underdetermination has been one of the most contentious problems in the philosophy of science. In this article I relate the underdetermination problem to models in biology and defend two main lines of argument: First, the use of models in this discipline lends strong support to the underdetermination thesis. Second, models and theories in biology are not determined strictly by the logic of representation of the studied phenomena, but also by other constraints such as research traditions, (...) backgrounds of the scientists, aims of the research and available technology. Convincing evidence for the existence of underdetermination in biology, where models abound, comes both from the fact that for a natural phenomenon we can create a number of candidate models but also from the fact that we do not have a universal rule that would adjudicate among them. This all makes a strong case for the general validity of underdetermination thesis. (shrink)

Epistemic deontology maintains that our beliefs and degrees of belief are open to deontic evaluations—evaluations of what we ought to believe or may not believe. Some philosophers endorse strong internalist versions of epistemic deontology on which agents can always access what determines the deontic status of their beliefs and degrees of belief. This paper articulates a new challenge for strong internalist versions of epistemic deontology. Any version of epistemic deontology must face William Alston’s argument. Alston combined a broadly voluntarist conception (...) of responsibility, on which ought implies can, with doxastic involuntarism, the position that our beliefs are not under our control. Together, those views imply that epistemic deontology is false. A promising response to Alston’s argument is to embrace a compatibilist account of control—specifically a reason-responsive version of compatibilism—and use it to criticism his doxastic involuntarism. I argue that while reason-responsive compatibilism about control does undermine Alston’s argument, it comes at a cost. Specifically, it is inconsistent with strong internalist versions of epistemic deontology. The surprising upshot is that so long as we retain a voluntarist conception of responsibility, we have reason for rejecting strong internalist versions of epistemic deontology. (shrink)

I present a recent historical case from cosmology—the story of inflationary cosmology—and on its basis argue that solving explanatory problems is a reliable method for making progress in science. In particular, I claim that the success of inflationary theory at solving its predecessor’s explanatory problems justified the theory epistemically, even in advance of the development of novel predictions from the theory and the later confirmation of those predictions.

The underdetermination of scientific theory choice by evidence is a familiar but multifaceted concept in the philosophy of science. I answer two pressing questions about underdetermination: “What is underdetermination?” and “Why should we care about underdetermination?” To answer the first question, I provide a general definition of underdetermination, identify four forms of underdetermination, and discuss major criticisms of each form. To answer the second question, I then survey two common uses of underdetermination in broader arguments against scientific realism and in (...) support of the use of values in scientific theory choice. I conclude that philosophers should also care about underdetermination because it impacts scientists in their practice. (shrink)

String dualities establish empirical equivalence between theories that often look entirely different with respect to their basic ontology and physical structure. Therefore, they represent a particularly interesting example of empirical equivalence in physics. However, the status of duality relations in string physics differs substantially from the traditional understanding of the role played by empirical equivalence. The paper specifies three important differences and argues that they are related to a substantially altered view on the underdetermination of theory building.

Moral reasoning is as fallible as reasoning in any other cognitive domain, but we often behave as if it were not. I argue for a form of epistemically-based moral humility, in which we downgrade our moral beliefs in the face of moral disagreement. My argument combines work in metaethics and moral intuitionism with recent developments in epistemology. I argue against any demands for deep self-sufficiency in moral reasoning. Instead, I argue that we need to take into account significant socially sourced (...) information, especially as a check for failures on our own moral intuitions and reasoning. -/- First, I argue for an epistemically plausible version of moral intuitionism, based on recent work in epistemic entitlement and epistemic warrant. Second, I argue that getting clear on the epistemic basis shows the defeasibility of moral judgment. Third, I argue the existence of moral disagreement is a reason to reduce our certainty in moral judgment. Fourth, I argue that this effect is not a violation of norms of autonomy for moral judgment. (shrink)

I identify a controversial hypothesis in evolutionary biology called the plasticity-first hypothesis. I argue that the plasticity-first hypothesis is underdetermined and that the most popular means of studying the plasticity-first hypothesis are insufficient to confirm or disconfirm it. I offer a strategy for overcoming this problem. Researchers need to develop a richer middle range theory of plasticity-first evolution that allows them to identify distinctive empirical traces of the hypothesis. They can then use those traces to discriminate between rival explanations of (...) evolutionary episodes. The best tools for developing such a middle range theory are experimental evolution and formal modelling. (shrink)

Current responses to the question of how one should adjust one’s beliefs in response to peer disagreement have, in general, formed a spectrum at one end of which sit the so-called ‘conciliatory’ views and whose other end is occupied by the ‘steadfast’ views. While the conciliatory views of disagreement maintain that one is required to make doxastic conciliation when faced with an epistemic peer who holds a different stance on a particular subject, the steadfast views allow us to maintain our (...) confidence in our relevant beliefs. My aim in this paper is not to adjudicate between these views. Rather, I shall focus on a particular strategy, namely, denying the appearance of epistemic symmetry between peers, that the steadfast views standardly invoke in support of their position. Having closely examined certain representative examples of the steadfast approach, I will argue that this strategy is fundamentally flawed. (shrink)

There has been considerable philosophical debate in recent years over a thesis called epistemic permissivism. According to the permissivist, it is possible for two agents to have the exact same total body of evidence and yet differ in their belief attitudes towards some proposition, without either being irrational. However, I argue, not enough attention has been paid to the distinction between different ways in which permissivism might be true. In this paper, I present a taxonomy of forms of epistemic permissivism (...) framed as the upshot of different ways one might respond to a basic argument against the view from Roger White. I then introduce a new type of permissive view which the contemporary debate has completely ignored and which is made available when we reject a widespread and largely unexamined background commitment to static rational norms connecting beliefs and evidence in favor of dynamic norms governing processes of consideration. I show how the dynamic strategy of rejecting static norms on belief opens the door to a new kind of permissivism which is both independently attractive and especially well-placed to answer worries that have been raised against traditional permissivist views. (shrink)

Much of the plausibility of epistemic conservatism derives from its prospects of explaining our rationality in holding memory beliefs. In the first two parts of this paper, I argue for the inadequacy of the two standard approaches to the epistemology of memory beliefs, preservationism and evidentialism. In the third, I point out the advantages of the conservative approach and consider how well conservatism survives three of the strongest objections against it. Conservatism does survive, I claim, but only if qualified in (...) certain ways. Appropriately qualified, conservatism is no longer the powerful anti-skeptical tool some have hoped for, but a doctrine closely connected with memory. (shrink)

Goethe's objections to Newton's theory of light and colours are better than often acknowledged. You can accept the most important elements of these objections without disagreeing with Newton about light and colours. As I will argue, Goethe exposed a crucial weakness of Newton's methodological self-assessment. Newton believed that with the help of his prism experiments, he could prove that sunlight was composed of variously coloured rays of light. Goethe showed that this step from observation to theory is more problematic than (...) Newton wanted to admit. By insisting that the step to theory is not forced upon us by the phenomena, Goethe revealed our own free, creative contribution to theory construction. And Goethe's insight is surprisingly significant, because he correctly claimed that all of the results of Newton's prism experiments fit a theoretical alternative equally well. If this is correct, then by suggesting an alternative to a well-established physical theory, Goethe developed the problem of underdete... (shrink)

One of the objections against the thesis of underdetermination of theories by observations is that it is unintelligible. Any two empirically equivalent theories — so the argument goes—are in principle intertranslatable, hence cannot count as rivals in any non-trivial sense. Against that objection, this paper shows that empirically equivalent theories may contain theoretical sentences that are not intertranslatable. Examples are drawn from a related discussion about incommensurability that shows that theoretical non-intertranslatability is possible.

Two of the most potent challenges faced by scientific realism are the underdetermination of theories by data, and the pessimistic induction based on theories previously held to be true, but subsequently acknowledged as false. Recently, Stanford (2006, Exceeding our grasp: Science, history, and the problem of unconceived alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press) has formulated what he calls the problem of unconceived alternatives: a version of the underdetermination thesis combined with a historical argument of the same form as the pessimistic induction. (...) In this paper, I contend that while Stanford does present a novel antirealist argument, a successful response to the pessimistic induction would likewise defuse the problem of unconceived alternatives, and that a more selective and sophisticated realism than that which he allows is arguably immune to both concerns. (shrink)

Advocates have sought to prove that underdetermination obtains because all theories have empirical equivalents. But algorithms for generating empirical equivalents simply exchange underdetermination for familiar philosophical chestnuts, while the few convincing examples of empirical equivalents will not support the desired sweeping conclusions. Nonetheless, underdetermination does not depend on empirical equivalents: our warrant for current theories is equally undermined by presently unconceived alternatives as well-confirmed merely by the existing evidence, so long as this transient predicament recurs for each theory and body (...) of evidence we consider. The historical record supports the claim that this recurrent, transient underdetermination predicament is our own. (shrink)

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 115, Issue 3pt3, Page 277-306, December 2015.

I give some reasons to think that perceptual experiences redound on the rational standing of the subject, and explore the consequences of this idea for the global structure of justification.

The Mundane World Hypothesis (mwh) says that we have material bodies, we have brains located inside our bodies, we have sense organs which process visual information, the direct cause of our perceptual judgments is typically macroscopic material objects, and we live in a material world. Skeptics using underdetermination arguments arguemwhhas no more epistemic merit than some skeptical competitor, e.g., that we are in the Matrix. Since such competitor hypotheses are equipollent, we are not justified in believingmwh. This paper takes the (...) underdetermination skeptic’s premises to a more radical conclusion: skeptical dogmatism, which is the view thatmwhis probably false based on the idea that there are many equipollent competitors tomwh. (shrink)

Human beings seem to capture time and the temporal properties of events and things in thought by having beliefs usually expressed with statements using tense, or notions such as ‘now’, ‘past’ or ‘future’. Tensed beliefs like these seem indispensable for correct reasoning and timely action. For instance, my belief that my root canal is over seems inexpressible with a statement that does not use tense or a temporal indexical. However, the dominant view on the nature of time is that it (...) forms, with space, a four-dimensional continuum where time does not encompass private perspectives or an absolute, fixed present. This ‘tenseless’ theory of time encounters a challenge in integrating tensed belief, because it cannot easily explain what constitutes a tensed belief in a tenseless world and how such a belief works inside our cognitive network to bring about the actions it does. Providing such an account is the main goal of this dissertation. -/- I argue here that the correct way to proceed would be to utilize philosophical theories dealing with indexicality, as the puzzling features of tensed belief are shared with beliefs expressed by first-person or spatial indexicals. In chapters II and III I expand the dominant theories about indexicality (Lewis, Perry, Kaplan) and apply them to tensed belief. I show that each is in certain respects incomplete or inadequate. -/- My preferred account critiques the preceding theories as mis-attributing the indexicality involved to a fully conceptual element in the way people think about time. I argue that we should instead connect tensed belief to not fully conceptual elements thought. For support I turn to work in perceptual psychology that connects beliefs about space to perceptions of spatial features. In chapter IV I develop an analogous argument about temporal thought and discuss how mental representations involved in perceptions are constitutively related to the formation and preservation of tensed beliefs. Combining this story with a tenseless theory of time should give us a complete, metaphysically uncontroversial, account of the way a tensed belief functions in reasoning and produces timely action. (shrink)

The problem of underdetermination is thought to hold important lessons for philosophy of science. Yet, as Kyle Stanford has recently argued, typical treatments of it offer only restatements of familiar philosophical problems. Following suggestions in Duhem and Sklar, Stanford calls for a New Induction from the history of science. It will provide proof, he thinks, of “the kind of underdetermination that the history of science reveals to be a distinctive and genuine threat to even our best scientific theories” (Stanford 2001, (...) p. S12). This paper examines Stanford’s New Induction and argues that it – like the other forms of underdetermination that he criticizes – merely recapitulates familiar philosophical conundra. (shrink)

Discussions of conservatism in epistemology often fail to demonstrate that the principle of conservatism is supported by epistemic considerations. In this paper, I hope to show two things. First, there is a defensible version of the principle of conservatism, a version that applies only to what I will call our basic beliefs. Those who deny that conservatism is supported by epistemic considerations do so because they fail to take into account the necessarily social, diachronic and self-correcting nature of our epistemic (...) practice. Second, I will attempt to show how our basic beliefs are justified via this principle of conservatism. (shrink)

In this chapter I investigate the prospects of integrated history and philosophy of science, by examining how philosophical issues raised by “hidden entities”, entities that are not accessible to unmediated observation, can enrich the historical investigation of their careers. Conversely, I suggest that the history of those entities has important lessons to teach to the philosophy of science. Hidden entities have played a crucial role in the development of the natural sciences. Despite their centrality to past scientific practice, however, several (...) of them (e.g., phlogiston, caloric, and the ether) turned out to be fictitious. For this reason, they have figured prominently in recent debates on scientific realism. The issues I explore in this paper are entangled with those debates. I argue that our understanding of hidden entities and their role in experimental practice can be enhanced by adopting an integrated historical-cum-philosophical approach. On the one hand, philosophical reflection on the reality of those entities has a lot to gain by examining historically how they were ntroduced and investigated. On the other hand, the historical reconstruction of the careers of those entities may profit from philosophical reflection on their existence. (shrink)

This paper presents a more clear formulation of the correspondence principle and explores its justification.

Abstract This paper develops an explanationist treatment of the problem of the criterion. Explanationism is the view that all justified reasoning is justified in virtue of the explanatory virtues: simplicity, fruitfulness, testability, scope, and conservativeness. A crucial part of the explanationist framework is achieving wide reflective equilibrium. I argue that explanationism offers a plausible solution to the problem of the criterion. Furthermore, I argue that a key feature of explanationism is the plasticity of epistemic judgments and epistemic methods. The explanationist (...) does not offer any fixed judgments or methods to guide epistemic conduct; even the explanatory virtues themselves are subject to change. This feature of explanationism gives it an advantage over non-explanationist views that offer fixed epistemic judgments and epistemic methods. The final section of this paper responds to objections to explanationism. (shrink)

Simon Evnine examines various epistemic aspects of what it is to be a person. Persons are defined as finite beings that have beliefs, including second-order beliefs about their own and others' beliefs, and are agents, capable of making long-term plans. It is argued that for any being meeting these conditions, a number of epistemic consequences obtain. First, all such beings must have certain logical concepts and be able to use them in certain ways. Secondly, there are at least two principles (...) governing belief that it is rational for persons to satisfy and are such that nothing can be a person at all unless it satisfies them to a large extent. These principles are that one believe the conjunction of one's beliefs and that one treat one's future beliefs as, by and large, better than one's current beliefs. Thirdly, persons both occupy epistemic points of view on the world and show up within those views. This makes it impossible for them to be completely objective about their own beliefs. Ideals of rationality that require such objectivity, while not necessarily wrong, are intrinsically problematic for persons. This "aspectual dualism" is characteristic of treatments of persons in the Kantian tradition. In sum, these epistemic consequences support a traditional view of the nature of persons, one in opposition to much recent theorizing. (shrink)

Four arguments are examined in order to assess the state of the Intelligent Design debate. First, critics continually cite the fact that ID proponents have religious motivations. When used as criticism of ID arguments, this is an obvious ad hominem. Nonetheless, philosophers and scientists alike continue to wield such arguments for their rhetorical value. Second, in his expert testimony in the Dover trial, philosopher Robert Pennock used repudiated claims in order to brand ID as a kind of pseudoscience. His arguments (...) hinge on the nature of methodological naturalism as a metatheoretic shaping principle. We examine the use of such principles in science and the history of science. Special attention is given to the demarcation problem. Third, the scientific merits of ID are examined. Critics rightly demand more than promissory notes for ID to move beyond the fringe. Fourth, although methodological naturalism gets a lot of attention, there is another shaping principle to contend with, namely, conservatism. Science, like most disciplines, tends to change in an incremental rather than revolutionary manner. When ID is compared to other non- or quasi-Darwinian proposals, it appears to be a more radical solution than is needed in the face of the anomalies. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en presentar una forma de conservadurismo epistémico que sea integral, y que sostiene lo siguiente: a partir de que S cree que p, como respuesta exitosa a su entorno, p adquiere un estatus epistémico favorable por el cual es racional que la creencia se mantenga hasta que aparezcan evidencias superadoras que sean alternativas e incompatibles con p. Además, se indagará en desarrollos posibles que puedan hacer de la versión integral un principio prometedor y a (...) la vez plausible, para concluir que otorga racionalidad a nuestros compromisos doxásticos mediante la constante mejora de las habilidades cognitivas. (shrink)

The existing literature on the rational underdetermination problem often construes it as one resulting from the ubiquity of objective values. It is therefore sometimes argued that subjectivists need not be troubled by the underdetermination problem. But on closer examination, it turns out, they should. Or so I will argue. The task of the first half of this paper is explaining why. The task of the second half is finding a subjectivist solution the rational underdetermination problem. The basic problem, I argue, (...) is as follows. Idealizing subjectivism generates too many ideal selves to deliver determinate or commensurable options regarding what non-ideal deliberating agents ought to do. My solution: these idealized options should be assessed from the only perspective we can, in fact, occupy, namely, that of our non-ideal, actual selves. Deciding what to do therefore becomes, in part, an exercise in deciding who to be. But one might now worry this just moves the arbitrariness bump in the rug. Privileging the perspective of our actual self seems contrary to the rationale for idealizing in the first place. I consider two solutions to the problem, one democratic, the other modelled on trusteeship. In the end, I argue, our actual self has complete freedom to choose the ideal self it grants rational authority. In the final part of the paper, I present my positive proposal as a solution to the underdetermination problem confronting the idealizing subjectivist and then argue that, so understood, this account vindicates a tidied-up version of how some reflective people already do deliberate in their everyday lives. This, in turn, suggests that a decision-procedure closely connected to the account is both possible and attractive. (shrink)

I critically discuss a controversial ‘trans-Planckian censorship’ conjecture, which has recently been introduced to researchers working at the intersection of fundamental physics and cosmology. My focus explicitly avoids any appeals to contingent research within string theory or regarding the more general gravitational ‘swampland’. Rather, I concern myself with the conjecture’s foundations in our current, well-trodden physics of quantized fields, spacetime, and gravity. In doing so, I locate what exactly within trans-Planckian censorship amounts to a departure from current physics—identifying what is, (...) ultimately, so conjectural about the conjecture. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce a new challenge to moral realism: the skeptical argument from moral underdetermination. The challenge arises as a consequence of two recent projects in normative ethics. Both Parfit and a group called consequentializers have independently claimed that the main traditions of normative theories can agree on the set of correct particular deontic verdicts. Nonetheless, as Dietrich and List :421–479, 2017) and myself :191–221, 2018; Australas J Philos 97:511–527, 2019; Ethical Theory Moral Pract 24:999–1018, 2021a) have argued, (...) the traditions still disagree about why these are the correct verdicts. This means that we can understand the situation in terms of an idea from the philosophy of science, the underdetermination of theory by the evidence. Yet underdetermination figures in one of the most important skeptical challenges to scientific realism. I show how an analogous skeptical argument can be construed for the moral realm. I propose a standard form for that argument. I then defend it against three possible objections, arguing that it is at least as plausible as, if not more plausible than, its counterpart in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Moderate epistemic akrasia is the state a subject is in when she believes that p and suspends judgment about whether her evidence supports p. In this article it is argued that, given a certain understanding of the attitude of suspension of judgment, moderate epistemic akrasia is doxastically irrational. The paper starts with a brief introduction that makes explicit some background notions and clarifies the dialectics of the debate. Second, the well-known distinction between propositional and doxastic rationality is introduced and some (...) cases of improper basing are discussed. Third, two different cases are considered in which one might argue that moderate epistemic akrasia is doxastically rational, and it is argued that none is successful. Fourth, several objections are presented and answered. Finally, some conclusions are drawn. (shrink)

Quine’s thesis of underdetermination is significantly weaker than it has been taken to be in the recent literature, for the following reasons: (i) it does not hold for all theories, but only for some global theories, (ii) it does not require the existence of empirically equivalent yet logically incompatible theories, (iii) it does not rule out the possibility that all perceived rivalry between empirically equivalent theories might be merely apparent and eliminable through translation, (iv) it is not a fundamental thesis (...) within Quine’s philosophy, and (v) it does not carry with it the anti-realistic consequences often associated with the thesis in recent debates. The paper analyzes Quine’s views on the matter and the changes they underwent over the years. A conjecture is put forth about why Quine’s thesis has been so widely misrepresented: Quine’s writings up to 1975 tackled primarily the formulation and justification of the thesis, but afterwards were concerned mostly with the question whether empirically equivalent rivals to the theory we hold are to be considered true also. When this latter discussion is read without bearing in mind Quine’s earlier formulation and justification of the thesis, his thesis seems to have stronger epistemic consequences than it actually does. A careful reading of his later writings shows, however, that the formulation of the thesis remained unchanged after 1975, and that his mature and considered views supported only a very mitigated version of the thesis. (shrink)

My dissertation addresses the question "do desires provide reasons?" I present two independent lines of argument in support of the conclusion that they do not. The first line of argument emerges from the way I circumscribe the concept of a desire. Complications aside, I conceive of a desire as a member of a family of attitudes that have imperative content, understood as content that displays doability-conditions rather than truth-conditions. Moreover, I hold that an attitude may provide reasons only if it (...) has truth-evaluable content. Insofar as desires lack truth-evaluable content, I hold that the content of a desire has the wrong kind of logical structure to provide reasons. My second line of argument claims that even if a desire did have truth-evaluable content, it would not follow that desires provide reasons. This is because a desire has no more rational significance than a guess or coin-flip. My argument relies on what I call the non-substitutability principle, the thesis that (all things being equal) one cannot substitute something that lacks rational significance, relative to some attitude, A, for something that has rational significance, relative to A, and leave the rational standing of A unchanged. For example, one cannot substitute the guess that P (i.e., something that lacks rational significance relative to the belief that P) for the perception that P (i.e., something that is rationally significant relative to the belief that P) without altering the rational standing of the belief. I argue that when the non-substitutability principle is applied to a desire that gives rise to an intention, it turns out that one can always substitute a guess or coin-flip (i.e., something that lacks rational significance relative to the intention) for the desire, without altering the rational standing of the intention. I take this to show that desires are not rationally significant relative to the intentions to which they give. (shrink)

In this article, I present a case study of underdetermination in nineteenth-century electrodynamics between a pure field theory and a formulation in terms of action at a distance. A particular focus is on the question if and how this underdetermination is eventually resolved. It turns out that after a period of overt underdetermination, during which the approaches are developed separately, the two programmes are merged. On the basis of this development, I argue that the original underdetermination survives in hidden form (...) in ontological and methodological redundancies of the subsequent particle–field electrodynamics. Implications regarding criteria for theory choice and the realism debate are briefly addressed. (shrink)

This paper seeks to evaluate the potential of the Newman objection to function as an immanent critique of Carnap's use of the Ramsey method of regimenting scientific theories. Stress is laid on the distinctive way in which ramseyfications are used by Carnap to formulate the analytic/synthetic distinction for the theoretical language and on the difference between the ontological and the epistemic readings of the Newman objection. While the former reading of the Newman objection is rejected as trading on an assumption (...) that Carnap did not share, the latter is accepted as critical. It is argued to turn on overlooking that the Ramsey sentence constitutes an idealization concerning which our normal expectations of what theories are like are bound to be frustrated. This idealisation need not reflect Carnap's considered view but can be regarded as adopted solely for the project of semantic explication. The distinctions drawn in the course of the argument also help to motivate Carnap's abstention from the discourse of realism and its denial. (shrink)