Abstract

The aim of this project is to dissolve the skeptical "indeterminacy" or "underdetermination" problem by showing that the problem depends essentially on an erroneous conception of time. ;I trace the development of underdetermination skepticism from its origins in the work of Duhem, through its transformation by Quine, to its contemporary use as an anti-realist argument in philosophy of science. The same skeptical problem appears as Quine's indeterminacy of translation. These analyses show that the problem is an improved version of Pyrrhonian skepticism of a completely general nature. Each of the standard responses to the problem is shown to be unpromising. A new approach is needed. ;This new approach is an attempt to dissolve the problem through an analysis of its temporal presuppositions. I show that underdetermination skepticism depends on the traditional philosophical conception of the atemporal . I deploy three argumentative strategies to make this point. First, in a metaphilosophical section, I discuss the importance of the denial of the reality of time in philosophy and of the variety of ways that the atemporal appears in different philosophical views. Then I analyze the indeterminacy argument and argue that, by always reducing the future to the present, the underdetermination skeptic depends on a denial of temporality. In an interpretive section, by analyzing the texts of those who have given the best responses to the indeterminacy argument, I show that without recognizing it, they are discussing time. ;The question of whether the "view from no-when" underlying underdetermination skepticism is in fact a metaphysical mistake is approached through the arguments between tensed and tenseless conceptions of time. I contend that time is tensed and that the arguments for the tenselessness of time are erroneous. In these chapters I consider the standard arguments between these views of time: McTaggart's argument, fatalism, change, our experience of time, and alleged counterexamples to the openness of the future