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Summary Philosophy of science
Summary of the book recipes of science, academic article about probability and lecture slides.
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Voorbeeld 4 van de 58 pagina's
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Philosophy of science by Lynouk van HasselDear all,
I summarised the book and used the slides within this summary. It is thus possible that I have written
down things twice because of the book and the slides. I hope this summary is clear for everyone and
please let me know what you think about it and if I can change and/or improve things.
Goodluck!
Chapter 1 What is Science?
1.1 The importance of science
The types of expertise required for e.g. climate changes takes years (even decades) to develop and
the expertise does not neatly transfer from one domain to another. Climate change is grounded in a
rich body of independent sources of evidences that support the same conclusion, human activities
are causing Earth’s atmosphere to heat up.
Some people are sensitive to the risks of climate change mainly depends on understanding its
human causes and on one’s level of education, but also on political influences (US). People who do
not know much about some topics tend to experience an illusion of understanding.
Illusion of understanding (book): Where a lack of genuine understanding of some topic is linked to a
lack of appreciation for the depth of one’s ignorance about that topic.
- E.g. with climate change: people who have no advanced education or training in science or
who otherwise do not understand how the climate works, tend to have unwarranted
confidence in their ability to assess scientific findings or make pronouncements about
climate change.
- The illusion of understanding has become easier to sustain today because of the internet
(google knowing).
o Improving public climate literacy is important for informed public engagement with
global warming.
o Understanding the processes that give rise to trustworthy scientific knowledge is
vitally important to deciding what to believe, whom and how to learn more.
Three facts:
1. Most of our beliefs are based on testimony.
2. Many people acquire odd beliefs based on others’ testimony.
3. Many of the people with odd beliefs consider themselves experts, and do not trust
scientists.
Experts: In a specified domain have a greater quantity of accurate information than most people do.
Laypeople (novices): Have little information in the specified domain.
Experts in a given field have more: three conditions:
- True beliefs (and fewer false beliefs) in that field than most people do
- The capacity to use their knowledge to answer new questions in that field
- Knowledge of the state of the field
, - Knowledge of the state of relevant evidence and of the opinions of other researchers in the
field
The novice-expert problem: How should novices choose one putative expert as more credible or
trustworthy than another? Possible strategies:
Arguments presented.
o Advantage: Information from putative experts is widespread and easily available.
o Problem: How can a novice make an accurate assessment of the putative experts’
arguments and technical language?
Agreement with other experts.
o Advantage: For any domain, there is typically more than one expert, and the great
majority of experts agree on a certain view. E.g. 5G does not cause COVID-19
o Problem: There are many possible reasons why people in a field might agree, and
such agreement doesn’t always signal that they are all correct
Appraisal by “meta-experts” / look up the credentials.
o Advantage: Degrees, prizes, work experience etc. reflect publicly available
certifications by other experts of one’s expertise
o Problem: Novices are not always in a position to assess the significance of one’s
credentials. E.g. differences in degrees from different unis?
Conflicts of interest.
o What’s a conflict of interest? A situation where I have multiple interests, and serving
one interest could work against another interest
o Advantage: Sometimes, conflicts are clear.
o Problem: In many contexts, novices cannot easily detect more subtle conflicts of
interest
Past track-record.
o Advantage: It seems easy to check how many times and in what situations a
putative expert got it right.
o Problem: For complex phenomena, it may be beyond the novice’s capacity to check
whether a putative expert got it right
An illusion of understanding : “People feel they understand complex phenomena with far greater
precision, coherence, and depth than they really do; they are subject to an illusion of explanatory
depth.” (Rozenblit & Keil 2002, 522)
Why is science so important;
- Most obvious because science satisfies our practical goals.
- More generally, science is the best approach we humans have developed for answering
questions about the natural world.
Philosophers traditionally thought of knowledge as requiring three elements:
1. Belief: This is necessary for knowledge, you cannot know something without believing it is
true.
2. Knowledge: An achievement, certain conditions must be met for a belief to count as a
knowledge.
3. Justification: To know something, one must have good reasons to believe it.
Sufficiently justified belief is not enough. For example of global warming;
, 1. It is true that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming up
2. You believe that it is warming up
3. You are sufficiently justified in believing that it is warmed up
Science is important because it is our best route to knowledge about the world around us. Scientific
knowledge also often has practical benefits and can influence how we act. Some scientific
knowledge is pure knowledge, or knowledge for it’s own sake.
Basic research: Scientific research that aims at knowledge for its own sake, e.g. rainbow research is
just because the particular scientist was interested.
Explanatory knowledge (generating knowledge): When science aims for pure knowledge, we want
to know how things work and why thing are the way they are.
Applied research: Scientific research is applied when it exploits knowledge in order to develop some
product, like software, pharmaceutical drugs, or new materials.
Basic and applied scientific research can operate synergistically, e.g. scientists aiming at the
production of knowledge for its own sake often rely on the new materials and techniques created by
scientists doing applied research and the other way around.
Limitations to the scope of science: will be explained later.
- Science does not replace or limit non-scientific intellectual pursuits, like literature or
philosophy, or politics for that matter.
- It differs from theological doctrine and religious practice too.
Evidence and justifications are fallible.
In science and everyday life:
- Evidence can support (to a greater or lesser extent) the truth of our beliefs, even though it
does not guarantee they are certainly true. (bar example)
- We can rely on various methods aimed to avoid there is significant luck in how our beliefs
manage to combine being true with being justified.
1.2 Defining science
1. Since 2008 crisis, universities faced the pressure to identify “essential scientific” fields and
cut the rest.
2. Economics is generally identified as an “essential scientific” field.
3. Like philosophy, economics cannot point to concrete objects or to big empirical successes of
its theories and models.
Demarcation problem: The difference between science and pseudoscience? Distinguishes science
from fake science.
The nature of science can be divided into two parts:
1. There is a question of what is distinctive and important about science when it comes to
generating knowledge.
2. There is a question of where we ought to draw the lines between science and non-science.
These questions are about the definition of science and how to draw the boundaries of science, that
is how to demarcate or set the boundaries of science in contrast to other kinds of projects.
, Pseudoscience: Deceptive attempts to appear scientific, it literally means fake or false. Other
scientific project do not pretend to be scientific, and these are perfectly fine. E.g. astrology
Non-science, pseudo-science and science:
- Non-scientific practices: Do not aim at generating knowledge in the same ways science
does, and their practioners do not say they are doing science.
o E.g. Literate, art, gardening, theology, videogaming, philosophy
- Pseudo-scientific practices: Pseudo = fake. Are not scientific, but their proponents try to
create the false impression they generate genuine, trustworthy knowledge.
o E.g. Climate change denial, anti-vax, intelligent design, scientific racism, graphology.
Intelligent design: The idea that the universe is built by intelligent agents.
No evaluation by organism, our bodies are overtime related by these
intelligent agents.
Anti-vax: Vaccination is bad and can cause e.g. autism.
Scientific racism: The idea that there is scientific evidence that one
population is superior than others.
Graphology: By looking at the way how you write, graphologist can predict
your life.
- Science, checklist in section1.2. (for an activity or project).
o Naturalism: Aims to provide natural explanations of natural phenomena.
o Empirical investigation falsifiability: Puts forward ideas that can be tested with
empirical evidence.
o Evidentialism: Updates ideas based on available evidence.
o Openness to falsification: Would abandon any idea that was thoroughly refused.
o Mathematical techniques: Employs mathematical tool appropriately when they are
useful
o Social and institutional structure: Involves broader scientific community.
Defining science by its history
The word science is derived from the Latin words -> Entia and Scire which means knowledge.
Persian Golden Age: 500 years from 8th till 13th centuries, most important period in the development
of science prior the scientific revolution. There were a lot of scientist in this period who had done
major scientific resource, e.g. the earth is not flat.
The scientific revolution: In Europe between 1550 and 1700
In the late 1800 statistical and computational methods emerged to do scientific research, nowadays
they are essential to science.
Maybe the definition of science relates to its subject matter – the world we see around us – as
distinct from philosophical, religious, and theological investigations of, for example, meaning and
purpose. Science involves empirical investigation using one’s senses.
Defining science by its subject matter
In science, the world itself and all of its parts and properties are investigated in order to better
understand and control them. We might look to the subject matter of science – planets, animals,
disease, and so on – to define it. A problem with this is that there are so many topics among the
various fields of science.
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