Aantekeningen hoorcolleges – Wetenschapsfilosofie
College 1 – Introduction: What’s it all about?
Philosophy of science
• What distinguishes science from non-science?
• What’s special about scientific knowledge as opposed to other kinds of information or
knowledge?
à Questions within science philosophy
• Levels of philosophy of science:
1. The social world à the real world
- Investigating the social world in social science
- This course studies the social sciences (the nature of)
What’s special about science?
• A popular answer à the scientific method
• This makes science:
- Reliable/trustworthy
- Objective
- Independent
- Verifiable/replicable
Scientific method:
Observation/question à research topic area à hypothesis à test with experiment à analyze
data à report conclusions à (and then the circle starts over)
• It is science because when someone replicates the exact study, the results are the same
Reality check
• All is not well with science à fraud, questionable research practices, bias or sloppiness,
failing peer review, replication crisis, bad incentives for researchers
The replication crisis: Psychology
• 100 influential studies from three prestigious psychology journals
• Only 36% successfully replicated
• Effect sizes 50% of original
à So, lots of papers were not trustworthy
The replication crisis: Economics
• 6700 studies
• Half of them have 90% of results underpowered
• Of those with adequate power 80% of effect sizes exaggerated by factor 2, often more
The replication crisis: Social science
• 21 high-profile studies
• 13 of those replicate (62%)
• Effect size 50% of original
The case of ‘the lying Dutchman’
• Diederik Stapel
• Until 2011, highly successful career in social psychology at three different universities
• Built on outright fraud à data fabrication
à To check retraction (intrekking) of papers à retractionwatch.com
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,Sloppy research science and questionable research practices
• Stopping data collection early (when significance is reached) or continuing until
significance is reached
• Hypothesizing after the results are known (Harking)
• Concealing results that contradict earlier findings
• Using creative/inappropriate analyses
• Not publishing negative (null) results
• Selective citing
• Demanding authorship without contributing
• Poor supervision
Explaining polarization
• Ezra Klein (co-founder of Vox.com)
• Polarization caused by our innate instincts for us vs. them thinking
• Which lead us to dislike outgroups, compete with them, and take pleasure in their losses
• Combined with social sorting and the formation of ‘mega-identities’
• These instincts are in turn explained by evolutionary theory
• Ingroup favoritism was good for survival in our evolutionary history
• Is social science ultimately a branch of biology?
Review of why we’re polarized
• Stephen Metcalf
• What about people’s beliefs, intentions, reasons, plans, interests, in the explanation of
polarization?
• Polarization was also very much a consciously devised political strategy, rather than
some foisted upon us blindly by our genes
Insider vs. outsider perspective in explaining human behavior
• Insider/s understanding à tries to understand the minds of other people, conduct
interviews etc. Forms an understanding based on that, emphasizes
• Outsider’s explanation à treats people like natural objects, products of blind forces of
nature. No need to look at the inside of people’s heads
What explains conspiracy belief?
• Outsider’s perspective à being skeptical, external factors like income
• Insider’s perspective à internal story people give for why things happen, distrust of
official sources, conscious reasoning
Course theme 1: Naturalism
• Are the social sciences different from the natural sciences?
• Studying people and society vs. studying physical particles, objects, systems
• Insider vs. outsider perspective
• Understanding vs. explaining
• Are there laws of nature, causality, mechanisms in the social sciences?
Course theme 2: Reductionism
• Is social science reducible to psychology, and neuroscience, or even further to the natural
sciences?
• Or are they irreducible and are social-level descriptions, theories, and explanations
ineliminable?
• Methodological individualism
- Is talk about ‘families’, ‘organizations’, ‘institutions’, ‘nations’, etc., shorthand for
talk about individuals and their actions?
- Should a good explanation be couched in terms of individuals?
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,Social science and values
• Can science be value driven? Or value free?
• Race theory, gender theory, feminism, etc.
Course theme 3: Normativity
Normativity of social science:
• Should (and can) social science be value-free?
• What does that mean and what does it have to do with objectivity, neutrality, and
trustworthiness?
Normativity in social science:
• What role do values, norms, and rules play in explaining human behavior?
• And what are they?
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, College 2 – objectivity and values
Standard image of science
Common sense view of science
• Based on empirical observation, not speculation or preconceived ideas
• Describing the world as it is in itself
• Outsider’s (third-person) perspective
• Neutral, value-free
• Formulated in exact theories, if possible using math/statistics
Logical positivism
• Vienna circle à group of scientists (in early 20th century Vienna) reflecting on
philosophical questions about science
- Moritz Schlick
- Otto Neurath
- Rudolf Carnap
• Aim à development of a strictly scientific worldview
• Against speculative philosophy, religious ideas, traditional worldviews
Side note
• Why the word ‘positivism’ à given, what’s positive, you want to restrict yourself to that
what is given
• From ‘positive’, in the sense of ‘what is posed’, what is given, what is laid down
• NOT in the sense of ‘happy’, ‘in a good mood’ etc.
Ideals
• Strict empiricism à knowledge can only come from observation
- No place for speculative claims that are not based on observation
• Use of formal logic and mathematics to create an ideal and precise language for science
- To guard against unwarranted terminology and against leaps to conclusions and
unsupported theories
Core ideas (1)
• Analytic vs. synthetic statements
1. Analytic à true just on the basis of the meaning of the words used
- ‘All bachelors are unmarried’
- 5 + 7 = 12
2. Synthetic à true/false on the basis of the meaning of the words used and what the world
is like
- ‘There are at least 100 students in this room’ à you have to go out and look in the
world
- ‘Marc is a bachelor’ à you don’t know this based on the name ‘Marc’, you have to
ask him, do research
- ‘All polar bears are white’ à you should check if they are all white
• The empirical sciences are concerned with synthetic statements
• Empirical scientific research is the only way of determining the truth or falsity of these
statements
• Definitions, logic, and mathematics are all analytic statements
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