In the first half of this dissertation, I develop a heuristic methodology for analyzing scientific
solutions to the problem of underdetermination. Heuristics are rough-and-ready procedures …

Despite the increasing recognition that heuristics may be involved in myriad scientific
activities, much about how to use them prudently remains obscure. As typically defined …

Scientific methods are heuristic in nature. Heuristics are simplifying, incomplete,
underdetermined and fallible problem-solving rules that can nevertheless serve certain …

Advocates have sought to prove that underdetermination obtains because all theories have
empirical equivalents. But algorithms for generating empirical equivalents simply exchange …

The underdetermination thesis poses a threat to rational choice of scientific theories. We
discuss two arguments for the thesis. One draws its strength from deductivism together with …

Eliminative reasoning is a method that has been employed in many significant episodes in
the history of science. It has also been advocated by some philosophers as an important …

The underdetermination argument in the realism debate runs as follows: since the available
observable evidence always supports at least two logically incompatible scientific theories …

Many philosophical accounts of scientific theory comparison take as a starting point
competition between mutually exclusive alternative hypotheses. However, in scientific …

Scientists have always relied on non-empirical arguments to trust theories. They choose,
develop, and trust theories before finding empirical evidence. The entire history of science …

I argue that the Bayesian Way of reconstructing Duhem's problem fails to advance a solution
to the problem of which of a group of hypotheses ought to be rejected or “blamed” when …