Lecture 10 - Philosophy of Science Flashcards
What is relativism and why is it associated with Kuhn?
That you cannot speak of scientific progress because if terms change (and the meaning in theories), these theories are not even about the same thing. In other words, your pov is relative to the paradigm in
How can the pendulum example be used to highlight Kuhn’s points (and also relativism)?
Pendulum’s have existed forever (or at least, the motion of it); however people can look at the same thing (throughout time) and see completely different things/derive different things from it
This also ties into something being unable to be called progress, as they are not comparable
Why can theories in psychology not really be called paradigms?
Because Kuhn means an all-encompassing scheme like Newtonian mechanics - which cannot really be said to be present in psychology
Why does Miriam Solomon believe evidence based medicine as a paradigm? (3)
- It is a social movement (institutions, courses, etc.)
- It is a general philosophy of medicine (defines both questions and evidence)
- It’s driven by successful exemplars (Kuhn = “concrete puzzle solutions”), basically it provides examples that replace explicit rules
What is Feyerabend’s view; epistemological anarchism?
An approach where all scientific knowledge is relative, as are the methods; as such, let go of the rules because scientific progress requires requires “anything goes”
What does Feyerabend’s mean with the tower argument? What is it used as an example against?
The argument against the heliocentric model; that the view cannot be possible as a stone thrown from a tower, lands next to it (which disproves the heliocentric model as the earth must not move)
If Popper’s falsification was strictly followed, the heliocentric model had to be disproven - even though it later turned out there was an explanation for this observation
Fey. also argues that Galileo was so successful because he went against the norms, which he sees as necessary
What does Lakatos with both Popper’s, Kuhn’s and Feyerabend’s views?
Sophisticated falsificationism; Theories should be falsifiable, but direct/strict falsification rarely happens in practice - researchers usually do not give up on their research easily, but will do so when a better theory is presented
This contains both Popper and Kuhn; falsification is there, but it is not descriptive
What are Lakatos’ research programmes?
There is a core of your research program, which is intensively important, this is surrounded by a body of beliefs (auxiliary assumptions).
This hard core cannot be changed (negative heuristic), if evidence against theory > tinkering in the body of beliefs (positive heuristic). If this tinkering does not suffice, the programme will slow down and the researcher might jump ship to another research programme
What is the normative component of Lakatos’ research programmes?
Scientists should stick with progressive ones and abandon degenerative ones
How does modern philosophy of science differ from when it started?
It no longer is concerned with the demarcation of science vs non science, it focuses on specific topics (e.g., inference) + attention for differences between disciplines (=specialized)
What is the main point of the standpoint theory?
Science is subjective and not neutral (biased)
What is the standpoint theory concerned with?
Questions regarding who’s standpoint is science concerned with/who like benefits from it (e.g., who benefit from the science/who bears the cost of science)
What is situated knowledge?
What is possible for your to know is depedent on your social identity (e.g., being a woman)
How did the standpoint change from why it began and where it is now?
It started mostly as a feminist standpoint, challenging the idea of scientific neutrality and how gender affects access to knowledge. It now focus more on interactions between social factors such as gender, race, sexuality and culture
What may be some standpoints we are missing in psychology?
Non Eurocentric standpoints, those with the clinical diagnoses, and many more
What is the idea of value-ladenness?
Knowledge is dependent on moral, political, social and economic evaluations
What is an example of a field (in psych) that considers itself velue free, but actually isn’t? Why?
Psychometrics; what questions are considered fair is dependent, methods (e.g., it focuses almost solely on quantitative research)
What are 5 hidden methodological principles (problems) in psychological science?
- Epistemic Freezing (choose operationalization and do not change - the opposite is epistemic iteration)
- Testing Myopia (Choose hypothesis and test it, do not look for opposing evidence?)
- Data fixation (progress requires new and surprising data)
- Smallism (to explain we need to dive deeper and deeper)
- Mirrorism (Our goal is to develop theories that are true, a mirror to reality)
