The intelligibility objection against underdetermination

Abstract

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 not intertranslatable. Examples are drawn from a related discussion about incommensurability that shows that theoretical non-intertranslatability is possible.

Externalismo semántico y subdeterminación empírica :respuesta a un desafío al realismo científico

“…Rogério PassosSevero (2008;2012a;2012b) resume los varios cambios de opinión de Quine sobre este ejemplo.…”