Back to course documents.
(a) You are required to submit the FIRST (1. Is It Science?) and then THREE
MORE only of the short papers described below.
(b) They are intended to be short--500 to 1000 words--but rich in content.
(c) The papers are due one week after the last paper of the relevant section
has been read in class. The deadlines indicated below are only estimates,
computed accordingly. They are provisional may change in response to changes in
our schedule of readings.
(d) Papers will be graded according to how well they clearly state a thesis in
philosophy of science and argue cogently for it. See policies on papers.
(e) Remember also my policies late
submission. (Don't.)
(f) Send the paper to me in email (jdnorton@pitt.edu) in an editable file, that
is, not a pdf. I find rtf = "rich text format" the most flexible and generated
by most word processors. My computer system does not read the latest Microsoft
"docx" format easily.
In 2002, a Working Party convened by the Danish Committee on Scientific
Dishonesty met to evaluate the work of environmental skeptic, Bjorn Lomborg,
notably his 2001 The Skeptical Environmentalist. Their initial
assessments included concerns that the the book "fails to meet the customary
requirements of science" and that it is (in scare quotes) "'bad science'." They
concluded in their report
(subsequently retracted)
that Lomborg's publication "is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good
scientific practice."
In coming to these conclusions, the Working Party needed to adopt a view of
the nature of good science. What is your assessment of the view they adopted
and its application?
CHOOSE THREE OF:
The dominant account of induction and confirmation in the present philosophy of science literature is the Bayesian account.
What is your view of its dominance? (For example, is it merited? If so, why? If not, which view is better?)
Inductive inference in science attracts optimists and pessimists. The
pessimists are skeptical that evidence can have anything like the inductive
reach that science attributes to it; but then they must explain the success of
science. The optimists gaze in wonder at the power of evidence in science; yet
now they must come up with an account of how that success comes about.
What is your view of this tension?
The long dominant view has been that the authority of science resides in it grounding in experiment and observation and that without them it would collapse into groundless speculation.
What is your assessment of this view?
It is generally accepted that a successful science must explain the relevant phenomena. Conforming to them and even predicting them in minute detail, is not enough.
Why is it not enough?
We are often reminded that that science is the best antidote to the
metaphysical flights of fancy to which we humans are prone. Antirealists merely
wish to resist the creation of new metaphysical flights within science itself,
whereas scientific realists regard this caution as unnecessary and excessive in
a domain already narrowly constrained by evidence. Both motivations seem sound,
yet the debate persists.
What is your view of this matter?
While causation seems to figure centrally in every science, we seem unable
to generate a universally admissible account of its nature.
Why is this?
In comparing reductionist and antireductionist theses, the reductionist
theses tend to be the most precisely articulated and they also draw the most
criticism. The antireductionist theses tend to be more welcomed, but are stated
more vaguely, typically as the negation of a reductionist theses.
Are we to conclude the reductionism is precisely hopeless and antireductionism
vaguely promising?
The era of writing the grand account of scientific change--paradigms and
revolution, research programmes, progress and problems--has passed. There is
now a growing sentiment that it was far too ambitious in seeking sweeping
statements about the essential nature of all science.
Was it too ambitious? What in your view have we learned from these projects?
A paper in philosophy of physics or philosophy of biology, in which a non-trivial thesis is clearly stated and argued for cogently.