Demarcation Flashcards
What is science?
Science is an umbrella-term covering the plurality of all and only scientific praxes
Five interconnected items of a praxis
- members
- aims
- means to reach aims
- criteria to judge whether aims are reached
- norms & rules for the behavior of the members
necessary conditions for praxis
- educational system
- money
scientific praxis
- people: scientists
- aims: produce scientific knowledge
- means: acting in accordance to some scientific method
- criterion: when one has collected a large and various body of evidence that confirms a hypothesis, model or theory, then it is accepted and obtains the seal scientific knowledge.
- values: CUDOS (communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, originality, skepticism)
skopology
discourse on aims
Aristotelian aims
- finding out the truth and nothing but the truth about reality
- discovering the laws of nature
- understanding reality
& more
(but, scientific aims)
Baconian aims
- To secure & enhance the prosperity and the welfare of people
- to contribute to the quality of life, to ‘the good life’, to Aristotelian eudaimonia
- Wisdom, i.e. the capacity to realize what is of value for us and securing it
(capitalist aims)
idealists
sharp distinction. between unknowable nouminal reality (reality as-it-is-in-and-of-itself) and the knowable phenomenological world, what results after nominal reality has passed the sensory organs and conceptual apparatus of the observing and understanding human subject.
metaphysical realists
no distinction between different worlds, reality is knowable by us.
Axiology
philosophical discourse on values
CUDOS
- communalism
- universalism
- disinterestedness
- originality
- skepticism
Communalism
transparency, no private intellectual property
Universalism
Impersonal criteria for judgement
Disinterestedness
no financial interests
Originality
extending current scientific knowledge
Skepticism
every idea must be criticized & tested severely
DECAY (MacFarlane)
replacing CUDOS in modern science.
1. Differentialism
2. Egoism
3. Capitalism
4. AdvocacY
Differentialism
Claims influenced by non-epistemic factors, like political, moral, economic & cultural factors
Egoism
Personal achievements
Capitalism
Profiting, patents
Advocacy
commitment to political/ cultural agenda
Hominum-objects
objects produced by humans
subcategories hominum-objects
- artefacts: concrete objects produced by engineers, and by artisans and craftsmen
- works of arts: concrete objects produced by artists
- waste: products of processes in the human body & by-products of actions performed by humans
Dual nature of artefacts
characterisation of an artefact needs both a description of the material object and a description of the function(s) it can perform
functions of artefacts
- proper functions: functions intended by the maker
- accidental functions: not intended, but also possible functions
Only concrete objects with proper functions can malfunction
Difference between scientific and technological praxis
- technological praxes only have external, Baconian aims –> for the sake of consumers’ needs or desires.
- Science is concerned with things that do exist, technology with not-yet existing things
- Science: mostly knowledge-that, and knowledge involved in technology: knowledge-how
Step-wise engineering processes
- specific needs and desires of the consumer are described
- functional requirements are determined
- specifications of the design (leads to blueprint)
- construction of a prototype of the artefact
- manufacturing the artefact
Latour & Woolgar
social construction of scientific facts
Process of scientific facts being constructed:
- p starts as a speculation
- p assumes various modalities
- p becomes the object of active empirical inquiry and invites judgement
- p gets confirmed, and is firmly fitted in scientific knowledge
- p is taken for granted, its history 1-4 is forgotten and stripped away; p has become a of morsel of scientific knowledge, a scientific fact
most drop out at any previous levels.
Social constructionism
thesis that scientific facts are not discovered, but constructed in a collective social process.
