Philosophy And Ethics Of Management, Economics, And Consumer Behaviour (CPT38306)
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Literature summary Philosophy and Ethics
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Philosophy And Ethics Of Management, Economics, And Consumer Behaviour (CPT38306)
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Wageningen University (WUR)
It contain a summary of the following articles:
Sandel, 2009
Popper, 1963
Okasha, 2002, chapter 1
Professor x (lecture), in line with Kuhn
Okasha, 2002, chapter
Satz, 2010
Adam Smith, 1759
Thomas Wells, 2013
Warburton, 1999
Verweij, 2014
Blok, 2021
Hannah Arendt, 1998
Blok & Le...
MSc MME Management, Economics And Consumer Studies
Philosophy And Ethics Of Management, Economics, And Consumer Behaviour (CPT38306)
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Philosophy and Ethics of Management, Economics and
Consumer Behavior
Literature summary
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Philosophy and Ethics of Management, Economics and Consumer Behavior........................................1
Sandel, 2009.......................................................................................................................................2
Popper, 1963......................................................................................................................................2
Okasha, 2002, chapter 1.....................................................................................................................2
Professor x (lecture), in line with Kuhn...............................................................................................3
Okasha, 2002, chapter 5.....................................................................................................................3
Satz, 2010...........................................................................................................................................5
Adam Smith, 1759..............................................................................................................................7
Thomas Wells, 2013...........................................................................................................................8
Warburton, 1999................................................................................................................................9
Verweij, 2014....................................................................................................................................10
Blok, 2021.........................................................................................................................................10
Hannah Arendt, 1998.......................................................................................................................12
Blok & Lemmens, 2015.....................................................................................................................14
Owen et al., 2013..............................................................................................................................16
Van den Belt.....................................................................................................................................18
Friedman, 1970.................................................................................................................................20
Tempels et al., 2017.........................................................................................................................21
Swanson, 1999..................................................................................................................................22
1
,Sandel, 2009
About the price gouging after a storm in the US, is it accepted or not? What is the role of the market?
Popper, 1963
About science as falsification.
There’s a difference between science (which often errs) and pseudo-science (which may stumble on
truth). Science is distinguished from pseudoscience—or from "metaphysics"—by its empirical
method, which is essentially inductive, proceeding from observation or experiment. However, this
was unsatisfactory.
My problem perhaps first took the simple form, "What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and
individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton's theory, and
especially from the theory of relativity? I felt that these other three theories (Freud, Marx and Adler),
though posing as science, had in fact more in common with primitive myths than with science; that
they resembled astrology rather than astronomy. These three have explanatory power in common.
Explanatory power; if [a theory] appears to be able to explain practically everything that happened
within the field to which they referred. Thus once knew a theory, the world was full of
verifications/confirmations of it. Often, a conclusion is based on previous experience (i.e. observed
confirmations). But each in its turn had been interpreted in the light of "previous experience," and at
the same time counted as additional confirmation. What, I asked myself, did it confirm? Because
every case could be interpreted by a specific theory. The strength of these theories (always
confirmed), was in fact their weakness.
The theory of Einstein was different: there was risk involved in the prediction. If observation shows
that the predicted effect is definitely absent, the theory is simply refuted.
Thus, the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.
At the same time I realized that such myths may be developed, and become testable; that historically
speaking all —or very nearly all —scientific theories originate from myths, and that a myth may
contain important anticipations of scientific theories. I thus felt that if a theory is found to be non-
scientific, or "metaphysical" (as we might say), it is not thereby found to be unimportant, or
insignificant, or "meaningless," or "nonsensical”. But it cannot claim to be backed by empirical
evidence in the scientific sense —although it may easily be, in some genetic sense, the "result of
observation”.
Thus the problem which I tried to solve by proposing the criterion of falsifiability was neither a
problem of meaningfulness or significance, nor a problem of truth or acceptability. It was the
problem of drawing a line (as well as this can be done) between the statements of the empirical
sciences and all other statements (metaphysical or simply pseudo-scientific).
Okasha, 2002, chapter 1
About ‘What is science?’; the philosophy of science.
Philosophers don’t want a list of activities that are usually called ‘science’, but a common feature all
things on that list share, i.e. what it is that makes something a science.
Galileo was seen as the first modern scientist, as he was the first to show that the language of
mathematics could be used to describe the behavior of actual objects in the material world (e.g.
falling bodies). Then came Descartes and Newton, who set laws for motions. Then Einstein with the
relativity theory, challenging Newton’s theories. Then came Darwin with the evolution theory; then
Watson and Crick with the structure of DNA. I.e. scientists follow each other up, disproving things
and coming up with new theories. Especially in the last hundred years, there’s been an explosion of
scientific research and new scientific disciplines. Also social sciences (economics, sociology) of which
many people still believe they lag behind the natural sciences in terms of sophistication and rigour.
2
, Part of the job of philosophy of science is to question assumptions that scientists take for granted
(e.g., why assume that future repetitions of an experiment will yield the same result?). Although
more attention has been for it in the past, philosophy of science is still very relevant, maybe even
more as a consequence of the increasingly specialized nature of science, and of the polarization
between the sciences and the humanities that characterizes the modern education system.
What is science? According to Popper a fundamental feature of a scientific theory is that it should be
falsifiable -> the theory makes some definite predictions that are capable of being tested against
experience and thus not compatible with every possible course of experience. Theories that do not
satisfy this, are merely pseudo-sciences.
However, some philosophers regard Popper’s criterion as overly simplistic. Because sometimes
scientists, rather than concluding that a theory must be wrong, stuck by the theory and attempt to
explain away conflicting observations (this e.g. led to the discovery of a new planet that explained a
differing observation). So is it not unfair to accuse something as pseudo-science but whatever came
later as an explanation as actual science (as it led to a great discovery)?
Generally, scientists do not abandon their theories whenever they conflict with the observational
data, the y look for ways of eliminating the conflict without having to give up their theory. Thereby,
finding a theory that fits all the data perfectly is extremely difficult.
But then (if falsification is not), is it actually possible to find some common feature shared by all the
things we call ‘science’? Popper thinks yes, others think no (also due to the wide range of discipline
and theories that fall under it). Maybe there’s rather a loose cluster of features most of which are
possessed by most sciences.
Professor x (lecture), in line with Kuhn
“The freedom we have in the design of our experiments is so enormous that when an experiment
doesn’t give us what we are looking for, we blame the experiment, not our theory. (At least, that is
the way I work). Is this problematic? No. [...] We find what we are looking for because we design our
experiments in such a way that we are likely to find what we are looking for. Of course!”
Okasha, 2002, chapter 5
Scientific change and scientific revolutions
Positivist philosophy of science
Logical positivism was a dominant philosophical movement post-war. They had a high regard for the
natural sciences, as well as for mathematics and logic. They wanted to make philosophy more
‘scientific’ in order to reach more breakthroughs. They made it objective, with techniques such as
experimental testing of facts, and did not look at history. They made a clear distinction:
- Context of discovery: the actual historical process by which a scientist arrives at a given
theory -> the positivists believed this to be a subjective psychological process
- Context of justification: the means by which the scientist tries to justify his theory once it is
already there – which includes testing the theory searching for relevant evidence' and so on.
-> the better one (they argued)
The positivists would argue it makes no difference how a hypothesis is arrived at initially. What
matters is how it is tested once it is already there 'for it is this that makes science a rational activity.
How Kekule first arrived at his hypothesis was immaterial; what mattered was how he justified it.
3
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