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Summary Class notes for philosophy of science
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Lecture 1: Philosophy of Science, Epistemology- This course is a reflection on whether psychology is a science
- Knowledge (epistemology) → philosophy of science → critical thinking
Philosophy of Science
- philosophical/critical thinking on what science is, does, how it generates knowledge
- Whats the difference between science and pseudoscience
- Science = ?
Why philosophy for psychologists?
- Psychology is a science?
- Need to be able to explain why/why not as an academic - requires knowledge about what has been
historically considered science
- Need skills to reflect, and argument on one’s views
- Replication crisis in psychology - science usually publishes only positive results, neds philosophical
critical reflection knowledge and skills
- Character building (somehow this builds my character)
- ⇒ better psychologists, scientists, citizens → understanding, then advancing society
- Most people are in psychology because they want to help people
Epistemology = theory of knowledge
- 3 epistemological questions
- What is certain K?
- How can we justify K?
- What is the source of K?
- 2 traditional views
- Rationalism = real k comes from ratio = reason
- Empiricism = real k comes from using sensory experience
- What are we certain of?
- Skepticism = Socrates = we can never know anything (i can only know how much i don’t know)
- Perhaps the conclusion must even be that we do not know anything at all, and never will
- Socrates is convicted to death because he was bad for society :(
- Rationalism = real k stands from our reason (general claim)
- ASSOCIATED claim: there is innate knowledge (nativism)
- Plato (radical rationalist)
- To learn is to remember = anamnesis
- There is no new knowledge, you do not learn anything, only remember
- Why did he claim this? Plato believed in reincarnation
- Plato believed that before you were born, you had all the real k, and then you lose it all
because birth is a traumatic experience
- Episteme = k of how the things are
- Vs Doxa = opinion about how the things are
- K = justified and true belief = you need to be able to explain to, say, a skeptic, how you
know that you know something
- A skeptic does not make claims about the world, says any claim is doxa, not episteme
- Plato responds to Heraclitis: Panta rhei = the world we perceive with our senses changes
constantly, then nothing is, and we can only acquire doxa, not episteme
- Plato does not want skepticism - like socrates he did not believe in the gods, but he
believed that k exists
- Cave Allegory
, - Ideas, forms exist apart from us in a world of Ideas/Forms
- The soul is akin to those ideas, imprisoned in our body where it can only perceive
the shadows of real things
- acquiring knowledge is to remember these ideas = anamnesis
- Thus behind every changing part of our world there is a higher order, not changing
idea/form
- Meno - socrates puts words in his mouth, this kind of rationalism is very extreme;
- descartes had a weaker version
- Empiricism: general claim = source of k is experiencing gained through sensory perception - common
sense view: of you want to know how something is, you have to sense it
- Greek Empeira
- Latin Experienta
- Associated claim: if all k comes from experience via perception, there is no innate knowledge
- Empiricist is not empirical, there is a difference: empiricist is the opposite of rationalist, the view
that knowledge stems from sensory experience
- Empirical = scientific method, k and experience to infer conclusions about the world; empirical
evidence gathered through observations or experiments, opposite of purely hypothetical
- Aristotle - plato’s student, but disagreed with the 2 worlds (one real and one of ideas) : there is
only one world, the one that we can perceive with our senses
- Implies a rejection of innate ideas = tabula rasa man
- Founder of lyceum, talked while walking - peripateo in greek
- Peripatetic principles = nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses
- Aquinas^
- Key of aristotle’s empiricism is sensory perception, but his empiricism does have
some rationalist elements in his empiricist epistemology
- Universal concepts:
- Plato: idea chair is an entity in the world of ideas
- Aristotle rejects - only the individual chair exists, no world of ideas
- Concrete → universal via Induction (epagoge)
- Induction is conclusion based on observation of some cases
- Problem with induction - one observation alone cannot tell that the abstract
general proposition is true - correlation not causation → induction is only the first
step, needs
- Intuitive induction = understanding, using the intellectual capacity of the mind
(nous), that abstractions are necessary truths = rationalistic element
- Thus, aristotle find a general statement, and is not very critical toward it because
he had established its trueness via intuitive induction
- Aristotle in the Middle Ages
- The catholic church had a lot of power
- Issues about k and reality were resolved either via Bible or Aristotle
- 2 paths to the truth:
- Revelation
- Use of good sense (like Aristotle, even though he was a pagan??)
- Thomas Aquinas tried to unite Christian teachings and pagan ideas of Aristotle (‘the
philosopher’)
- THeory of matter and form example
- Matter = potentially something
- Shape/form makes the actual thing
- = process of creation and decay, ever changing forms of life
- Aquinas argued that God has put this process of creation and decay in motion, Aristotle’s
unmoved mover (=the first cause)
, - This means that aristotle = bible, so you can’t argue against aristotle because that is
attacking the bible
- Aristotle view on experiments was that you don't need them because they can’t teach us
about the natural world
- Experiments = heresy = death
- Why did Aristotle have these views?
- He used observation - had classifications of plants and animals
- Manipulation = world goes against the natural ways of things and as such we do not learn
anything about the natural world
- Middle ages: both philosophy and science (they were the same thing back then because of
Aristotle) came more and less to a halt
- Aristotle needed to be rejected to advance the philosophy of science and science itself
Lecture 2: Epistemology of francis bacon, Rene descartes etc
Francis Bacon New Method
- Politician, which allowed him to question aristotle (without gettting in trouble with the inquisition
- The new method
- Abandon epistemic prejudices
- Persistent epistomological biases (idols, false conceptions) that prevent us from acquiring
knowledge - you think you know, but you don’t
- Idols = of tribe, cave, marketplace, theatre = BIASES
- Idola tibus = typically human thinking mistakes - like visual illusions
- Seeing order and regularity where there is none - 10 people are white, so all people must
be white (wrong use of induction)
- Search for confirmation = confirmation bias
- Seeing ths un go down (but it is actually the earth rotating
- Sailors trust in the power of prayer = god is the idol of the tribe
- Idola specus (cave) = idols that we have because we belong to a certain group)
- Extreme conservatism - thinking the good old days were the best ever; but extreme
preference for the new should also be avoided
- Idola fori (marketplace) = ew can talk about something, so we assume that it is real - like destiny,
luck, coincidence
- We can have words that refer to things that don’t realy exist
- Idola theatri = prejudices due to the authorities saying they are true (like ancient philosophical
schools
- Use empirical method - observation and experiments
- Francis bacon experimented on himself whether opium would prolong his life
- (like aristotle) use induction, but differently from aristotle
- Induction = perception and understanding (rationalistic element)
- Goos science = observation + rational inference
Bacon vs Aristotle
- Induction
- But aristotle was wrong acc to Bacon bc he doesn’t take induction seriously
- Aristotle failed to inquire whether his general claim holds true in other place, and bacon sought disconfirming
evidence in london
Rene Descartes Rationalism
- He wanted certain knowledge, without accepting plato’s theory of anamnesis of world of forms
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