I could nominate a lot of people from this forum alone, but I'll refrain for now.


I suppose you're mentioning something akin to Contrastive Underdetermination. If we are going to say that ultimately one metaphysic is true, then all the other metaphysic(s) are false.

Causation, change, identity, substance, supervenience and so forth, none of these questions can be answered by science itself but must be presupposed for any of the sciences to function, this is where philosophy comes into play and a sound philosophy of nature is required in order to be able to coherently be involved in any of the sciences.

Underdetermination[1]

The challenge by the problem of underdetermination to the sciences is well acknowledged. And my solution to the specific challenge of contrastive underdetermination would require a criteria for evaluating explanatory hypotheses. The following is the criteria of my preference.

i. Explanatory Power
A scientific theory must be testable, verifiable, falsifiable, and also be internally consistent, while producing explanations which are best able account for all the events concerning a phenomena without contradicting itself.

ii. Explanatory Scope
A theory must be able to account for as much as it can, any explanatory hypothesis that is found to have untainted useful applications which best reflect real it should be prioritized for the progress of the sciences. While this doesn’t necessitate the fact of the theory, it does help in getting a greater proximation of what is true, and that is all that will be needed to be concerned with truth. 

iii. Ontological Parsimony
The holist’s challenge is well acknowledged, no theory can be tested in isolation. This view comes with the consequence that whenever we test a theory and confirm a hypothesis, we necessarily confirm our metaphysical suppositions it includes along with it.

iv. Theoretical Parsimony
If the metaphysical suppositions can be replaced, then we have a choice between those metaphysical suppositions. If however, the metaphysical suppositions cannot be replaced, we have to stay committed to them since they are indispensable to the theory.[2]

Purely Unconceived Alternatives

Are we really to be believe that there are inconsmmensurate empirically equivalent explanatory hypotheses with the same wide scope, and share the same ontological and theoretically parsimony? Then this would need to be shown rather than merely asserted. If the best argument for underdetermination is an appeal to looking back at history. I can in the least say that this is an argument from possibility. If there are no specific instances where all of these criteria are met in the past, then the argument is undercut, and thus removes any warrant in believing in them. If anyone even admits that it ever gets off the ground.


[1]http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-underdetermination/, the full article is simply prodigious, and if read well should be able to demonstrate that the whole rationale of the sciences depend upon a sound and serious philosophy of nature and metaphysic.

[2]http://classicaltheism.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=317 - The rules of Rational positing.

(Credits originally to John West.)
 

Last edited by Dennis (3/05/2016 9:58 pm)