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Theoreticity, Underdetermination, and the Disregard for Bizarre Scientific Hypotheses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

André Kukla
André Kukla*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Division of Life Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, Scarborough, Ontario M1 1A4, Canada; e-mail: andre.kukla@utoronto.ca.
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Abstract

The problem of scientific disregard is the problem of accounting for why some putative theories that appear to be well-supported by empirical evidence nevertheless play no role in the scientific enterprise. Laudan and Leplin suggest (and Hoefer and Rosenberg concur) that at least some of these putative theories fail to be genuine theoretical rivals because they lack some non-empirical property of theoreticity. This solution also supports their repudiation of the thesis of underdetermination. I argue that the attempt to provide criteria of theoreticity fails, that there is a Bayesian solution to the problem of scientific disregard that fares better, and that this successful solution supports a distinctively Bayesian version of the underdetermination thesis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 2001 , pp. 21 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Dubrovnik Philosophy of Science Conference in April 2000.

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