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Confirmation holism

Confirmation holism, also known as the Duhem–Quine thesis, is an epistemological doctrine in the philosophy of science holding that no individual scientific hypothesis or statement can be empirically confirmed or disconfirmed in isolation, but rather that evidence pertains to entire systems of interconnected beliefs or theories as a collective whole.^[1]^[2] The thesis originated with French physicist and philosopher Pierre Duhem in his 1914 work The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, where he contended that a physical experiment does not isolate and test a single hypothesis but instead examines it alongside a complex "theoretical scaffolding" of auxiliary assumptions, mathematical frameworks, and background theories.^[1] If an experiment yields unexpected results, the failure implicates the entire group of propositions rather than any one in particular, akin to diagnosing an illness in the human body where symptoms affect the system holistically rather than a single organ.^[1] American philosopher W.V.O. Quine extended and radicalized Duhem's idea in his seminal 1951 essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," applying confirmation holism beyond physics to all empirical knowledge and rejecting the traditional empiricist distinction between analytic (logically true) and synthetic (empirically informed) statements.^[2] Quine famously described the body of scientific knowledge as a "web of belief," where statements confront the "tribunal of sense experience" not individually but corporately, like a field of force whose interior adjusts in response to peripheral conflicts with observation.^[2] He emphasized that "any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system," and conversely, no statement is absolutely immune to revision.^[2] Confirmation holism carries profound implications for scientific methodology and epistemology, undermining the possibility of conclusive falsification of isolated hypotheses—as critiqued in Karl Popper's falsificationism—and contributing to the underdetermination thesis, wherein empirical data can support multiple incompatible theories through suitable adjustments to auxiliary beliefs.^[2] In Bayesian epistemology, the doctrine prompts refinements to probabilistic confirmation models, recognizing that background beliefs mediate how new evidence updates degrees of belief across the entire network rather than incrementally for single propositions.^[3] Despite debates over its scope—whether limited to theoretical physics (per Duhem) or encompassing all cognition (per Quine)—confirmation holism remains a cornerstone of twentieth-century philosophy of science, influencing discussions on theory choice, realism, and the theory-ladenness of observation.^[3]

Introduction

Definition

Confirmation holism is the philosophical position in the philosophy of science asserting that individual hypotheses or statements cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed in isolation by empirical evidence; instead, empirical tests confirm or disconfirm entire theories or interconnected networks of beliefs as wholes.^[4] This core claim emphasizes that no single proposition is directly testable on its own, as observations always depend on a broader system of assumptions and auxiliary hypotheses.^[5] As an instance of epistemological holism, confirmation holism extends this idea to all knowledge claims, maintaining that sensory experiences underdetermine any particular belief unless interpreted within the full web of interconnected statements that constitute one's total body of beliefs.^[3] No belief is tied so immediately to experience that its justification remains independent of the rest of one's beliefs, rendering isolated confirmation impossible.^[3] The term "confirmation holism" derives from debates in analytic philosophy, building on semantic holism—where meanings are interdependent across a language—but specifically targeting the nature of evidential support rather than linguistic meaning alone.^[6] For example, a single observation, such as an anomaly in a planet's orbit, does not test one physical law in isolation but evaluates the entire theoretical framework, including auxiliary assumptions about measurement instruments and background conditions.^[5] This position elaborates the foundational Duhem-Quine thesis regarding the holistic character of empirical testing.^[4]

Historical origins

The philosophical roots of confirmation holism trace back to the early 20th century, particularly through the work of French physicist and philosopher Pierre Duhem. In his 1906 book La théorie physique: son objet et sa structure, Duhem contended that scientific theories in physics cannot be tested individually but must be evaluated as interconnected wholes, incorporating auxiliary hypotheses and background assumptions that render any experiment underdetermining for a specific theory alone.^[7] This perspective challenged the notion of isolated hypothesis testing, emphasizing instead the holistic nature of empirical evaluation in physical theory.^[7] Originally published in French, Duhem's ideas remained somewhat obscure in English-speaking circles until their translation as The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory in 1954.^[7] These concepts were significantly expanded and popularized in analytic philosophy by Willard Van Orman Quine in his seminal 1951 essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." Quine extended Duhem's underdetermination argument beyond physics to encompass all empirical knowledge, arguing that confirmation applies not to isolated statements but to the entire body of scientific beliefs, which face experiential testing as a collective unit.^[8] By rejecting the traditional distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions—one of the "dogmas" of empiricism—Quine underscored the revisability of any part of this holistic system in light of new evidence, thereby cementing confirmation holism as a cornerstone of post-positivist philosophy of science.^[8] Quine's engagement with Duhem's work played a key role in disseminating these French-origin ideas to a broader Anglophone audience.^[8] Confirmation holism also arose as a direct critique of logical positivism, particularly the verificationism advanced by the Vienna Circle in the 1920s and 1930s, which posited that meaningful statements could be verified individually through sensory experience.^[8] Quine's essay targeted this reductionist approach, highlighting its failure to account for the interconnectedness of scientific claims and the impossibility of confirming or refuting sentences in isolation.^[8] This reaction marked a pivotal shift away from the Vienna Circle's emphasis on atomic verification toward a more integrated view of empirical justification. Following Quine's intervention, confirmation holism saw early integrations into philosophy of science during the 1960s and 1970s, notably in debates challenging Karl Popper's falsificationism, which advocated refuting individual hypotheses through decisive experiments.^[9] Philosophers drew on holistic underdetermination to argue that apparent falsifications always involve adjustable auxiliary elements, complicating Popper's strict demarcation of science via refutability.^[9] These developments influenced ongoing discussions in scientific methodology, embedding holism within broader critiques of empiricist orthodoxy.^[9]

Theoretical foundations

Duhem-Quine thesis

The Duhem-Quine thesis asserts that scientific hypotheses cannot be tested in isolation but only as part of a larger system of auxiliary assumptions and background knowledge.^[10] In its standard formulation, a hypothesis H under test is conjoined with a set of auxiliary assumptions A_1, A_2, \dots, A_n—such as theoretical principles, measurement techniques, and initial conditions—to derive predictions about observable evidence E. Thus, evidence E (or its absence \neg E) confirms or disconfirms the entire conjunction (H \land A_1 \land \dots \land A_n), rather than H alone.^[11] This means that any empirical test involves an interconnected web of propositions, where the implications of evidence are distributed across the system. The logical structure of the thesis highlights the impossibility of isolating a single hypothesis for definitive confirmation or refutation. If the conjunction (H \land A) predicts \neg E, but E is observed, then the inconsistency implies that either H is false or at least one A_i is false; however, no experiment can pinpoint which component is at fault without further assumptions.^[12] Pierre Duhem originally developed this idea in the context of physical theories, arguing that experiments in physics rely on a complex framework of auxiliary hypotheses, including the reliability of instruments and conventional background laws that introduce elements of arbitrariness.^[11] For Duhem, the role of these auxiliaries underscores that physical theory aims at systematic representation rather than isolated causal explanations, as adjustments to conventional elements can always preserve the core hypothesis in the face of discrepant data.^[10] Willard Van Orman Quine extended Duhem's insights beyond physical theories to all empirical statements, including even observation sentences, thereby rejecting the reductionist dogma that individual statements can be verified against sense data in isolation.^[12] Quine's broader holism posits that the entire body of scientific knowledge confronts experience as a cohesive unit, allowing for flexible revisions anywhere in the system to accommodate new evidence. He famously articulated this view by stating, "Our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a body."^[12] This extension transforms the thesis into a foundational challenge to empiricist reductionism, with underdetermination of theory by data emerging as one key consequence.^[5]

Underdetermination of theory by data

Underdetermination of theory by data refers to the philosophical problem in which empirical evidence is insufficient to uniquely determine a single scientific theory, as multiple rival theories can be compatible with the same body of data through adjustments to auxiliary hypotheses or background assumptions.^[13] This arises because, under confirmation holism, observations do not test isolated hypotheses but entire theoretical frameworks, allowing for the construction of empirically equivalent alternatives that fit the evidence equally well.^[13] The Duhem-Quine thesis serves as the logical enabler of this underdetermination by emphasizing the holistic nature of empirical testing.^[13] A classic historical example is the discovery of Neptune in 1846, which addressed anomalies in Uranus's orbit without falsifying Newtonian mechanics. Astronomers Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams predicted Neptune's existence as an auxiliary hypothesis to preserve the Newtonian framework, demonstrating how the core theory could be maintained holistically by modifying peripheral elements rather than rejecting the entire system.^[13] Similarly, the anomalous precession of Mercury's perihelion, observed in the 19th century, posed a challenge to Newtonian gravity that was not resolved by isolated adjustments but required a wholesale revision through Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity in 1915, which reconfigured the gravitational framework to accommodate the data.^[13] These cases illustrate how underdetermination manifests in practice, where evidence prompts holistic reevaluation rather than decisive refutation of individual components. Philosophically, underdetermination implies the theory-ladenness of observations, meaning that what counts as "data" is not neutral but shaped by prior theoretical commitments, leaving no archimedean point from which to arbitrate impartially between competing theories.^[13] This challenges the notion of objective empirical adjudication, as rival theories can always be engineered to align with the same observations by tweaking auxiliaries. Underdetermination operates on two scopes: local, concerning the current available data, which may transiently allow multiple fits; and global, encompassing all possible future evidence, which confirmation holism posits as perpetually permitting empirically equivalent rivals.^[13] The holistic perspective particularly underscores the global form, suggesting that no conceivable evidence can conclusively eliminate all alternatives.^[13]

Variants of holism

Total confirmation holism

Total confirmation holism represents the radical interpretation of confirmation holism, positing that evidential support or refutation applies to entire theoretical systems or the whole of science, rather than to isolated hypotheses or statements. Willard Van Orman Quine articulated this view, arguing that "our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body."^[8] In this framework, no part of a theory can be tested in meaningful isolation because empirical significance emerges only from the collective structure of beliefs, rendering individual confirmation impossible.^[14] Quine's position extends beyond empirical hypotheses to encompass logic, mathematics, and language as interconnected elements within this holistic system.^[14] This total approach has profound implications for epistemology, rejecting foundationalism in favor of a coherentist model where beliefs form a "web of belief." In Quine's metaphor, knowledge constitutes an interconnected network, with central tenets like logic and mathematics more resistant to revision due to their pervasive role, but no element entirely immune to adjustment when confronting anomalous data.^[14] Peripheral beliefs may be altered to preserve the core, allowing the system to adapt holistically without foundational anchors. For instance, in response to discrepant evidence, one might revise principles of logic or mathematics alongside empirical claims, as all components are interdependent within the web.^[14] Quine elaborated this holism in the theory of meaning as tied to confirmation in his 1960 work Word and Object, emphasizing how linguistic and scientific understanding derives from the totality of the system rather than atomic units.^[14] The strengths of total confirmation holism lie in its ability to explain scientific revolutions as wholesale paradigm shifts, where entire frameworks are reconfigured rather than piecemeal adjustments. This aligns with Thomas Kuhn's analysis of scientific change, where revolutions involve holistic transformations in disciplinary matrices, influenced by holist ideas like Quine's.^[15] Unlike partial confirmation holism, which permits targeted testing of theory clusters, total holism underscores the uncompromising interdependence of all knowledge claims.^[16]

Partial confirmation holism

Partial confirmation holism represents a moderated form of confirmation holism, positing that while theories are tested as wholes involving auxiliary assumptions, confirmation can nonetheless target specific hypotheses or sub-parts of a theory through strategies such as ceteris paribus clauses or modular testing approaches that isolate components for evaluation. This view tempers the extreme of total confirmation holism by permitting delimited confirmation without requiring the revision or affirmation of an entire theoretical network. Key proponents of partial confirmation holism include Adolf Grünbaum, who in the 1960s argued for the partial isolability of hypotheses through adjustments to auxiliary conditions, enabling targeted falsification or confirmation despite holistic dependencies.^[17] Ken Gemes advanced this perspective within hypothetico-deductivism, incorporating domain-specific holism that allows confirmation to focus on particular theoretical domains rather than the full system.^[18] Elliott Sober further developed the idea through contrastive confirmation, where evidence confirms one hypothesis relative to alternatives, facilitating localized assessment amid broader theoretical entanglements.^[19] A representative example occurs in physics, where a specific equation, such as one describing particle interactions, can be tested while holding background theories like quantum field theory fixed, thereby confirming or challenging that equation without necessitating total theoretical overhaul. This approach offers advantages over total holism by avoiding absurd implications, such as distant evidence confirming unrelated claims like the composition of the moon.^[19] Ioannis Votsis's work emphasizes inter-theory relations to achieve partial objectivity in confirmation, arguing that objective assessment is possible without invoking full holism, as evidential support can be evaluated across theory boundaries in a constrained manner.^[20]

Implications and applications

In scientific methodology

In scientific methodology, confirmation holism profoundly influences hypothesis testing by emphasizing that experiments do not isolate individual hypotheses but rather probe the conjunction of a target hypothesis with a web of auxiliary assumptions, such as background theories, measurement protocols, and instrumental calibrations.^[21] To approximate isolation, scientists employ controls and ceteris paribus conditions, yet these measures acknowledge the inherent interdependence, as any experimental outcome potentially implicates multiple components of the theoretical framework rather than a single element. This approach shifts the focus from decisive confirmations or refutations to incremental adjustments across the entire system, ensuring that evidence is evaluated within its broader context.^[22] Due to the underdetermination arising from holism, theory choice in science relies on pragmatic criteria beyond empirical fit alone, including simplicity, explanatory coherence, predictive novelty, and fruitfulness, as articulated in Imre Lakatos's framework of research programmes.^[23] In this view, scientists appraise competing theories not in isolation but as parts of progressive or degenerating programmes, where a hard core of central tenets is protected by a belt of auxiliary hypotheses, and choice favors programmes that generate excess empirical content over time.^[24] These criteria help resolve the multiplicity of theories compatible with the same data, guiding decisions toward frameworks that unify diverse observations while maintaining internal consistency.^[25] Confirmation holism manifests in practical applications across fields, notably in particle physics, where tests of the Standard Model involve holistic parameter fitting that simultaneously adjusts multiple coupled variables—such as coupling constants and particle masses—against a comprehensive dataset from accelerators like the LHC, rather than verifying isolated predictions.^[26] Historically, the adoption of quantum mechanics in the 1920s and 1930s exemplified this, as physicists like Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg selected the Copenhagen interpretation not through isolated confirmations but via its overall coherence in resolving anomalies in atomic spectra and blackbody radiation, integrating auxiliary assumptions about measurement and complementarity into a unified framework.^[27] Such cases illustrate how holism facilitates the acceptance of revolutionary theories by evaluating their systemic explanatory power. Methodological holism, as an extension of confirmation holism, promotes interdisciplinary integration in scientific practice by treating evidence from one domain as supportive of broader theoretical structures, encouraging collaborations that draw on diverse fields to refine holistic models. Confirmation holism also shapes Bayesian approaches to scientific inference, where priors are constructed to reflect interconnected webs of background knowledge rather than isolated propositions, allowing posterior probabilities to update holistically across the belief network in response to new evidence.^[3] This integration accommodates the Duhem-Quine insight by distributing confirmatory weight over auxiliary assumptions, enhancing the flexibility of probabilistic reasoning in complex empirical settings.^[28]

Challenges to falsificationism

Karl Popper, in his seminal work The Logic of Scientific Discovery (originally published in German in 1934), proposed falsifiability as the demarcation criterion for scientific theories, asserting that a theory must be capable of being refuted by a single observation or experiment, while confirmation plays only a secondary role in scientific progress.^[29] Popper emphasized that genuine scientific hypotheses risk falsification through bold predictions, contrasting this with non-scientific claims like those in psychoanalysis, which he argued could evade refutation.^[30] Confirmation holism poses a fundamental challenge to this view by invoking the Duhem-Quine thesis, which holds that no hypothesis can be tested or falsified in isolation; instead, empirical tests always involve a conjunction of the hypothesis with auxiliary assumptions, background theories, and methodological rules.^[5] Consequently, an apparent falsification does not conclusively refute the core theory, as scientists can adjust the auxiliary components—such as introducing ad hoc hypotheses—to preserve the theory, rendering strict Popperian falsification practically impossible.^[31] Willard Van Orman Quine's formulation of holism in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) directly undermines Popper's "methodological individualism" in testing, arguing that scientific statements face the "tribunal of experience" as a holistic "corporate body," where revisions occur across the entire system rather than targeting isolated elements.^[32] A classic example illustrates this tension: the testing of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Prior to relativity, the anomalous precession of Mercury's orbit was addressed through the ad hoc hypothesis of an undetected planet (Vulcan), which failed empirical verification but allowed Newtonian mechanics to persist.^[33] Einstein's theory, however, predicted the anomaly precisely without such auxiliaries, yet even its confirmation—such as the 1919 Eddington eclipse expedition bending starlight—relied on a web of auxiliary assumptions about instruments and atmospheric conditions, which could have been blamed for discrepancies rather than falsifying the theory outright.^[30] This contrasts with naive Popperian expectations of decisive refutation, highlighting how holistic frameworks enable adjustments that shield theories from immediate falsification. These challenges shift the emphasis in scientific methodology from strict falsification to corroboration through repeated, risky tests within a broader theoretical network, influencing subsequent critiques by Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend.^[34] Lakatos developed the concept of "research programmes" with a "protective belt" of auxiliaries to explain why theories endure anomalies, while Feyerabend rejected falsificationism as an inadequate description of historical scientific practice, advocating methodological pluralism.^[30] Overall, confirmation holism reveals falsificationism's limitations in capturing the interconnected nature of scientific inference.^[29]

Criticisms and debates

Arguments against total holism

One prominent objection to total confirmation holism is the absurdity it generates regarding the scope of evidential support. According to this critique, if evidence confirms an entire theory or belief system holistically, then it would also confirm any arbitrary conjunction of that theory with unrelated or even trivial statements, such as pairing a confirmed physical law with an ethical claim or the assertion that the moon is made of green cheese. This leads to the counterintuitive result that any evidence, no matter how narrowly targeted, would bolster unrelated propositions simply because they are logically conjoined to the confirmed whole, rendering the notion of specific confirmation meaningless.^[35] Bayesian approaches to confirmation offer another line of argument against the necessity of total holism by enabling the probabilistic isolation of individual hypotheses. Proponents like Colin Howson and Peter Urbach contend that through the use of likelihood functions and prior probabilities, Bayes' theorem allows evidence to differentially confirm or disconfirm specific components of a theory without requiring the revision or confirmation of the entire belief system. For instance, background assumptions can be assigned high priors, effectively shielding them from revision while allowing targeted evidence to bear on the hypothesis of interest, thus mitigating the Duhem-Quine problem without endorsing total interconnectedness.^[36] Empirical practices in science provide counterexamples to total holism by demonstrating successful targeted tests of specific predictions. The 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN's Large Hadron Collider exemplifies this, where experimental data from proton collisions were used to confirm the particle's existence and properties as predicted by the Standard Model's electroweak sector, without necessitating wholesale revision of unrelated theoretical components. Philosophers analyzing this case argue that such "crucial tests" isolate and corroborate individual posits through model selection and statistical methods, suggesting a degree of modularity in scientific confirmation; however, proponents of holism maintain that even these tests depend on auxiliary assumptions about the experimental apparatus and background theories, thus not fully contradicting total holism. Critics aligned with scientific realism further object that total holism exacerbates underdetermination, rendering theoretical truth unattainable and thus incompatible with the realist commitment to the approximate truth of successful scientific theories. By positing that evidence underdetermines entire theory networks indefinitely, holism implies perpetual empirical equivalence among rival theories, which undermines the inference to unobservables and the explanatory success attributed to realism— for if confirmation is inescapably holistic, no theory can be uniquely favored as true despite predictive accuracy.^[5] Adolf Grünbaum's analysis in his 1960 paper "The Duhemian Argument" addresses Duhem's problem directly, arguing that it can be resolved through partial testing methods rather than requiring total holism. Grünbaum maintains that hypotheses can be falsified or confirmed in isolation by auxiliary assumptions that are themselves empirically grounded or independently corroborated, using examples from geometry and chronometry to illustrate how targeted experiments avoid the need for holistic revision. This partial approach, he claims, preserves the rationality of scientific inference without the overreach of total interconnectedness.^[37] As an alternative to total holism, partial confirmation holism has been proposed to accommodate these objections by allowing evidence to support theory components selectively.

Responses and developments

Defenses of confirmation holism emphasize its pragmatic utility in scientific practice. Willard Van Orman Quine portrayed knowledge as a "web of belief," where empirical challenges prompt revisions primarily at the periphery—such as auxiliary assumptions or observational reports—while core elements like logical principles remain more resistant to change, reflecting a pragmatic strategy to minimize systemic disruption.^[14] This approach counters criticisms of holism's radical implications by highlighting how scientists selectively adjust less central components to preserve theoretical coherence.^[14] Elliott Sober advanced a holistic yet contrastive framework for confirmation, arguing that evidence supports hypotheses not in isolation but relative to alternatives through likelihood comparisons, often termed "likely stories."^[38] In this view, probabilistic evidence confirms a theory holistically by rendering it more probable than rivals, thereby addressing concerns about underdetermination while maintaining the interconnected nature of confirmation.^[38] Refinements to partial confirmation holism have sought greater objectivity in testing. Ioannis Votsis, from 2011 onward, advocated for partial holism wherein theories, augmented by background auxiliaries, enable direct empirical predictions and explanations, allowing for objective partial tests despite theoretical dependencies.^[39] Votsis emphasized "background theory neutrality" by minimizing reliance on contentious auxiliaries, facilitating evidential assessments that approximate isolation without full holism.^[39] This perspective integrates with structural realism, where confirmation holistically validates relational structures across theory changes, such as the preservation of wave equations from Fresnel's optics to Maxwell's electromagnetism, rather than isolated entities.^[40] In the 2020s, confirmation holism has found applications in big data and AI-driven science, where holistic modeling via machine learning ensembles embodies interconnected "confirmation webs."^[41] These ensembles aggregate multiple models to enhance reliability across metrics like accuracy and robustness, countering underdetermination in high-dimensional data by confirming predictions through collective evidential support rather than single algorithms.^[41] Responses to charges of absurdity in total holism invoke domain-specific limitations and evidential relevance. Karel Gemes, in the 1990s, argued that holism operates within relevant conceptual domains, preventing the confirmation of unrelated claims—such as quantum mechanics entailing ethical propositions—by restricting evidential links to pertinent auxiliary structures.^[42] This scoped holism preserves the thesis's coherence without implying universal interconnectedness. Recent 2020s debates have linked confirmation holism to the philosophy of AI, particularly questioning underdetermination in neural network training, where multiple architectures fit training data equally well, echoing holistic challenges to unique confirmation.^[43] Richard Rescorla's analyses highlight how such underdetermination in deep learning parallels epistemic holism, urging representational theories to account for confirmatory indeterminacy in AI systems.^[43]

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