Philosophy
Your analysis of how the Quine-Duhem Thesis applies to your case study should be expanded in a 3-4 page word document and double-spaced. Submit the word document in the assignment folder along with the presentation. Here, the necessary conditions are the same as in Part 6 above. The only difference is that you will be going into greater detail about the two parts that you choose in the Quine-Duhem Thesis. Make sure you tell the complete story of how the Quine-Duhem Thesis applies to your case study. You will need an introduction and a conclusion as specified by the analytical writing guidelines presented in class.
The necessary components here are that you discuss two aspects of the Quine-Duhem thesis. Depending on which components you choose, you will discuss different things. Below, I list out the necessary components for each aspect. For example, if you explain the tribunal of experience and crucial experiments you will have to include A, B, C, and D.If you choose the tribunal of beliefs, discuss A) what other auxiliary hypotheses are included in the web of hypotheses; and B) how do these hypotheses make it difficult to confirm and/or disconfirm the main hypothesis. If you chose crucial experiments, discuss C) what kind of crucial experiment could we hope to have with this hypothesis; and D) why is it impossible, according to the Quine-Duhem thesis, to have such a crucial experiment in your case study. Here, you will have to do some creative thinking to see how to apply a crucial experiment in this scenario. This will be relatively difficult if you only have one hypothesis. One suggestion is that usually when we confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis, we are doing so in relation to an alternative hypothesis–even if it is the null. So, in a sense, every experiment can be interpreted to be a crucial experiment. Your goal here is to apply the Quine-Duhem thesis to make us lose hope in the crucial experiment in relation to your hypothesis. This is an important qualification. It means that you are not saying that in principle no crucial experiments ever work. Rather, you are showing why a crucial experiment won’t work in your scenario. If you chose underdetermination, discuss C) how underdetermination works in your scenario; and D) how even if we had more data it wouldn’t help solve underdetermination here. The important detail here is that you understand that theory is underdetermined by evidence. Your argument will run something like, we have all of this evidence, but it still doesn’t point to the theory. This is why; and this is why, even if we had more data, it would still not point to the theory. For an example, recall the turtle case study described in class. This makes underdetermination accessible.
Note, crucial experiments is the most difficult aspect. The reason why is precisely because you’ll have to think about the design of the experiment. Tribunal of beliefs and underdetermination are relatively easy.