SOC SCI H1G Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Nelson Goodman, Falsifiability, Linguistic Relativity
Document Summary
Why talk about underdetermination: underdetermination of theory of evidence is partly why we can"t go on doing normal science forever, and why we need paradigms to help provide rational justification for normal science. We need paradigms because evidence alone is not enough. Why talk about value-ladenness of observation: because this is how. We can have multiple paradigms (in different times, of course) purporting to describe the same world radical kuhn argues for incommensurability of data and language across paradigms. What is determination of theory by evidence? theories as potential truth true theories need to be consistent with each other and consistent with the world. Underdetermination of theory by evidence the evidence is consistent with multiple (mutually inconsistent) theories this means that. Evidence is not enough to get us to a single truth. But what more can we possibly need in science.