Science philosohpy 2 Flashcards

Question

The four most important figures championing the use of _reason_ in philosophy

Answer 1

1) Parmenides 2) Plato 3) Galileo Galilei 4) Rene Descartes

Answer 2

1) Heraclitus 2) Aristotle 3) Francis Bacon

Answer 3

quote by Isaac Newton; highlights the social structure of science

Answer 4

The idea that all knowledge comes from sense experience; Challenging rationalism; Three big figures: Bishop George Berkley, David Hume, **John Locke** (the father of empiricism)

Answer 5

Father of empiricism; Actively challenged metaphysical views and "innate ideas"

Answer 6

the philosophical study knowledge

Answer 7

"blak slate" The idea that we are born with an empty mind; Proposed by Locke

Answer 8

The problem born from Empiricism concerned with that because all we experience is sensations, we don't know anything about the real world

Answer 9

Philosophy of science that dominated the early 20th C, after WWI

Answer 10

Concepts developed by logical positivism; Analytic propositions: Statements that are logically true Synthetic propositions: Statements that are true because they describe the way something works in reality

Answer 11

Anything that cannot be verified is meaningless; Debunks external work skepticism

Answer 12

How can one verify the verificability theory of meaning?

Answer 13

Wrote "two dogmas of empiricism"; Claimed that ideas precede testing anything

Answer 14

Contender view for empiricism and positivism; things exist regardless of our observations

Answer 15

forming general theories from specific observations; its conclusions are likely

Answer 16

forming specific conclusions from general premises; its conclusions are true

Answer 17

Proposed by Hume (one of the main empiricists); Points out that we can never see a law, only things that obey a law. "The future is under no obligation to mimic the past" Example: Russel's chicken. A chicken gets fed by a farmer day after day. Is that a law of nature?

Answer 18

A scientific hypotesis is confirmed when its logical consequences turn out to be true

Answer 19

"All ravens are black"; Someone finds a yellow bird and it's a chickadee. This indirectly counts as evidence for the first statement to some degree. Generalisations need to take theory into account in order to make sense; This theory needs to work holistically

Answer 20

Data can support diffferent, sometimes, mutually exclusive theories Grue - blue + green; The strength of an argument depends on the language used to state the argument; The same principle applies for being able to fit more than one model to one dataset

Answer 21

Popper (Austrian-British philosopher) claims science is not actually based on induction, but deduction. He championed deduction and disregarded the value of induction.

Answer 22

Popper says we see patterns because we expect patterns; In later observations the pattern can be refuted nonetheless, which is the nature of science

Answer 23

Popper says hypotheses come before observation, a "protohypothesis" example: Say to someone "observe" without saying what to observe

Answer 24

Our protensity to look for regularities breeds dogmatic thinking; This needs to be abandoned and a critical thinking attitude must be adopted; Dogmatic thinking will find a way to confirm a theory; It's important to be open to challenging one one's theories

Answer 25

To be scientific, a theory has to be incompatible with certain possible results of observation (i.e., testable and falsifiable) Note that despite Popper being right, falsifiability is not enough to consider a theory scientific.

Answer 26

Some scientific ideas are not falsifiable in a deductive way (e.g., evolution) A theory that has been tested 100 times and not falsified is just as unfalsidied as a theory that has never been tested, but the former is at least *likely*.

Answer 27

It's mostly inductive. Its results are most often likely instead of absolute

Answer 28

Most of the time it's inductive; This is because scientific results are *likey* and never *absolute*.

Answer 29

Kuhn made this distinction. Most science is problem-solving and uneventful, happening in a set of presuppositions and assumptions. This framework is called a *paradigm*.

Answer 30

Kuhn said that anomalies are not counter-examples to a theory. Anomalies exist everyhere and are of a statistical nature. On rare occassions, the anomalies won't have a good explanaition. As anomalies accumulate, they can lead to a paradigm shift.

Answer 31

Term coined by Kuhn, which refers to the scientific proces that results from accumulation of anomalies that can't be explained, leading to a paradigm shift; The Michelson-Morely experiment was an anomaly in the paradimg of light being trasnported by ether. It was never explained until Eintein's theory of relativity. The whole process involved normal science, anomalies, crisis science and finaly led to a *paradigm shift*.

Answer 32

The Michelson-Morely experiment was an anomaly in the paradimg of light being trasnported by ether. It was never explained until Eintein's theory of relativity. The whole process involved normal science, anomalies,

Answer 33

Contrary to the notion of scientific knowledge accumulating in a linear way, it is full of paradigm shifts; This was pointed out by Kuhn

Answer 34

Popper criticized working inside a paradigmatic framework, while Kuhn championed it. Kuhn argued that in order to do science, working within a paradigm based on cooperation and consensus is necessary (although one has to be open to change) to achieve progress. I don't need to spend time trying to disproof that beetles are insects.

Answer 35

He said different paradigms are incommensurable (apples and oranges) and no data can decide between paradigms because data itself if collected under a paradigm (ladeness of observation)

Answer 36

Before making an observation we have a prior theoretical framework of what we're testing, thus, that framework is part of the observation; More simply put: observations themselves are affected by a particular theoretical framework. I think of Boyd's photo of wasps that had different sizes: I said it could be different species (maybe hyperparasitoids); Kyle said maybe they were ants and they were drones and workers

Answer 37

Kuhn proposed 5 values for measuring the quality of a theory 1) accuracy (predictions matching observations) 2) consistency (within itself and other theories) 3) scope (applies for future data) 4) simplicity 5) fruitfulness (warrant future research) Note these values are not easily measured in reality, and their weighing may not be straightforward

Answer 38

The merits of defeated theory are not acknowledged

Answer 39

Kuhn said that there is not one single scientific method, and that's a good thing because it allows for creativity

Answer 40

Hungarian philosopher that championed the readoption of reason in science

Answer 41

Coencept proposed by Lakatos; research programs are similar to Kuhn's paradigms, but they can coexist within a discipline instead of being mutually-exclusive; research programs consist of a *hard core* (i.e., essential aspects) and a *protective belt* (i.e., branching concepts); The core is fixed, but the protective belt is flexible

Answer 42

In a good, progressive, research program, anomalies should increase its predictive power in an "updated version". A degenerating research science weakens with anomalies.

Answer 43

Lakatos acknowledged that theories have anomalies

Answer 44

A concept developed by John Platt (1964) to describe an accumulative method of inductive inference. According to Platt it consists of 4 steps: 1) Developing **alternative hypotheses** 2) Devising an experiment with **alternative possible outcomes** 3) Carrying out a **clean experiment** 4) Repeat, making **sequential hypotheses** Platt describes it as climing a tree from branch to branch (i.e., "inductive tree") According to plat, this is the main reason why molecular biology advances so fast

Answer 45

republic of science (i.e., a community of independent tinkers cooperating) is analogous to a master-trainer system that maintains scientific standard in the criteria of: plausibility, scientific value, originality

Answer 46

a systematic statement of principles involved in a system

Answer 47

a proposed, unproved theory potentially explaining a system

Answer 48

a generalized representation of a system; a more specific version of a hypothesis