WEEK 12 - UNDERDETERMINATION
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| Group 2 |
The class started with the presentation from Group 2. The presenters are Azri, Azwa, Sabrina and Hanisah. This topic which is about the underdetermination is a stage that happens during any scientific investigation. There are few factors why it happens, generally because of too much information and we cannot choose one exact explanation to an observation. Due to there is no single theory or explanation to the observation, the thing is left underdetermined. The presenters gave us a video for their presentation and a slide for notes.
Underdetermination is the idea that we may have insufficient evidence to determine what beliefs we should hold in response to it. The information given does not determine the conclusions from a situation that we can draw. There are three versions of undetermination which are holistic underdetermination, contrastive underdetermination and transient underdetermination. Firstly, holistic underdetermination arises whenever our inability to test hypotheses in isolation leaves us underdetermined in our response to a failed prediction or some other piece of disconfirming evidence. It means that if our prediction fails we can not validly say that the hypothesis is incorrect. A theory is scientific if and only if falsifiable. Falsifiable means that it can demonstrate or prove to be a false experiment. Next, contrastive underdetermination takes a set of evidence and shows that it can support more than one theory. While transient underdetermination is a theory that is not comparable through observation or experience. A theory is transiently underdetermined if and only if the rival theories which make different claims about unobservable but are well-suited with all the evidence available the point of time in the science development.
Then, the underdetermination is important because a sufficiently strong form of underdetermination implies that non-rational factors always play a role in how scientist accept theories. Non-rational means irrational. Irrational thinking is thinking that is inconsistent with (or unsupported by) known facts. Moreover, the strength of the underdetermination is that underdetermination has no uniqueness which means that more than one hypothesis is acceptable. Thus, theorist should be concerned about underdetermination, because it can impact science in general.
After we have finished watching the video, the presenters have a Q&A session. One of the questions is why do scientist want to explore more about existing theory when the theory itself already have conclusion?. It is because scientist want the existing theory to improvise, and that's actually how underdetermination plays a role. If any theorist underdetermines a hypothesis, those theorists continue to observe and experiment, to complete the theory that exists. They still accept the existing theory, just that they still think some improvisation is needed in the theory. One of the characteristics of nos is the theory of knowledge is falsifiable. The theory will remain in use until one day another theory has been proved to contradict the current theory. But we must know that we need rigorous or several tests and experiments to question a theory.
There are also many activities during the presentation which are we need to solve a puzzle and answer what animals do we see. From the puzzle, there are two animals, duck and rabbit. This activity is about contrastive underdetermination because one evidence can support many theories. Another activity is to guess between Lion🦁 and Tiger🐯, who roar louder?. The answer is we do not know which one roar louder. This activity is an example of falsifiable theories or hypothesis where it can be a statement such as Tigers roar louder than Lions. That is a falsifiable statement as we can verify it empirically and determine which animal is louder than the other. Hence, the theory hypothesis might be wrong and therefore lions might roar louder than tigers. Then, there is a quiz and each group is given mark based on their answer. After the quiz has ended, madam asks about our understanding of this topic. I can conclude that a claim of underdetermination involves a set of rival theories, a standard of responsible judgment and a range of circumstances; where it is ultimately impossible to choose between any of them.
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