Philosophy of science
Risjord ch. 1 - Intoduction
Philosophy looks into what it means to be human. They have three broad themes: normativity (the
place of values in social scientific inquiry), naturalism (relationship between natural and social
sciences), and reductionism (how social structures relate to those that constitute them).
‘Democratic peace’ refers to the appearance that democracies don’t go to war with other
democracies. However, is this tendency an effect of the ruling government or of the people who
inhabit the country and thus choose the government? How do protest even form? If you don’t
actively participate, you’ll still get the rewards so what difference does it make to actively do
something? Do we even know the other person if we rule something over them? There is no way
that we know what goes on in their head.
Philosophy is often divided into:
o Value theory
What makes something morally good? / Concerns with morals and values
o Epistemology
What constitutes knowledge and how is it justified? / Concerns human knowledge
o Metaphysics
What are causes and are humans free? / Concerns about the fundamentals of earth
To explain further, normativity are issues about norms, values, and rules and enter the social
sciences in one of two ways. On the one hand it is what the social sciences study. On the other hand,
they recognize and are part of their own society.
We assume that social sciences and social policy are independent. Based on that line of thought and
with the example of America not attacking other democracies, you can imagine that you need
definitions for ‘peace’ and ‘democracy’ that are independent of politics. However, does this even
exist? Social scientists are involved in policy and will therefore have to defend their objectivity.
Moral and political values of the scientist will colour the research. So, can there be value free
research? And if we follow value freedom, can there be objectivity?
Naturalism is the name for a variety of views holding that the social sciences should be like the
natural sciences in some important way. Those who believe that think that social science needs a
distinct way of theorizing are called anti-naturalists. We make a distinction between epistemological
naturalism and metaphysical naturalism:
o Epistemological naturalism
Issues about theory, explanation, and method. E.g., differentiating qualitative research from
quantitative research. Anti-naturalists see this as deeply distinct from natural sciences.
o Metaphysical naturalism
Humans are part of the natural world and must therefore be understood in terms of the
same causes and mechanisms that animate all other creatures. Anti-naturalists argue that
humans and human societies are deeply distinct from those ‘creatures’.
Reductionism is the relationship between studies. For example, can studies be seen in a hierarchal
order where one stands above the other? This too can be divided into epistemological reductionism
and metaphysical reductionism:
o Epistemological reductionism
Theories at one level can be replaced by theories at a lower level. For example, sociology is
ultimately explainable by psychology while psychology can be reduced to biology.
, o Metaphysical reductionism
Entities, properties, processes, or events at one level are nothing but objects at another.
Minds do not exist, only brains, reductionists might say.
Breedveld
Jeroen Geurts wanted to expand his scientific knowledge, so he took on an extra study in
philosophy. Additionally, as rector, he wants to bridge the gaps between disciplines. Moreover, he
wants to collectivise the process of applying for scholarships to have more people working as a team
instead of having one particular person on a pedestal.
Lawson (2020) – We should expect to be much more open but also more boring
According to Ritchie, a psychologist scientist, we would question the scientific results in papers more
if we understood the entire paper-publishing process. He sees something is rotting in the ‘kingdom
of science’. Namely, the following four:
1. Fraud
People deliberately making or altering results to try and get a paper published
2. Bias
Scientist are people and have predispositions and will therefore even alter the results in
such a way that it fits their ideas of how the world works
3. Unforced errors / negligence
A typo in an excel sheet that can alter the entire results
4. Hype
Scientists writing up the results as if they’re much more interesting than they really are
The filter of paper-publishing is broken, peer-review systems don’t work the way they should. Ritchie
names rush and personal vendetta as one of the reasons for the failing system. Besides the peer-
review problem there is also a transparency problem. Universities should also support those who do
not necessarily publish papers but who contribute to science in a different way.
With more openness and transparency, the hype and interesting element will decline and boringness
increase, but it will give us higher quality science.
Smith I
Schütz argued that in both social science and everyday life we use ‘types’ or mental constructs,
which allow us generally to predict how others around us are likely to behave. By stereotyping the
behaviour and motivations of others, we are able to identify predictable patterns around us which
enable us to think through a situation and act. He recommended that we follow the ‘postulate of
adequacy’ whereby ideas had to link lived experience with scientific specific knowledge.
A scientific statement is considered to be adequate when it accounts for everyday experience and is
understandable to those who love in the relations being studied. To illustrate his point, Schütz asks
us to build an environment of a city as our chosen object of analysis and imagine three viewpoints
about this environment:
o The person on the street
Someone who is simply at home in a particular place, operating through tacit knowledge,
getting by without the need for deep reflection
o The cartographer
Someone with the expertise to map urban environments, but who maintains a degree of
detachment from the object and is unable to comprehend what it is like to live in such a
place. This can be treated as a metaphor for a lot of the main problems of social scientific
practice
, o The stranger
Someone who is passing through, but who needs to establish an adequate grasp of existing
social relationships in order to get by. The stranger is neither unreflective like the person on
the street nor trapped within the narrow vantage point of an academic specialism
Note that ‘strangers’ have a unique vantage point here, they can participate in society with
maintaining a certain degree of detachment. The person on the street can best be compared to a
social scientist having expertise knowledge on one certain aspect. The difficulty of social science is to
find a balance to be involved in the research but still maintain detachment (but also not too much).
You want to have objectivity to your research but still be able to explain it to a broader audience.
Lecture 1
What distinguishes science from non-science? Is an example of a philosophical question. As social
sciences, we study the social world, here, we study the social sciences from a philosophical angle.
We think a level above the social sciences.
What is special about science?
Most people will firstly think of the scientific method. It makes science reliable, objective,
independent, and verifiable. This is how it is ought to work. Some problems that we have seen
before:
- Fraud
- Questionable research practices
- Bias/sloppiness
- Failing peer-reviews
- Replication crisis
- Bad incentives for researchers (get promoted when quantity > quality)
The replication crisis: only 36% of research papers from 100 influential studies in three prestigious
psychology journals could be replicated and effect sizes were often ±50% of the original. Same story
in economics and social sciences.
Besides actual fraud, often times retracted papers or false science comes into the world when
science is sloppy. Examples of sloppy science are keeping up with data collection to make it become
significant, stopping it sooner when it is still significant, not publishing negative null hypothesis, etc.
Ezra Klein gives us an insight why we as a society and specifically America is so polarized. Us vs. them
thinking and affective polarization (hating other groups than your own). These are unconscious
psychological tendencies. Metcalf debates this and argues that some people want to polarize as a
political strategy. Can be seen as inside perspectives (peoples’ motives and incentives) vs. outside
perspective (us vs. them). The outside perspective see the people as a neutral force that isn’t
necessarily influenced. The question rises, is one better than the other? Can we combine them?
Does one theory apply more to one subject than the other.
Naturalism are natural sciences different than the social science? If so, how?
Reductionism can other branches of science be reduced to natural sciences?
Klein gives us a reason why we have inbred assumptions. It sees it through evolution because it used
to be beneficial to have ingroups and outgroups. Thus, it is biological. Is social sciences than
ultimately a branch of biology as well?
