Abstract
When the results of an experiment appears to disconfirm a hypothesis, how does one know whether it’s the hypothesis, or rather some auxiliary hypothesis or assumption, that is at fault? Philosophers’ answers to this question, now known as “Duhem’s problem,” have differed widely. Despite these differences, we affirm Duhem’s original position that the logical structure of this problem alone does not allow a solution. A survey of philosophical approaches to Duhem’s problem indicates that what allows any philosopher, or scientists for that matter, to solve this problem is the addition of epistemic information that guides their assignment of praise and blame after a negative test. We therefore advocate a distinction between the logical and epistemic formulations of Duhem’s problem, the latter relying upon additional relevant information about the system being tested. Recognition of the role of this additional information suggests that some proposed solutions to the epistemic form of Duhem’s problem are preferable over others.
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Notes
An anonymous reviewer usefully notes the possibility of "pragmatic" resolutions that are not themselves epistemic: for instance, the choice to favor a hypothesis that would lend theoretical support to more easily or cheaply conducted experiments over a rival hypothesis. We agree that such pragmatic considerations play a role in scientific decision-making and are important topics of study, but we restrict our inquiry here to the prospects of epistemically justified resolutions. Our selection and evaluation of proposed solutions in the following sections thus rests on appeals to epistemic values such as fit with the evidence, independent support for assumptions, or explanatory power, rather than pragmatic ones.
For one thing, Pr(E| ~ H) plausibly depends on how many alternative theories (e.g. H1, H2,… Hn) would predict E, and with what strength. Mayo (1997) points out that since the number of alternative theories that could predict E can plausibly be expanded or contracted at will with the help of some theoretical ingenuity and historical selectivity, the strength of Pr(E| ~ H) can likewise be varied at will.
In this quotation, we’ve substituted “Ha” and “Hb” for Dorling’s notation (“T” and “H” respectively), to maintain consistency with our notation.
Note that by treating theory and auxiliary statements differently in his model, Dorling imports another kind of asymmetry into his description of the problem. For instance, he counsels us to consider explanations by alternative theories, but doesn't describe the evaluation of auxiliaries in the same way.
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Dietrich, M., Honenberger, P. Duhem’s problem revisited: logical versus epistemic formulations and solutions. Synthese 197, 337–354 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1845-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1845-1