Beauchemin, Pierre-Hugues and Staley, Kent (2025) How uncertainty and underdetermination allow measurement to produce useful results. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Recent philosophical literature on the epistemology of measurement has relegated measurement uncertainty to a secondary issue, concerned with characterizing the quality of a measurement process or its product. To reveal the deeper epistemological significance of uncertainty, we articulate the problem of usefulness, which is concerned with the tension between the specificity of the conditions under which particular measurements are performed and the broader range of conditions in which measurement results are intended to be – and are – used. This is simultaneously an epistemological and a practical problem. To articulate the problem and explain its solution we employ a philosophically pragmatist framework that treats measurement as a form of inquiry. Drawing on that framework, we claim that measurement uncertainty is crucial to understanding how in practice investigators solve the problem of usefulness. Explaining exactly how that works, however, yields a surprising result. The contribution of measurement uncertainty to the solution of the problem of usefulness exploits the underdetermination of measurement procedures by the aims of a measurement and the resources available for performing that measurement. Underdetermination of measurement, its treatment in terms of the investigation of uncertainty, and the relationship of uncertainty to sensitivity, are key to enabling investigators to successfully complete measurement inquiries. Our account thus shows how two features of scientific inquiry typically thought of in epistemically negative terms – uncertainty and underdetermination – promote positive objectives in the pursuit of knowledge.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||
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| Keywords: | uncertainty, underdetermination, sensitivity, pragmatism, inquiry, usefulness, epistemology | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Data General Issues > Evidence General Issues > Experimentation Specific Sciences > Physics |
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| Depositing User: | Kent Staley | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 09 Jul 2025 13:07 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 09 Jul 2025 13:07 | |||||||||
| Item ID: | 25918 | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Data General Issues > Evidence General Issues > Experimentation Specific Sciences > Physics |
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| Date: | 8 July 2025 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/25918 |
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