How Do We Deal With Conflicts Between Different World Views If They Are Based on the Same Evidence?: The Philosophical Problem of Underdetermination in the Thought of W.V. Quine and Donald Davidson

This book is a close examination of Quine's thesis of underdetermination and its relation to other Quinian positions like empiricism, holism, indeterminacy of translation, and naturalism about truth. The book aims at elaborating and defending the thesis of underdetermination about global theories or systems of the world. A natural fallout of such a thesis is pluralism of worldviews. If underdetermination is a plausible position to hold, then there is no escaping the view that alternative scientific worldviews or conceptual schemes can exist. Donald Davidson, however, has rejected the very idea of a conceptual scheme on the basis of his view of language. Although he is in some ways sympathetic to Quine's views on underdetermination, he still argues for reconciliation of alternative worldviews through systematic reconstrual of predicates. It is argued in this book that such a reconstrual of predicates does not sit well with Quine's thesis of underdetermination, and Davidson's own argument against alternative conceptual schemes through his criterion of languagehood also fails. As a result, it appears that Quine's underdetermination thesis paves the way for the existence of alternative conceptual schemes. A criterion for individuation of such conceptual schemes is derived from partial failure of translation between languages embodying alternative world views.