Does the underdetermination thesis have anything to do with the world outside of physics?… Well, postmodernist, poststructuralist, etc. philosophers certainly applied it across the board (if sometimes vaguely and implicitly). Indeed, Larry Laudan stated that the thesis “has wreaked havoc throughout twentieth-century philosophy”. (The words “anything go” come from an oft-quoted statement by Paul Feyerabend.)
Firstly, it can be seen in the title that the word “facts” is used. In most discussions of the underdetermination thesis the phrases readers will usually come across include the following: “data underdetermine theory”, “observations underdetermine theory”, and “evidence underdetermines theory”.
The word “facts” is more of an everyday term than “data”, “observations” and “evidence”. Most philosophers of science, at least in this context, rarely use it. They don’t use it because it’s a controversial notion, at least from a philosophical point of view. However, so too are the notions of observation, evidence and data - and sometimes for similar reasons.
In this essay, the word “interpretation” (i.e., rather than “theory”) will also be used.
Other Philosophical Uses of Underdetermination
Philosophically, the underdetermination thesis can be applied to phenomena outside of physics. So let’s quickly run through a couple of well-known examples.
Idealists would argue that everything we observe underdetermines the “external reality” which is said to exist outside (or independently) of our minds. Indeed, this has the same shape as Descartes dream argument in that “waking reality” underdetermines the possibility that we aren’t always dreaming. (The grand illusion created by Descartes’ evil demon or the machines which run the Matrix offer possibilities which underdetermine what Morpheus called “the Real”.) Thus, the underdetermination thesis can easily lead to a general scepticism. Indeed, as Larry Laudan argued in the introduction, it has done so.
The Aesthetics of Theory Choice
If the facts (the definite article “the” is used for dramatic purposes throughout this essay) don’t determine theory, then which additional factors do so? The philosopher of science Alex Rosenberg offers some suggestions.
Firstly, he suggests “non-experimental [and] non-observational considerations”, such as
“a priori philosophical commitments, religious doctrines, political ideologies, aesthetic tastes, psychological dispositions, social forces or intellectual fashions”.
If such things really were important factors when it comes to scientific theories, then many scientists would argue that they (as Rosenberg puts it) “deform understanding and lead away from truth and knowledge”.
Various postmodernist, poststructuralist, feminist (such as Elizabeth Anderson later) etc. philosophers would argue that it’s impossible to escape from all of these extra “considerations”. Thus, if a scientist has no “religious doctrines” which guide him, then “political ideologies” may do so instead. Similarly, if a scientist’s “aesthetic tastes” don’t amount to much, then his penchant for “intellectual fashions” may well do so.
What complicates this even more is that some philosophers may argue that religious doctrines, aesthetic tastes, intellectual fashions, etc. themselves fall under the broader category political ideologies, and are the consequences of social forces too.
Now it needs to be said that even if there are such additional factors in theory choice, then these factors won’t (in a strict sense) determine any theory either. They may well be important, but they still won’t literally determine (or entail) any given theory.
An Extreme Consequence of Underdetermination
Rosenberg also expresses one extreme consequence of the underdetermination thesis. He writes:
“Imagine, now, the ‘end of inquiry’ when all the data on every subject are in. Can there still be two distinct equally simple, elegant, and otherwise satisfying theories equally compatible with all the data, and incompatible with one another?”
Rosenberg concludes:
“Since they are distinct theories, our two total ‘systems of the world’ must be incompatible, and therefore cannot both be true. We cannot remain either agnostic about whether one is right or ecumenical about embracing both. Yet it appears that observation would not be able to decide between these theories.”
There are a couple of questions to ask about these passages — even if they are broadly correct.
What does it mean to claim that two theories can (or can’t) be “equally simple, elegant, and otherwise satisfying”? How could that be established, let alone quantified? Moreover, if the notions of elegance, simplicity and satisfaction are allowed into theory choice, then an added problem is deciding what these things actually are in the first place. What’s worse, aesthetic choices (at a second-order level) will determine what elegance and satisfaction are within any particular context.
As for simplicity, this seems to be less controversial and/or less hard to establish… Or is it? Isn’t one man’s simplicity another man’s complexity (or at least his bafflement)?
Rosenberg himself doesn’t worry about all that… Or at least he doesn’t when it comes to physics. (Rosenberg does appear to be exclusively talking about physics in the passages quoted so far.) There are two reasons for that: (1) Such additional considerations, in the long run, don’t really impact on science. (2) On the whole, there are rarely proliferations of theories scrapping over the same facts. (This seems wrong.) As Rosenberg puts it:
“In short, theory is underdetermined by observation. And yet science does not show the sort of proliferation of theory and the kind of unresolvable disputes that the possibility of this underdetermination might lead us to expect.”
Indeed, a couple of pages later, Rosenberg claims that “underdetermination is a mere possibility”. He then claims that “it almost never occurs”. In even stronger terms, Rosenberg suggests (although he’s not necessarily putting his own position) that
“observation really does govern theory choice [ ] or else there would be more competition among theories and models than there is”.
Of course, if what Rosenberg says is correct, then we’ll need to know why underdetermination doesn’t, to requote Larry Laudan, “wreak[] havoc” on all science. (Laudan referred to what it has done to “twentieth-century philosophy”, not to science.)
In addition, it’s not clear why Rosenberg says that “two total ‘systems of the world’ must be incompatible”. That’s unless it’s written into the notion of a total system of the world that it can only ever be singular. One can suppose, however, that if one total system has it that “All swans are white”, and the other has it that “All swans are purple”, then both systems must be “incompatible”, and “therefore cannot both be true”.
How does dialetheism fit into this? (This may seem to be an odd philosophical position to bring up.)
A dialetheist philosopher of science (if there is such an animal) could argue that we can “remain either agnostic about whether one is right or ecumenical about embracing both”. And he may take this position for mainly pragmatic reasons, or even for more arcane logical/ontological reasons.
To add something to the dialethic position.
Some ancient Greek sceptics argued for equipollence. (This was a position that wasn’t that unlike Kant’s position on antinomies.) Such sceptics argued that sometimes (or even many times) the reasons for and against theories are equally balanced. (This idea can also be found in Jaina seven-valued logic.) More relevantly, this position can be tied to the underdetermination thesis in that equipollence is at least partly a result of underdetermination.
Political Uses of the Underdetermination Thesis
The underdetermination thesis in philosophy is often presented in an arcane manner with rarefied examples from physics. Indeed, even when it is tackled within an epistemological context, the examples may seem either farfetched or irrelevant.
To express at least part of the problem in simple terms, it’s worth quoting Rosenberg again. He writes:
“Quine certainly did not claim the universality of underdetermination in order to undermine the objectivity of science, only our complacency about what its objectivity consists in. But historians, sociologists and radical interpreters of Kuhn’s theory certainly have claimed that underdetermination means that, in science, theory choice is either not rational, or rational only relative to some social, psychological, political or other perspective.”
So it’s not all about rival theories (or interpretations) explaining the same facts. What about the cases in which all the facts aren’t enough — on their own — to establish any theory at all? Thus, in political terms, racists, non-racists, Marxists, anti-Marxists, etc. may all be in the same (or at least in a similar) boat.
This is quite an extreme idea in that, at face value, if a given set of facts doesn’t entail (or it always underdetermines) any theory, then perhaps anything goes. Or at least a clever, say, philosopher (such as Paul Feyerabend) could use the underdetermination thesis to advance such a position. That is, he could argue that since the facts don’t necessitate (or determine) any given theory, then we’re free to adopt a theory for political or (as Bas van Fraassen puts it) “pragmatic” reasons.
Thus, again, does this mean that anything goes?
Let’s put an extreme case, and express it in a simple language.
Marxist Theory (Choice)
If theory is underdetermined by the facts (or by data, evidence, etc.), then perhaps Marxist, Nazi, poststructuralist, etc. theories cannot be shown to be false (or incorrect).
In a more concrete mode. Marxists have often dealt with the same facts, data, evidence, etc. as everyone else. However, they’ve offered us their own theories to account for them. Alternatively put, Marxists have interpreted the facts in their own ways.
To be crudely simplistic. Say that a Marxist argues that when a particular white person punched a black person, he did so because he was a racist. A non-Marxist denies this. Yet the facts are the same: John punched Jim. Of course, there may be (or there will be) more facts that can justify the Marxist interpretation. However, there’ll be more facts that justify the non-Marxist interpretation too. In both cases, there’s no entailment — or algorithmic move from the facts to the theory (or interpretation) — even when new facts are added to the two rival theories.
Now take a more technical account of the problems here.
In an article called ‘Understanding Society: Underdetermination and truth’, the Marxist philosopher of science Daniel Little tackles Marxist theory. He writes:
“Take the idea of class conflict as a theory of political behavior. [ ] And here is the crucial point: different specifications lead to different predictions about political behavior; so the general theoretical assertion is underdetermined by empirical observation. [ ]
“Do we think that social assertions are true or false in the semantic sense: true by virtue of correspondence to the facts as they really are; or do we think that social assertions are simply ways of speaking about complexes of social phenomena, with no referential force? Is the language of class or ideology or ressentiment just a way of encompassing a range of social behaviors, or are there really classes and ideologies in the social world? And if we affirm the latter possibility, does the evidence of social observation permit us to unambiguously select the true theories?”
Those two paragraphs admirably capture what’s at stake here.
Of course, when it comes to some theories or interpretations, the facts may not be the facts in the first place. Thus, when a Nazi offers us the theory that Aryans are a superior race, it can be argued that the term “Aryan” doesn’t name a natural or biological kind.
However, this may not be (or it isn’t) an examples of genuine underdetermination because in this case different “facts” are determining rival theories. However, it could be if, say, Aryans did constitute a biological natural kind, and someone offered a theory as to the inferiority of Aryans as a racial group instead. However, whatever the case is, genetics, biology, history, evolution, etc. alone would never establish either racial superiority or racial inferiority.
A philosopher of science may now argue that I’m playing fast and loose with the underdetermination thesis with this talk of race, people being punched, Aryans, etc.
The Underdetermination Thesis and Analytic Philosophy
This essay is at least partly about how postmodernist, poststructuralist, etc. philosophers have used the underdetermination thesis for political ends. However, such philosophers didn’t invent this philosophical thesis. The blame — or praise! — for that lies elsewhere.
The philosopher Maria Baghramian (in her chapter ‘Relativism about Science’) writes:
“Much of the philosophical inspiration behind relativism about science comes, not from French postmodernism, but from the Duhem-Quine thesis of underdetermination of theory by data [ ].”
Added to that is Quine’s related notion of the inscrutability of reference, plus other ideas from the cookbooks of analytic philosophers. Indeed, Quine’s ‘Gavagai’ example is dated at 1960, a time when postmodernism wasn’t even gestating.
In addition, in an article called ‘How postmodernism became the universal scapegoat of the era’, the left-wing writer Richard Seymour blames analytic philosophers for this and for similar philosophical crimes too. He writes:
“Anti-realists, such as the US philosopher Hilary Putnam, dispute this. They argue that all scientific theories are ‘underdetermined’ by the data, particularly when they relate to non-observable objects such as genes, so there is no good reason to assume they are correct. Moreover, they draw a pessimistic inference from the fact that past scientific theories have usually been in some important ways false, to suggest that current theories are probably false too. Far from being an inherently unreasonable view, this position is usually grounded in empiricism and a historicist reading of scientific practices.”
Despite all that, Rosenberg (again) does argue that
“Quine and his philosophical followers could not countenance the misapplication of their doctrine of underdetermination to support the conclusion that current scientific conclusions are not the most reasonable and well-supported conclusions we can draw about the world”.
Despite Richard Seymour’s words above, few philosophers and scientists deny the underdetermination thesis — perhaps not even realists.
Does Everyone Accept the Underdetermination Thesis?
Relevantly, in his book Intellectual Impostures, the mathematician and physicist Alan Sokal argued that although the thesis “looks absurd” at face value, it “can be ‘shown’” to be correct… However, he cited the example of a criminal investigation (i.e., rather than something from physics) to get his point across. He wrote:
“So we would conclude, for example, that, whatever the facts, there will always be just as many suspects at the end of any criminal investigation as there were at the beginning. Clearly, this looks absurd.”
In more detail:
“[O]ne can always invent a story (possibly a very bizarre one) in which X is guilt and Y is innocent and in which ‘the data are accounted for’ in an *ad hoc* fashion.”
Similarly, the English philosopher James Ladyman provides us with his own extreme(?) example.
Take the broadest of subjects: “everything that happens”.
Ladyman offers us three theories to explain such a thing:
“(1) Everything that happens is a random result of physical forces. (2) Everything that happens is designed for a reason by God. (3) Everything that happens is an effect of a previous cause.
In the case of everything that happens, the “empirical facts” can all be explained by three different theories. Ladyman points out that, according to the logical positivists at least, all three theories above “cannot be decided by experience”. And, as such, they must be “metaphysical nonsense”. What’s more, in order to make these theories make sense, “scientific realists [would need to] claim[] knowledge beyond empirical facts”.
(The logical positivists took a Humean position on (3), which may, at first, seem like the odd man out of the three.)
To return to Alan Sokal. His artfully-chosen example may well be absurd. But what about the many examples of underdetermination found in physics? The problem here is that Sokal’s criminal-investigation example may not (or does not) glide so smoothly over to the cases found in physics.
In any case, Sokal argued that the underdetermination thesis only “works” because of its “generality”.
Now let’s take the case of the feminist philosopher Elizabeth Secor Anderson.
The Political Case of the Elisabeth S. Anderson
Elizabeth Anderson is a Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. (She’s been published by — and featured in — The New Yorker, Jacobin, Chris Hedges’ Truthdig, 3:AM Magazine, Democracy, etc.)
To put the case at its most simple: Anderson plugs the underdetermination-of-theory gap with politics and ideology.
In Anderson’s paper ‘Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and a defence’, she discusses how (what she calls) “value judgments” and “background assumptions” impinge on (all?) scientific theories. More relevantly, she focuses on how political and ideological value judgements and background assumptions plug the underdetermination-of-theory gap which is left after all the facts, data, observations, etc. are in. That theme is at the heart of her paper.
Anderson argues that feminist naturalised epistemology
“rejects the positivist view that the epistemic merits of theories can be assessed independently of their ideological applications”.
Anderson also tells us that there’s a “logical gap” between the facts and scientific theory. However, it doesn’t automatically follow that we need necessarily plug that gap with (what she calls) “value judgements”. Of course, this depends on what exactly Anderson means by those two words. Considering the rest of her paper, she doesn’t only mean those judgements as to what makes a scientific theory “simple”, “elegant”, “explanatorily powerful”, or “empirically adequate” (or a mixture of all these, as well as other criteria). Rather, Anderson is talking about ideological and political value judgements.
Readers will also need to know what Anderson means by “background assumptions”. These background assumptions would be — or would go alongside — the various value judgments. And those value judgments — or at least some of them — are seen to be (at least in part) ideological and political in nature. Thus, Anderson argues, these background assumptions will be “used to argue that a given observation constitutes evidence for a given hypothesis”.
So what kind of scientific observations and theories is Anderson talking about here? Is she talking about observing the effects of particle interactions in a bubble chamber, or the effects of having a low income on a family? It can easily be argued that political or ideological value judgements (or background assumptions) may plug the underdetermination gap in the latter case, though what about the former? Indeed, in principle — even if only in principle — ideological or political background assumptions needn’t necessarily impinge on one’s observations of — and theories about — a poor family either.
In any case, many philosophers of science have argued that empirical adequacy is easy (i.e., because facts, data, evidence or observations always underdetermine theory). If that’s true, then perhaps background assumptions (or value judgments) really do take on an importance which we otherwise wouldn’t expect. Moreover, perhaps empirical adequacy weighs less on the scales than the prior political/ideological judgments (or background assumptions) which are made, and which then impinge on what scientists believe is empirically adequate.
More relevantly, Anderson moves from noting the role and importance of ideology and politics when it comes to plugging the underdetermination gap, to her holding the view that scientists should be fully ideologically/politically aware all the way through the process of scientific theory construction. Anderson also believes that scientists should always keep their eyes firmly fixed on all possible future (Anderson’s words) “political applications” of their theories. Such a stance will be decisive when in comes to how underdetermination creates not just different theories, but also rival political theories.
Note:
(1) In a sense, it’s obvious that any given set of facts can’t entail any given theory simply because facts are facts and theories are theories. The former and latter are different kinds. Thus, the fact that “Birds fly” isn’t a statement of a theoretical position. Of course, this statement may have a degree of theory somehow embedded within it. However, the statement itself isn’t theoretical.
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