Definition of "underdetermination" [underdetermination]

• The state or quality of being underdetermined (noun)

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• "An inference can be weaker or stronger depending on how much evidence points to a particular conclusion rather than to another one, and also on the number of possible alternative solutions (if there are too many competing hypotheses the evidence may simply not be sufficient to discriminate among them, a situation that philosophers call the underdetermination of theories by the data)."
• "Our efforts to confirm scientific theories, he suggests, are no less threatened by what Larry Sklar (1975, 1981) has called “transient” underdetermination, that is, theories which are not empirically equivalent but are equally (or at least reasonably) well confirmed by all the evidence we happen to have in hand at the moment, so long as this transient predicament is also"
• "The difficulty with any and all inductive inferences is that they are subject to often massive underdetermination, that is, the evidence can never establish the truth of any particular inference to the exclusion of all competing, non-consistent inferences."