Breaking the ties: epistemic significance, bacilli, and underdetermination.
One premise of the underdetermination argument is that entailment of evidence is the only epistemic constraint on theory-choice. I argue that methodological rules can be epistemically significant, both with respect to observables and unobservables. Using an example from the history of medicine -- Koch's 1882 discovery of tuberculosis bacteria -- I argue that even anti-realists ought to accept that these rules can break the tie between theories that are allegedly underdetermined. I then distinguish two types of underdetermination and argue that anti-realists, in order to maintain the underdetermination argument, need to do more than show that theories are empirically equivalent: they need to show that a certain kind of underdetermination obtains.
Tulodziecki
Dana
D
Columbia University, Department of Philosophy, New York, NY 10027, USA. dt193@columbia.edu
D035843:Biomedical Research; D003141:Communicable Diseases; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009161:Mycobacterium; D014376:Tuberculosis