Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:09:38.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Discussion: In Defense of the Quine-Duhem Thesis: A Reply to Greenwood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Robert Klee
Robert Klee*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Religion, Ithaca College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

While discussing the work of Kuhn and Hanson, John Greenwood (1990) misidentifies the nature of the relationship between the incommensurability of theories and the theory-ladenness of observation. After pointing out this error, I move on to consider Greenwood's main argument that the Quine-Duhem thesis suffers from a form of epistemological self-defeat if it is interpreted to mean that any recalcitrant observation can always be accommodated to any theory. Greenwood finds this interpretation implausible because some adjustments to auxiliary hypotheses undermine too much of the prior observational evidence for the test theory. I argue that Greenwood mistakes the logico-metaphysical Quine-Duhem thesis for an epistemological one. All the argument he takes to undercut it actually illustrates how well the thesis works on a practical level. This is illustrated with an example from contemporary immunology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 487 - 491
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I am grateful to an anonymous referee for constructive criticism of an earlier draft of this paper.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA.

References

Feyerabend, P. (1975), Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Greenwood, J. D. (1990), “Two Dogmas of Neo-Empiricism: The ‘Theory-Informity’ of Observation and the Quine-Duhem Thesis”, Philosophy of Science 57: 553–574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grünbaum, A. (1962), “The Falsifiability of Theories: Total or Partial? A Contemporary Evaluation of the Duhem-Quine Thesis”, in Wartofsky, M. W. (ed.), Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 1. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 178–195.Google Scholar
Hanson, N. R. (1958), Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kosso, P. (1989), Observability and Observation in Physical Science. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, T. (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T. (1977), “Second Thoughts on Paradigms”, in Suppe, F. (ed.), The Structure of Scientific Theories. 2d ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 459–482.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T. (1982), “Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability,” in P. Asquith and T. Nickles (eds.), PSA 1982, vol. 2. East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 669–688.Google Scholar
Popper, K. R. (1963), “Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 215–250.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. (1953), “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, in From a Logical Point of View. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 20–46.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. (1976), Letter to Grünbaum dated 1 June 1962, in S. Harding (ed.), Can Theories Be Refuted? Dordrecht: Reidel, p. 132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. (1990), The Pursuit of Truth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. and Ullian, J. S. (1970), The Web of Belief. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Roitt, I.; Brostoff, J.; and Male, D. (1989), Immunology. 2d ed. London: Gower Medical Publishing.Google Scholar
Sklar, L. (1974), Space, Time, and Spacetime. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar