Evolution of Quine ’s Thinking on the Thesis of Underdetermination and Scott Soames ’s Accusation of Paradoxicality

Quine’s thesis of underdetermination plays a central role in his philosophy of language and philosophy of science. As such it has generated a lot of philosophical debate and come to exert far-reaching influence on contemporary philosophical attitudes toward language and science directly or indirectly. This essay traces the evolution of Quine’s thinking on the thesis of underdetermination over a period of about 2 decades, in order to undermine Scott Soames’s scathing attack that Quine’s thesis of underdetermination leads to a contradiction when viewed through and within Quinian holistic verificationism. In what follows I will first briefly state Soames’s criticism of the underdetermination thesis and then detail the evolution of Quine’s thinking on the subject. I distinguish underdetermination as a general theoretical claim from underdetermination as a claim about our practical limitations as scientists and point out that it is the latter view that is Quine’s later position, although his own rejection of the thesis as a general theoretical claim is based on a misinterpretation