Philosophy of Science & Methodology - Lecture 1: Science between scientism and scepticism 1. - Studeersnel (2024)

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Universiteit van Amsterdam

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Lecture 1: Science between scientism and scepticism 1. Clashing views on science - Scientism: ● Science is vastly superior to all other attempts at securing knowledge: its laws provide certainty ● Modernism: modern thinking, rational reasoning, think for yourself - Scepticism: ● Science does not give certainty, it is equal to other forms of knowledge: Science is faith ● Crooked mirror: our mind cannot perfectly capture reality but is rather a crooked mirror full of superstition and imposture ● Anything goes: No rules to determine which one is absolutely correct, anything goes ● Post-modernism: pluralistic thinking, relativism (diversity of human experience) ● Denialism: Denying scientific facts and presenting their own alternative facts

Lecture 2: Rationalism and Empiricism in Antiquity & A New Philosophy of Science 1. Rationalism - What is knowledge? ● Correspondence theory of truth: to possibly constitute knowledge, the belief must at least be true ● In Plato’s Theaetetus: Knowledge = True judgment with an account ● Now: justified true belief - Plato’s rationalism: ● True knowledge about reality derives from the use of reasoning capacities ● Using intellect and reasoning to remember the eternal Forms (learning-by-recollection = anamnesis) ● Two worlds: Eternal World of the Forms (reality) and the Natural world (appearance, constantly changing) we live in - Allegory of the Cave - Socratic Method (to reach the memories of knowledge), three stages: 1. Anamnesis: recollect from the World of Forms 2. Hermeneutics: Interpretation of your recollection 3. Intellectual midwifery: helping to give birth to knowledge - Metaphysics (beyond the physical): the study of what is beyond nature, or the first causes of things (Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the world made of?) - Ontology: the study of being (of metaphysical questions), about unobservable things - Epistemology = what we know of the world: the study of knowledge - Nativism = human is born with innate ideas 2. Empiricism - Sensory experience is the key to knowledge - There is only one world, and that is the natural world we live in - Peripatetic Axiom: Nothing is in the intellect which was not first found in the senses - Tabula rasa (a blank slate): We are born with no knowledge at all (all come from sensory experience)

● Geocentric: the earth was heavy and immobile, centre of the universe● Cosmos has two distinct realms: - Superlunary (from the moon outward): objects are imperishable, moving in perfect, uniform circles - Sublunary (between earth and moon): move in straight lines to their natural place then stop - Four elements: earth, air, fire, water - Superlunary world has the fifth element: pure, invisible, glass-like substance

• Copernican Revolution:● Heliocentrism instead of Geocentrism● Daily rising and setting of sun comes from the daily rotation of earthon its axis● Against Christian theology (dangerous)
• Bacon’s new methodology● “Books must follow science and not sciences books”● Emphasis on empiricism: Knowledge comes from the senses and notthrough argumentation and authority● Aristotle was not an empiricist, he only seeked limited empiricalevidence to justify what he already believed● Induction instead of deduction, gather as much empirical evidence aspossible● Bacon is not a naive empiricist but beware of ‘Idols’ (characteristicerrors or sources of misunderstanding) that warp our perception:

1. Idols of the Tribe: innate distortion shared by all human beings(our senses are prone to make mistakes)
2. Idols of the Cave: distortion due to upbringing and habits (yourculture)
3. Idols of the Marketplace: distortion by the use of language(framing)
4. Idols of the Theatre: distortion by dogmas (=indisputableschools of thoughts)

● A combination of observation and theory makes good science.● Spiders > Ants > Bees

• Scientific Revolution● Johannes Kepler: planets don’t move in circles but in ellipticaltrajectories● Galileo Galilei:
• Empirical observations using telescope: Moon is not perfect(moon craters), dark spots on the Sun, more than 7 bodies insolar systems (all against dogmas)
• House arrest● Isaac Newton:
• Three laws of motion
• Law of gravitation
• Explained the behavior of all objects in mathematical terms
• Characteristics of the SR:

1. Commitment to the observational method
2. Universal mechanics: no more anthropomorphic (everything is likehumans) -> Aristotle’s final cause is discreted
3. Universal mathematics (everything explained in mathematical terms)

• Everything is like a machine -> Demystification (get rid of myths) started

• Esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived -> existence of something consists of its being perceived. Mind-dependent (IDEALISM)

• Only one substance: mental substance (immaterialism)

4. David Hume (E)

• Wanted to create a Science of Man: to establish empirical laws about humansand society
• Atheist and critical of his own empiricism
• The contents of the mind is perception, with two varieties:

1. Impression: immediate data of experience (the taste of sourness wheneating guava)
2. Ideas: faint copies of impression (when one remembers the taste of theguava yesterday)

• If a term lacks empirical content, it is not knowledge
• The concept of substance are meaningless
• Copy Principle:● All our ideas are nothing but copy of our impressions (cannot form theidea of the taste of a pineapple unless has tasted one)● First principle in the science of human nature● = Metaphysical microscope: divide a complex idea into simple ideasconnected to their corresponding impressions● Two problems:

1. Complex ideas (like a city) might still exist withoutimpressions
2. Missing links but still solvable? (shade of blue)

• Method of blending: blending ideas in a row togenerate the missing ideasHume and Kant on Human Knowledge

1. Hume

• Causality is an unobservable concept, 3 principles:

1. Contiguity: being in contact with something

2. Priority: the cause is prior to the effectE. a ball was rolling into the vase then the vase broke into pieces

3. Constant conjunction: same relationships hold when tested again in the same situation

• Problem of induction● We cannot conclude from past experience that the world will behaveuniformly● Causality is a psychological impression, not an observablephenomenon● When human reason fails, our habits are our guide to life
• Hume’s conclusion● Scientific knowledge is just a belief● Beliefs are conjectures and best guesses arrived at by applying habitualpassions (He argued that our belief in causality is based on habitualassociation rather than any direct experience of necessary connectionbetween events)● Knowledge is an illusion of imagination● All we have is empirically informed best guesses

2. Kant

• Causality problematic for Hume (habitual passion, imagination) but is one of12 categories of reason for Kant
• Unobservable concepts can count as knowledge
• Transcendental philosophy: a philosophy that is concerned with theconditions of our experience and the mode of our knowledge of objects
• Types of judgmentsAnalyticMaking things clearerdefines/logically correctSyntheticExtends our knowledge,adds information about theworldA prioriIndependent of senseexperienceSource = reasonAnalytic a priori: logicalstatementsA bachelor is unmarriedSynthetic a priori: conceptswith which we can knowthings (pure reasons in ourhead before observations(necessary and universal

● Like Copernicus exchanged the earth for the sun, Kant exchanged the object for the subject● Linked knowledge to the knower and not to the world as it exist. => The Enlightenment: no more religious revelation, but critical reasoning and observation are the foundation of knowledge

Lecture 4: (Logical) Positivism and HermeneuticsHow to study humans? 1. Positivism - August Comte (1798-1857) - Founder of the social sciences - Positivism = to describe and explain: ● Uniform manner of reasoning for nature and society ● Social and mental phenomena can be investigated empirically ● Positive = factual, useful, exact, empirical ● Universal science - Law of the Three Stages: (3 stages of intellectual development in societies, each has its own method of philosophizing) 1. Theological stage (primitive) - All phenomena come from the action of supernatural beings - Animism (inanimate objects have spirit) -> Polytheism (nature is under the control of many god-like beings) -> Monotheism (controlled by only one God) 2. Metaphysical stage (abstract) - Essence, nature, power, force rule - Circular reasoning? (The medicine makes you sleep because it has the power to make you sleep) 3. Positive stage - Factual, exact, certain - Fact-based, law-based - How instead of why (avoid inviting explanations of god/essences) - Observation is the basis - Act like a bee: Observation + theory 2. Hermeneutics (understand) - Wilheim Dilthey - Positivism is science worship - We have our insides. Humans are subjects (with subjectivity) - Hermeneutics: the art of interpretation

2. Early Wittgenstein

• Provided the philosophical foundation for Vienna Circle
• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:
  1. Formal and factual statements:● Formal (analytic, a priori) -> logic: do not say anything about the world 2+2 = 4 Triangle has three sides● Factual (synthetic, a posteriori) -> empirical Eiffel Tower is in Paris
  2. Verifiability as demarcation● Science and pseudo science● Factual statements must be empirically verifiable
  3. Philosophy is a method of logical analysis● Philosophers should not try to answer questions about the world (Antiquity), consciousness (Kant) but about the language used by scientist (Wittgenstein)

3. Conclusion

• Radical clean-up of theological, metaphysical ideas from science
• Science is now all about observation and logical analysis

Lecture 5: Critical RationalismPopper’s new idea 1. Context - No risky and bold statements in the social sciences in those days (Marxist’s scientific socialism, Adler’s inferiority complex, Freud’s Oedipus complex) - Their formulation makes them always right - Their theory explains everything => These could not be scientific 2. The problem of verification - The boundary between science and non-science is not clear - Empiricist solution is not good enough ● Verification too strong - Never possible, cannot observe all cases - Universal laws are neither true or false but instruments to predict (Schlick) ● Confirmation too weak - Degree of confirmability (Carnap’s solution), Science as a process of gradually increasing confirmation - Astrology can be empirically confirmed -> Science? - Add critical thinking: A theory should be falsifiable - Statements of science should be falsified (must be capable of confliction with possible or conceivable observations) - This is critical rationalism 3. Falsificationism a. Falsification is an adequate criterion of demarcation b. Only theories that can be falsified are informative c. Humans are fallible, we are seekers of truth d. Knowledge grows through conjectures and refutations, trial and error, deduction instead of induction 4. Popper’s thinking critically - Corroboration: a theory that is temporarily true is a corroborated one - Negative road to truth: the only way in which our knowledge can grow is by trying to locate, remove and correct mistakes - Crucial test: falsification test

• World 1: The physical world
• World 2: The mental world
• World 3: The product of the human mind, the abstract world (Unembodied entities and embodied entities)
• Objective knowledge can be found and is stored in World 3
• Knowledge according to Popper: ● Subjective knowledge: World 2, thought processes ● Objective knowledge: World 3, thought contents

Lecture 6: Criticizing Critical Rationalism: Paradigms, Research Program andMethodological AnarchyCriticizing Critical Rationalism - Temporary immunization is not a crime (a falsified hypothesis does not make the entire theory wrong) - Pseudosciences also make falsifiable claims (falsification as demarcation is not strong enough) - Replacing a false theory by another false theory is not progress (Popper’s verisimilitude = Newton > Aristotle -> progress) - Deductive testing presupposes induction (maybe we can only use induction before the process)Later Wittgenstein - Language does not depict reality - Words receive their meaning from the social linguistic context in which they are used (Language game) - There are different language games: religion, science, media, economics - Meaning is use of words and not the definition they refer to - The same word can have different meanings depending on the language game it is used in - Relativism: The truth of a claim depends on certain framework (Words have meaning relative to the language game in which they are used) - Wittgenstein’s (anti-)private language argument: ● Language rules constitute the language games ● The rules are public, no private language games. You have to obey them - Support for relativism: ● From psychology: (Human) perception is heavily theory-laden - Constructivism: Reality is our own construction, when our theories change, what we consider to make up reality changes - Scientific relativism: What scientists take to be the truth is always relative to a group of scientists in a certain period in time ● From linguistics: What one can think about and what one can perceive depends on the language one speaks

Theory of Research Programmes - Imre Lakatos - Popper and Kuhn were both wrong: ● Popper: Scientists need to come up with an alternative theory before they can falsify ● Kuhn: scientific revolutions are irrational changes in commitments - 3 varieties of falsificationism 1. Dogmatic falsificationism: scientific theories cannot be proven, only disproved 2. Methodological falsificationism: scientists make a decision that a mature theory that has been successful in the past can no longer be rejected -> unfalsifiability 3. Sophisticated falsificationism - A theory is falsified when the new theory meets the three demands for scientific growth: a. Predicts novel facts b. Explain the success of the old theory (all the unrefuted content of the old theory included) c. Some of the new content is corroborated - Theory of research programmes ● Research programmes are like a network of propositions: - Hard core: accepted propositions, fundamental assumptions - Protective belt ● Scientists use heuristic as methodological rules (positive = what to follow, negative = what to avoid) ● Degenerative programme: predicts no novel facts (piling on ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses leading to a crisis) ● Progressive programme: predicts novel factsAnarchistic theory of knowledge - Paul Feyerabend, radical constructivist - Anarchistic thinking about science - Against the monopoly of the scientific method - Anything goes. Radical pluralism: use everything, any method can provide knowledge, do not exclude anything a priori

Lecture 7: Scientific RealismPost modernism - Golden era of scepticism/post-modernism (Anything goes) - Idea of language games basis for post-modernism: there is no objective science, and facts do not exist - The social world is compiled of different islands with different languagesPost modernism in philosophy and social sciences - In philosophy -> philosophical scepticism -> relativism, especially in its interpretation - In social science and humanities -> opening up to new perspectives (women’s studies, gender and sexuality studies) - In society: IndividualisationThe Sokal Hoax - Facts do matter a great deal >< Feyerabend (Science is a fairy tale) - All three hoaxes wanted to save science from post-modern scepticism - They defended the position that is called scientific realismScientific realism - John Smart & Ernan McMullin - “Accept science as it is” - Science is real because it is successful (makes predictions that are right) - Entity realism: entities exist even when theories about them are wrong - Science can truthfully represents the unobservable parts of the world - Why do we believe in scientific realism? ● Because there is no cosmic coincidence. (Scientific facts are not merely surprising and random) ● Science is not a miracle. - Success of science can be explained by Inference to the only/Best Explanation (IBE) - That is called abduction, the third way of reasoning