Giere Flashcards
What’s objective Realism? Who are big representatives? What is the objection?
It is the idea that the truths to be discovered take the form of laws so that they will form a permanent part of human knowledge.
- Weinberg
- Bas van Fraassen
Giere: strongest claims a scientist can make are of a qualified, conditional form (e.g. According to this highly confirmed theory (or reliable instrument), the world seems to be roughly such and such)
What’s constructivism? Who are big representatives?
What is the objection?
It is the acknowledgment that a large part of our social world is the product of human social interaction over time. (E.g The category of “planet” with our modern meaning did not exist prior to the seventeenth century, although planets did exist.)
- Berger
- Luckemann
moderate constructivism: Do their constructions about the nature of scientific claims not also apply to the claims of constructivists themselves? (the Reflexive question)
What’s the Contigency thesis?
The insisting that objects are contructed in the sense of being constitued through the use of various recording devices.
-> New way of looking (Pickering): the product that claims to be knowledge is determined in part by the process of research
What’s Naturalism? What are some misunderstandings?
It’s the rejection of appeals to anything supernatural
(= Giere’s general framework wherein he will be working)
Misunderstandings:
- How can one determine the boundary of the natural beyond which lies the supernatural?
- > Take naturalism as a methodolical stance and not as a doctrine
- It is often claimed that naturalism necessarily leaves out the normative dimensions of science (refer to a scientific work as good, bad, better or worse).
- > The Pragmatist stance in this regard is to allow any particular method to be questioned, but not all methods at once
What’s perspectivism? How does Giere talk about perspectivism?
It’s the idea of viewing objects or scenes from different places, thus producing different visual perspectives on said objects or scenes. Not to be confused with relativism.
Giere: perspectivism as alternate to objectivist realism and social constructivism
- human perspective is typically colored and colors aren’t objective in the stronger sense of objectivist realism remains to be seen.
- all theoretical claims remain perspectival in that they only to aspects of the world and never with complete percision.
- scientific instruments and theories are human creations
How did objective realism before 1960’s evolve to constructivists and Perspectivists after the 1960’s?
Because of the attention to the process of doing science. Most scientists and philosophers of science still maintain an objectivist view of science, many historians and sociologists of science maintain aa form of constructivism.
Statements of author: some degree of contingency is always present in science, so constructivists are at least partly right. Perspectival realism is as much realism as science can provide.
How does the practice of representing look like?
S uses X to represen W for purpose P
W = aspect of the world
X = method (e.g. equations, theories, photographs)
What’s a theory? Which forms of theories are popular?
A theory is a traditional medium of scientific representation. Some forms:
- principles: (Author: we have to find something that they describe. Best candidate is abstract objects)
- models: elements of the model identify with features of the real world. Two movements from principle to models: identification and interpretation
- generalizations: there are always known restrictions and exceptions -> need to understand them as part of the characterization of an abstract to be true
- similarities = way to use models, you cannot say true or false but only say ‘true of’ or ‘false of’ a particular model
- models of data: it’s what models are compared to
e. g. y=ax is model and a=0 derived from x=0 and y=0 is model of data. It is NOT a model-world comparison.
What are laws of nature?
Notion of Nature was imported into discourse about science from Christian theology, both directly and indirectly through mathematics. They were understood as God’s laws for nature.
Giere regards some statements called laws as being principles that define highly abstract models/
When does a model fits its intended object according to Giere?
The question whether a model fits its intended object becomes answerable only once the specific features of the model being compared with something in the world are identified.
How does a map reflect a perpective?
- maps are not linguistic entities
- maps are partial
- maps are of limited accuracy regarding included features.
- maps are interest relative
- maps are depended on conventions for interpretation
(e. g. in Europe: Europe in centre of world map).
What can we learn from cartography?
- feature selection
- flattening the earth
- > equal distances, areas, shapes
- smoothing (esp. on larger scale)
Can you name some similarities and differences between paradigms and perspectives?
similarities:
- claims about truth of scientific statements or the fit of models to the world are made within paradigms and perspectives
- paradigms and perspectives become dysfunctional, failing to generate new verified findings or modals fitting new phenomena, Eventually they may be displaced by new paradigms or perspectives that provide resources for new research leading to new verified claims or successful models.
differences:
- Kuhn’s use of the term paradigm was notoriously ambiguous
- Kuhn’s paradigms are incommensurable, while there are no problems of linguistic incommensurability for perspectives.
What are the main differences between objectivist and perspectival approaches?
objectivist: kinds -> laws -> theories (assumption according to Giere)
perspectivist: theories + laws -> kinds (mechanical system)
How does scientist go about justifying their claims as to the relative fit of specific models to aspects of the world?
Task is to describe how these methods work and to explain why they are thought to be generally effective
- only specific models can be empirically tested by bringing together two perspectives, one observational and one theoretical.
- because scientific conclusions are always relative to theoretical and instrumental perspectives, standard experimental tests are effective.
- overlapping theoretical perspectives lead to a more fundamental constant of nature.
