HPS100H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: True Basic, Deductive Reasoning, Underdetermination
3 Oct 2016
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Chapter 5 - quine-duhem thesis and implications for scientific method. Bodies of beliefs and the tribunal of experience. Given the role played by auxiliary hypotheses, when we perform an experiment, we are not really testing just the individual hypothesis. In an important sense, the test is more of a test of the main hypothesis plus the accompanying auxiliary hypotheses. What we"re typically testing is really a body of claims, any one of which can be rejected or modified in the face of disconfirming evidence. Key element of the quine-duhem thesis = a hypothesis typically cannot be tested in isolation. What is tested is an entire group of claims, any of which is available for rejection or modification should the experimental results not be as expected. Quine tended to speak of the collection of beliefs as webs of beliefs , suggesting an analogy with a spider"s web.
