Presented at the Southern California Philosophy Conference and the Philosophy of Science Association meeting (November 2002); published in Philosophy of Science.
If two theory formulations are merely different expressions of the same theory, then any problem of choosing between them cannot be due to the underdetermination of theories by data. So one might suspect that we need to be able to tell distinct theories from mere alternate formulations before we can say anything substantive about underdetermination, that we need to solve the problem of identical rivals before addressing the problem of underdetermination. Here I consider two possible solutions: Quine proposes that we call two theories identical if they are equivalent under a reconstrual of predicates, but this would mishandle important cases. Another proposal is to defer to the particular judgements of actual scientists. Consideration of an historical episode (the alleged equivalence of wave and matrix mechanics) shows that this second proposal also fails. Nevertheless, I suggest, the original suspicion is wrong; there are ways to enquire into underdetermination without having solved the problem of identical rivals.
@ARTICLE(Magnus2003c,
AUTHOR = {P.D. Magnus},
TITLE = {Underdetermination and the Problem of Identical Rivals},
JOURNAL = {Philosophy of Science},
YEAR = 2003,
MONTH = dec,
VOLUME = {70},
NUMBER = {5},
PAGES = {1256--1264}
)