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Cosmic topology, underdetermination, and spatial infinity
It is well-known that the global structure of every space-time model for relativistic cosmology is observationally underdetermined. In order to...
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Overdetermination, underdetermination, and epistemic granularity in the historical sciences
The optimism vs. pessimism debate about the historical sciences is often framed in terms of arguments about the relative importance of...
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Introducing new work on indeterminacy and underdetermination
This paper summarises the contributions to our Topical Collection on indeterminacy and underdetermination. The collection includes papers in ethics,...
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Quine’s Underdetermination Thesis
In On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World from 1975, Quine formulated a thesis of underdetermination roughly to the effect that every...
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The metaphysical underdetermination of time-reversal invariance
In this paper I argue that the concept of time-reversal invariance in physics suffers from metaphysical underdetermination, that is, that the concept...
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Moral underdetermination and a new skeptical challenge
In this paper, I introduce a new challenge to moral realism: the skeptical argument from moral underdetermination . The challenge arises as a...
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Underdetermination, holism, and feminist philosophy of science
Appeals to some thesis of underdetermination, to the idea that scientific theories and hypotheses are not entailed by the evidence that supports...
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Underdetermination: A Realist Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and Bohmian Mechanics
It is generally believed that two rival non-relativistic quantum theories, the realist interpretation of quantum mechanics and Bohmian mechanics, are...
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The structuralist approach to underdetermination
This paper provides an exposition of the structuralist approach to underdetermination, which aims to resolve the underdetermination of theories by...
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Making it precise—Imprecision and underdetermination in linguistic communication
How good are we at understanding what others communicate? It often seems to us, at least, that we understand quite well what others convey when...
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Realism, Theory-Equivalence and Underdetermination of Theories
The focus of this chapter is the realism-antirealism debate in philosophy of science. The two central doctrines of scientific realism, viz., (i)... -
Scientific Realism and Further Underdetermination Challenges
In an earlier article on this journal I argued that the problem of empirical underdetermination can for the largest part be solved by theoretical...
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The sky is blue, and other reasons quantum mechanics is not underdetermined by evidence
I criticize the widely-defended view that the quantum measurement problem is an example of underdetermination of theory by evidence: more...
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Modeling interventions in multi-level causal systems: supervenience, exclusion and underdetermination
This paper explores some issues concerning how we should think about interventions (in the sense of unconfounded manipulations) of "upper-level"...
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Monist and Pluralist Approaches on Underdetermination: A Case Study in Evolutionary Microbiology
Philosophers have usually highlighted how the weakness and paucity of historical evidence underdetermine the choice between rival historical...
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An invitation to conventionalism: a philosophy for modern (space-)times
Geometric underdetermination (i.e., the underdetermination of the geometric properties of space and time) is a live possibility in light of some of...
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Are models our tools not our masters?
It is often claimed that one can avoid the kind of underdetermination that is a typical consequence of symmetries in physics by stipulating that...
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General Relativity, MOND, and the problem of unconceived alternatives
Observational discrepancies in galactic rotation curves and cluster dispersion data have been interpreted to imply the existence of dark matter....
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Naturalized metaphysics or displacing metaphysicians to save metaphysics
Naturalized metaphysics aims to establish justified metaphysical claims, where metaphysics is meant to carry its usual significance, while avoiding...
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“Caught in the Amber”: A Sketch of Chemical Underdetermination
In the chemical sciences, theoretical uncertainties can have at least two different reasons. On the one hand, the theory in question might be just...