Underdetermination of infinitesimal probabilities

Logical underdetermination in physics

This paper discusses physical implications of a result concerning underdetermination of truth in mathematics. If the time development of a complex physical system on the macro level for logical reasons may be underdetermined by the physical laws which determine its behavior on the micro level, then there arises a free maneuvering space concerning that physical system, giving room for a form of ...

Is structural underdetermination possible?

Structural realism is sometimes said to undermine the theory underdetermination (TUD) argument against realism, since, in usual TUD scenarios, the supposed underdetermination concerns the object-like theoretical content but not the structural content. The paper explores the possibility of structural TUD by considering some special cases from modern physics, but also questions the validity of th...

Underdetermination and Evidence

The Intelligibility Objection against Underdetermination

One of the objections against the thesis of underdetermination of theories by observations is that it is unintelligible. Any two empirically equivalent theories — so the argument goes — are in principle intertranslatable, hence cannot count as rivals in any non-trivial sense. Against that objection, this paper shows that empirically equivalent theories may contain theoretical sentences that are...

Intervention, underdetermination, and theory generation

We consider the use of intervention data for eliminating the underdetermination problems in statistical modelling, and for guiding extensions of the statistical models. The leading example is factor analysis, a major statistical tool in the social sciences. We first relate indeterminacy in factor analysis to the problem of underdetermination. Then we draw a parallel between factor analysis mode...