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Chapter 7 Does Science Tell Us the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth?

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Conjectures and Refutations Karl Popper The growth of scientific knowledge comes from overthrowing theories and replacing them with better, ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Chapter 7 Does Science Tell Us the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth?


1
Chapter 7Does Science Tell Us the Whole Truth
and Nothing but the Truth?
2
Introduction
  • Philosophy of Science critical analysis of
    various sciences and their methodology
  • Scientism blind faith in the power of science
    to determine all truth

3
How do we come to belief?
  • Charles Sanders Peirce built the foundation of
    pragmatism
  • Abduction the method for discovering the best
    scientific hypotheses for a given situation

4
The Fixation of BeliefCharles Sanders Peirce
  • Examines the difference between doubt and belief
  • Doubt causes one to struggle for belief
  • Simply asking a question does not produce a
    struggle for belief
  • An inquiry does not need to begin with first
    principles, but from something which one does not
    doubt
  • When doubt ceases, the struggle ends and would be
    without purpose if it continued

5
The Fixation of BeliefCharles Sanders Peirce
  • Beliefs become fixed using
  • Method of tenacity
  • Method of authority
  • A pirori method
  • Method of scientific investigation

6
The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
  • Science is based on laws
  • Deductive-nomological model (covering law model)
    an explanation of an event consists in
    covering the event under some law from which
    the explanation is deduced
  • How are conclusions validated?

7
Conjectures and RefutationsKarl Popper
  • The growth of scientific knowledge comes from
    overthrowing theories and replacing them with
    better, more satisfactory ones
  • Rejects the idea that science grows through
    making conjectures based on theoretical laws

8
Conjectures and RefutationsKarl Popper
  • Stronger theories can be distinguished because
    they
  • Contain the most empirical information
  • Are logically stronger
  • Can be more severely tested
  • A new theory must be tested empirically

9
Scientific Revolutions
  • Hypothetico-deductive method involves deducing
    consequences that should hold if the hypothesis
    is correct and then testing it experimentally
  • Normal science the idea that science
    accumulates truth by building on previous
    theories over time
  • Revolutionary science scientists sometimes
    reject traditional, time-honored theories in
    favor of new, incompatible ones

10
Scientific Revolutions
  • Anomalies new events that do not fit within the
    prevailing beliefs
  • Paradigm scientific achievement so deep and
    impressive that it defines daily practice for a
    community of scientists
  • Incommensurable describes the incompatibility
    of two paradigms and the lack of ability to
    determine which is more accurate

11
The Structure of Scientific RevolutionsThomas S.
Kuhn
  • Defines normal science as research that is based
    on past scientific achievements
  • Paradigms are scientific achievements that
    attract more adherents than others and are
    open-ended enough to leave room for more
    discoveries
  • Scientific revolutions occur when an old paradigm
    is replaced with a new one
  • When paradigms change, there are usually a
    significant shifts in the criteria for
    determining the legitimacy of the problems and
    solutions

12
Objectivity and Science
  • Prejudice is a prejudgment and should be avoided
  • A bias is the perspective a person has and it
    cannot be avoided but a person should be aware of
    it
  • Standpoint theory every person has a personal,
    social, cultural, and historical standpoint that
    limits and makes possible what they can know
    through discovering, analyzing, and critiquing
    standpoints. Popular among feminists and others.

13
Strong ObjectivitySandra Harding
  • The recognition of the role of standpoints in
    science and the production of knowledge leads to
    strong objectivity
  • Standpoint theory
  • Is not about understanding marginal lives more
    objectively, but about starting research from the
    location of the marginal life
  • Is not arguing that there is a universal
    description of a womans life that is a starting
    point for research

14
Science and Traditional Thought
  • How is scientific belief different from
    traditional religious belief?
  • Theodicy explains why bad things happen

15
Old Gods, New WorldsKwame Anthony Appiah
  • Explores the relationship between his background
    of traditional African belief and his
    understanding of European scientific belief
  • To understand how irrational beliefs are
    sustained, one must understand
  • The ritual and beliefs that support it
  • Historical sources of ritual and belief
  • What sustains the ritual and belief

16
Old Gods, New WorldsKwame Anthony Appiah
  • Rationality is an ideal because it is something
    that should be reached for (truth) but that
    cannot be completely realized
  • Traditional religious theory is like natural
    science in that they both explain, predict, and
    control
  • Religious belief explains life in terms of
    personal forces, while natural science explains
    it by impersonal forces (Robin Horton)
  • Modernity is more accommodative than traditional
    cultural beliefs

17
The Will to Truth
  • discursive formations are what Foucault
    describes as something that operates
    independently of the intentions and beliefs of
    individuals, such as language
  • What are the discursive formations of knowledge,
    science, or the desire for truth?

18
The Discourse on LanguageMichel Foucault
  • In every society, discourse is determined by
    certain procedures that are meant to avert the
    powers and dangers of discourse, cope with chance
    events, and avoid materiality
  • Discourse is determined by
  • Rules of exclusion
  • Opposition between reason and folly
  • Will to truth or knowledge

19
Truth and PowerMichel Foucault
  • The political economy of truth is characterized
    by truth being
  • Centered on scientific discourse
  • Subject to economic and political demand
  • Circulated widely
  • Produced and transmitted under control of
    political and economic apparatuses
  • The issue of political debate and social
    confrontation

20
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