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BobTheBob comments on 'Is' and 'Ought' and Rationality - Less Wrong
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The differences you've identified amount to (A) both explanations can be reconciled equally well with all possible facts, and (B) all facts can anyway be explained without the theoretical posits. But (B) doesn't seem in-principle different from any other scientific theoretical apparatus. Simply operationalize it thoroughly and say "shut up and calculate!"
So that leaves (A). I'll admit that this makes a big difference, but it also seems a very tall order. The idea that any given hypothesized set of beliefs and desires is compatible with all possible facts, is not very plausible on its face. Please provide links to the aforementioned arguments to that effect, in the literature.
I didn't mean to say this, if I did. The thesis is that there are indefinitely many sets of beliefs and desires compatible with all possible behavioural and other physical facts. And I do admit it seems a tall order. But then again, so does straight-forward scientific underdetermination, it seems to me. Just to be clear, my personal preoccupation is the prescriptive or normative nature of oughts and hence wants and beliefs, which I think is a different problem than the underdetermination problem.
The canonical statement comes in Chapter 2 of W.V.O. Quine's Word and Object. Quine focusses on linguistic behaviour, and on the conclusion that there is no unique correct translation manual for interpreting one person's utterances in the idiolect of another (even if they both speak, say, English). The claims about beliefs are a corrollary. Donald Davidson takes up these ideas and relates them specifically to agents' beliefs in a number of places, notably his papers 'Radical Interpretation', 'Belief and the Basis of Meaning', and 'Thought and Talk', all reprinted in his Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Hilary Putnam, in his paper 'Models and Reality' (reprinted in his Realism and Reason ), tried to give heft to what (I understand) comes down to Quine's idea by arguing it to be a consequence of the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem of mathematical logic.
Timothy Bays has a reply to Putnam's alleged proof sufficient to render the latter indecisive, as far as I can see. The set theory is a challenge for me, though.
As for Quine, on the one hand I think he underestimates the kinds of evidence that can bear, and he understates the force of simplicity considerations ("undetached rabbit-parts" could only be loved by a philosopher). But on the other hand, and perhaps more important, he seems right to downplay any remaining "difference" of alternative translations. It's not clear that the choice between workable alternatives is a problem.
Thanks for the link to the paper by Timothy Bays. It looks like a worthwhile -if rather challenging- read.
I have to acknowledge there's lots to be said in response to Quine and Putnam. I could try to take on the task of defending them, but I suspect your ability to come up with objections would well outpace my ability to come up with responses. People get fed up with philosophers' extravagant thought experiments, I know. I guess Quine's implicit challenge with his "undetached rabbit parts" and so on is to come up with a clear (and, of course, naturalistic) criterion which would show the translation to be wrong. Simplicity considerations, as you suggest, may do it, but I'm not so sure.