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Summary Key Concepts Risjord (supplemented with lecture notes)
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Summary of the Key Concepts from Risjord's book, supplemented with lecture notes.
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Philosophy of Science: ALL LECTURE NOTES
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College aantekeningen Wetenschapsfilosofie (WF) Philosophy of Social Science, ISBN: 9780415898256
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VOLLEDIGE samenvatting Wetenschapsfilosofie 2021
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Risjord Ch 1: Introduction/HC1- Insider vs outsider perspective
o Opposition to the insider perspective:
biased descriptions
apologetic (defensive, protective) descriptions
o Opposition to the outsider perspective
too much emphasis on explanations
false reduction of insider perspective
- Solutions
o Neutral stance
o Reflexive stance
o Take perspective of the stranger (schutz)
- Three central themes of philosophy of social science
o Naturalism: the problem of understanding and explanation in the
social sciences
e.g., is it possible to use concepts such as causality and
explanation when we speak about society
o Reductionism: the problem of the relation between holism and
individualism in the social sciences
e.g., is it possible to reduce social institutes to their individual
members?
o Normativity: the function of norms, values and rules in the social
sciences
e.g., are subjects (researchers) and objects of research living
in different worlds
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,Risjord Ch. 2: Objectivity, Values, and the Possibility of a Social
Science/HC2
Distinction epistemic and non-epistemic values
- Epistemic values: refer to considerations in the evaluation of hypotheses
and theories, e.g., precision and scope of theories, models, etc.
o Idee: betrouwbaarheid, je wil dat je onderzoek betrouwbaar is, dit is
een waarde. Het zit in je onderzoeksontwerp
- Non-epistemic values refer to moral judgements, ideological views or
religious beliefs par grounds that determine the assumption or rejection of
scientific claims
o politieke voorkeur,
Distinction constitutive and contextual role of these values
- Constitutive values are necessary in conducting scientific research. give
shape to research “from within” in a fundamental way
o geeft vorm aan onderzoek
o keuze voor een methode
o esthetica, muzikant, kunst, schoonheid, wat is mooi nummer?
- Contextual values form part of the situation in which the research takes
place. Design the research in a ‘random’ way and are therefore not
necessary for the practice of scientific research...
o Financiering voor populaire muziek spelen
- Non-Epistemische waarden mogen alleen een contextuele rol spelen
Fact – value distinction
- A strict fact–value distinction would require that descriptions (statements
of fact) have no evaluative consequences on their own. One way to make
clear the distinction between descriptions and evaluations is to say that
evaluative statements include explicitly evaluative predicates like “ought,”
“good,” and their cognates. To make science value-neutral, we would thus
simply forbid sentences containing evaluative predicates from appearing in
scientific theories
- Social scientific theories are always partly political, and therefore the
evaluation of theory should take the political dimensions of the theory into
account.
Ideal of value free science
1. science is autonomous: only scientists (and not politics or business)
determine which research questions are worthwhile
2. science is impartial: moral judgements or ideological views play no role in
the acceptance of scientific knowledge
3. science is neutral: researchers tell how the world works, hot how it should
work. science describes reality and does not prescribe what we should do
‘Objectivity’: three meanings
- 1 Objectivity as freedom from bias. (advertising claim is not objective)
- 2 Objectivity as intersubjectivity (something is intersubjective to the
degree that it is open for critical scrutiny be more than one person)
- 3 Objectivity as reliability (method is reliable insofar as it provides results
that are likely to be true)
- A method can be intersubjective, but unreliable
- Social science can be objective in the reliability and intersubjectivity
senses, even if it is value-laden
, - Biases are difficult to detect
Moderate Thesis of Value Freedom
- Science is objective when only epistemic values are constitutive of
scientific practice, moral and political considerations must always remain
contextual
Case USA census
- In the example of the census, the political considerations were used to
support methodological virtues. Th e Democrats preferred the risk of an
overcount, while the Republicans preferred the risk of an undercount. It is
therefore misleading to say that the trade-off between false positives and
false negatives is strictly a scientific matter. The politics was determining
the relative importance of under- and overcounting citizens. Since all
science occurs in some social context, one might argue, contextual values
will always have some influence on the core workings of scientific decision
making. In response, the defender of value freedom might agree that, as a
practical matter, moral and political values are always present. Value
freedom is an ideal toward which we should strive. Moral and political
values are not necessary for science, and the goal of objectivity requires
minimizing their influence.
Longino & objectivity
- Scientific ‘objectivity’ can be preserved through well-functioning scientific
community which possesses (Longino1990)
o Recognized avenues for criticism: there are recognized forums for
critical debate (scientific journals, congresses, etc.).
o Shared standards: the debate is based on generally shared criteria
(e.g., accuracy and consistency).
o Community response: criticism is addressed, positions and
assumptions are adjusted if necessary, in the light of criticism.
o Equality of intellectual authority: all members of the community are
considered to be intellectually equivalent.
Empirical analytical method
- the empirical-analytical method
o empirical: scientific research based on systematic observation
(observation)
o analytical: decomposable into logical, elementary statements
(proposition)
o results: hypothesis about empirical regularities (expressed as a law)
- Basic inductive inference
o this bird is a raven (proposition
o this bird is black (observation)
o all ravens are black (hypothesis about regularity (law))
- Hypothetical-deductive inference
o All ravens are black (hypothesis about regularity (law)
o Ravi is a raven (observation)
o Ravi is black (prediction/explanation)
Logical positivism
- The empirical sciences must replace theological and metaphysical world
views – i.e., the unreasonable powers of church and political ideologies
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