Quinn On Inadequate Decisive Theory

Experience is the doorway through which we obtain information about the world.With that information,we project our systematic theory of the external world.On the one hand,the theory is used to explain the preceding events.On the other hand,it is used to predict subsequent events.But this totally plausible contention poses the big problem of how we are to get from here to there.How can experience,always personal and subjective,manage to inform us about matters of impersonal fact regarding objective reality?Theory statements always concern the external theory posits,but our experience is just stimulations that response to impacts on our sensory surface and we cannot find any trace of theory posits in it.Hence,there are no direct claim on the unobservable posits in experience and there can be no direct evidential relation between the two.So, it is reasonable to argue that there can be two theories with different theory posits but may account for our observations equally well.The observation itself would not do any help for us to determine the true one or even the better one.This,roughly speaking,is the thesis of the underdetermination of theory.W.V.Quine had discussed that idea in lots of his papers and books and there are three features about Quine’s discussion.First,his views on the matter changed several times.Second,he tended to downplay the theoretical significance of the thesis.Third,his discussion can be reasonably divided into two themes,one concerns the formulation and justification of the thesis,the other concerns mostly with the question whether empirically equivalent rivals we hold are to be considered true also.This paper mainly make up of three parts.The first part analyzes Quine’s changes on the formulation and justification of the thesis in a time-based order.The second part concerns mostly with Quine’s vacillations on the matters of whether empirically equivalent rival we hold are to be considered true also.The third part deals with some common misunderstandings on this thesis.