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Summary Exploring Humans, ISBN: 9789085062264 Philosophy Of Science
This is a full summary of the book, with notes from the professor and notes from earlier classes on the subject. It is divided per chapter
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Exploring Humans: Philosophy of science for the Social SciencesIntroduction: Between Scepticism and Scientism
Science provides an understanding of reality.
There is still a lot we don’t know.
According to sceptics, we don’t know anything and scientists are dogmatic believers.
Introduction to Part 1
Questions:
- How can we justify knowledge?
- What is the ultimate source of knowledge?
- What is the method by which we gain knowledge?
Approaches to these questions:
- Rationalism: human reasoning abilities knowledge
- Empiricism: sensory capacities knowledge
Chapter 1 Out of The Cave: Rationalism and Empiricism in Antiquity
Socrates – What is Knowledge? He started this. 2 views: Rationalism and Empiricism. 2
forms of epistemology.
1.2 Plato’s Rationalism
Plato was a student of Socrates. Information on Socrates:
- His not knowing was his only certainty
- He asked people questions to make them doubt what they believed
- Sentenced to death
- Everything about him is known from Plato’s work.
Plato’s metaphysics: branch of philosophy that asks and tries to answer the oldest questions.
Heraclites information:
- Flux is the heart of existence
- Nothing is, everything becomes – panta rei/ everything flows
- Story of the river: you’re never in the same river twice
Parmenides/ Plato disagreed;
- Your senses perceive you
- Reality seems to be changing all the time, but appearances are deceptive.
- There has to be an underlying permanent reality.
- Everything is, nothing becomes.
- Senses deceive rely on reason.
- Being is perfect, so it couldn’t change.
According to Plato, if the empiricists were right and knowledge comes from our senses, the
sceptics would turn out to be right: if everything changes all the time, our knowledge will vary
from moment to moment AND from person to person. It will become relative. And this is not
what knowledge is; it’s about what something REALLY is, not relatively. Senses give us
belief/ doxa, not knowledge/ epistème.
The real world therefore isn’t the every-changing world of appearances, but the world of
Forms/ world of Ideas is (cave story).
Since the forms are supernatural, we cannot perceive them. With the use of our ratio we can
get knowledge about them though, and also because he believed in nativism or innate ideas.
We forgot everything because of the trauma of birth. We don’t learn new things, but we
remember. He tried to explain this with a dialogue about Meno and his slave and Socrates
(didn’t work though if you think about it).
1.3 Aristotle’s Empiricism
According to empiricists, we gain knowledge through sensory experience. Aristotle:
- There is only one world
- Leave abstract theorizing
- Universal knowledge is incorporated into natural objects
- “Nothing is in the intellect which was not first found in the senses”
, Exploring Humans: Philosophy of science for the Social Sciences
- No innate knowledge tabula rasa
- Deduction: general particular :
All humans are mortal + Socrates is a human being Hence, Socrates is mortal
= a syllogism
- Universal principles must be causative, true and immediate (observable)
- This is because scientific knowledge relies on it.
- We can’t just ‘know’ these principles are correct because there are NO innate ideas.
His way of thinking:
1. We only have scientific knowledge of an object if we have grasped its cause
2. Causality is crucial. Types of causes:
a. Formal cause – shape of a statue
b. Material cause – marble of a statue
c. Efficient cause – primary source of change/ sculptor
d. Final cause – goal/ why was it done? Statue might be devotional
3. Use induction with your senses as the first step: particular general.
Senses universal principles. This is only step 1 though.
An observed dead person was mortal. Can’t generalize this, because we get all
knowledge with our senses.
4. We can’t observe everything, so there must be more to get universal principles
5. There must be intuition to get the first principles
6. Intuitive induction by the mind.
Because of this, we cannot call him an empiricist; he doesn’t solely use his senses.
Aquinas called him “The Philosopher” and connected him to God and the Bible couldn’t
disagree with neither.
Around this time, the Scientific Revolution came and most information got lost and science
couldn’t be done because of Aristotle.
, Exploring Humans: Philosophy of science for the Social Sciences
Chapter 2 Beyond The Pillars of Hercules: A New (Philosophy of)
Science
Bacon wanted to replace Aristotle’s “Organon” with the “Novum Organum” or the new
method for science so we could discover new things. He no longer wanted science to rely on
faith and tradition, but on observation and experiments. Nickname Bacon: father of
experimental philosophy. Didn’t do any experiments though.
2.2 The Aristotelian-Medieval Worldview
View Bible = view Aristotle during the Middle Ages. Believes:
- The planets and stars in the cosmos are attached to ‘spheres’
- The earth was heavy and immobile and it was the centre
- 2 realms:
o The superlunary/ Celestial region
Domain from the moon outward.
Everything is eternal and perfect
o The sublunary/ Terrestrial realm
Between the moon and earth.
Everything changes and everything is made up of 4 elements in various
combinations: earth, air, fire and water. They all have a natural place.
Example; heavy objects composed of earth and water fall down and belong in
the centre.
Aquinas connected him with the Bible to form a comprehensive view of the universe.
First to undermine this view: Copernicus.
- Sun is the centre and everything revolves around it
- The daily rising and setting of the sun is the result from the daily rotation of earth
- His work led to the Scientific Revolution: everything got questioned
2.3 Bacon’s New Methodology
His believe: books should follow science, not vice versa. We could only get knowledge if the
classical-medieval monopoly on science were broken.
Truth comes from your senses, not authority and contemplation. Need to use experimental
methods.
Here, he seems like a true empiricist, but he wasn’t naïve. Tabula Rasa was too simplistic.
He talked about the “idols” that could alter your perception:
- Characteristic errors
- Deceptions
- Sources of misunderstanding
To get knowledge, we need to get rid of the idols. 4 categories:
1. Idols of the Tribe
Innate idols. Senses are prone to make mistakes. We also see more regularity than
there actually is. We focus on supporting evidence and don’t question the things we
already believe. Theories shouldn’t be immune to criticism
2. Idols of the Cave
Peculiarities of individuals due to their upbringing.
Either you extremely look at what you know, or at what you don’t know. Blind for the
rest
3. Idols of the Marketplace
Distorted believes that stem from common language.
Some words, such as “unicorn” refer to things that don’t exist. But people tend to
believe that words we use actually refer to existing things
4. Idols of the Theatre
Accepted dogmas and methods of old schools of thought.
Prejudices we have because authorities say they are true
So, we need a new method. Replace deduction, because what guarantees the truth of the
premises? We can’t start with universal statements for that reason. New method= induction.
Combine observation and reason. Example: all swans are white.
, Exploring Humans: Philosophy of science for the Social Sciences
Chapter 3: Early Modern Rationalism and Empiricism
After everything that was believed about knowledge was questioned, several philosophers
tried to formulate a foundation for the new sciences to replace scepticism.
3.2 Rene Descartes
Father of modern philosophy. Descartes didn’t like the medieval doctrines: those foundations
were weak and we needed stronger ones to counter scepticism. He especially responded to
De Montaigne:
- Doubt the existence of material reality
- Our senses have tricked us many times, why not now?
- If we experience images of objects and not the objects themselves, how can we say
we have knowledge about those external objects?
If you don’t know something, how do you have knowledge about it?
- We don’t have knowledge: reason and observation are both unreliable
Descartes was a rationalist:
- In the end, human reason grounds knowledge.
- There are innate ideas
- Not as radical as Plato though
o Didn’t accept the theory of the supernatural World of Forms
o Didn’t accept the method of recollection
- Pineal gland is the place where mind and brain meet
- The bodies of all animals are complicated machines
He DID do research. Geometry was most important.
- All knowledge should be built based on self-evident, absolute certain statements
Steps of Descartes to find out what he knows FOR SURE with the method of doubt:
1. Anything that can be doubted is uncertain and not knowledge
2. Don’t trust anyone or anything that has deceived you before
3. Therefore, you can’t trust your senses: they have deceived you before, why not all the
time
4. Do we know for sure we are here and awake? No.
You might dream you are some place else than your body actually is.
Maybe you don’t even have a body and this is also a dream.
5. There are no mathematical certainties: some people make mistakes with the easiest
equations. If some people can be wrong, everyone can be wrong.
6. There is a malin genie, a demon.
God, who is good and perfect and therefore won’t lie, won’t deceive us.
7. At this point, he didn’t know anything.
8. However, he knew one thing: he was doubting. Cogito ergo sum.
I think, therefore I am. He is a res cogitans, an immaterial thinking thing.
9. He did believe in innate ideas, such as infinity.
He wasn’t infinite himself, so he couldn’t have generated it himself.
Another one of those ideas is God and this idea states that God is perfect.
If he is perfect, he must exist, otherwise it isn’t perfect.
10. If God is perfect, he won’t deceive us/ let us be deceived by a demon.
11. He also won’t let us make mistakes the whole time and believe something that isn’t
true for a long time
12. The physical world must exist and we have bodies.
We are a res extensa, a physical thing
So, 2 substances (dualism), that can exist without the other: res extensa and res cogitans.
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