-> We’ve now covered nearly a century of argument about science, now we’re connecting three main ideas
Empricism
Naturalism
Scientific realism
But there are conflicts between them, or between pairs of them
For example, scientific realism requires being opposed to some central ideas in the empiricist tradition
To summarize:
Empiricism says the only source of (scientific) knowledge is experience
Naturalism says that the only way to resolve philosophical problems is by approaching them within a scientific picture of ourselves and our place in the universe.
Scientific realism says that even the unobservable structures of the world can be be described by science
-> Empiricism is the source of many problems
Extreme empiricism: It doesn’t even make sense to talk or think about what might lie beyond experience
Moderate empiricism: It’s hard to see how experience itself can support a hypothesis about structures lying behind experience
-> Empiricism vs Scientific Realists
Empiricists:
There’ll always be a range of alternative theories compatible with all of our evidence, so it’s not possible to have empirical grounds for choosing one over the other and saying it represents how the world really is. If we have no empirical grounds for that kind of choice, then we have no grounds at all.
Empiricists often use a foundationalist structure, and say that we start from a starting point where we only have direct access to our ideas and experiences, working out from there. Naturalism is opposed to the idea of starting within the circle and then working your way out.
The Sociologist Argument:
Empiricist tradition in philosophy is a collection of myths.
In actual science, experience isn’t the arbiter of theoretical disputes
-> Naturalism requires a form of scientific realism
The Sociologist Argument:
We must abandon the philosophical myths about science’s contact with reality.
-> Godfrey-Smith’s take
Two-part argument:
A general philosophical discussion regarding epistemology
Empiricism as a view about science
It’s wrong to think of two layers or domains in the world:
One which is accessible to us and familiar - the domain of experiences a.k.a. domain of the observable.
The other inaccessible, mysterious, ‘theoretical’ and problematic.
We are biological systems embedded in a world containing objects of all sizes and at all different kinds of distance and remove from us.
Our mechanisms of perception and action give us a variety of different kinds of contact wth these objects.
Our ‘access’ to the world via thought and theory is really a complicated kind of causal interaction which is constantly being expanded, as our technology improves
Parts of the world that at one time were the subject of speculative inferences are now much more directly observed and evaluated.
To solve the ‘undetermination’ argument, you learn what kind of reliability you have in your attempts to know about the world.
You can apply the same approach to inferences and modeling strategies in science by asking:
What sort of reliability are we able to achieve sing different sorts of scientific reasoning and model-building strategies?
Over time what was once inaccessible and only ambiguously model-able has now become routinely accessible and observable. (e.g. DNA)
You can meta-analyze how well you did after those things become accessible and routine to help you do better in the future
-> Science is the strategy of subjecting even the biggest theoretical ideas, questions, and disputes to testing by means of observation.
The strategy is to attempt to assess big ideas by exposing them to experience.
The Scientific Strategy is:
To construe ideas
To embed those ideas in surrounding frameworks
To develop those ideas in such a way that exposure to experience is sought even in the case of the most general and ambitious hypotheses about the universe
-> We need to focus on the development and structure of a socially organized way of carrying out the basic scientific strategy.
The distinctive features of science as a social structure are found along 2 dimensions:
the organization of work at a given time – science is able to coordinate the energies of diverse individuals in an effective way (ch 11)
the organization of work across time, the relationships between different times, and with the transmission of ideas between scientific generations – scientific work is cumulative.
Balance between competition and cooperation
the message of Merton, Hull, and Kitcher
Balance between criticism and trust
the message of Kuhn and kind of Shappin
The cumulative structure of science can be gained and lost.
In terms of cooperation and competition within the organization of scientific work at a time, Robert Boyle helped set up a new kind of culture of controlled criticism and a new kind of network of trust.
Alchemy: The precursor to chemistry. A combination of practical work based on detailed recipes and an amazingly strange set of accompanying theories.
-> Modern science involves both a general strategy and a complex social structure that carries out the strategy.
What are the key issues in the near future for philosophy?
What role do frameworks, paradigms, and similar constructs haven our understanding of theory changes science?
What differences are there between different fields and different subcultures science? (e.g. relation between competition and cooperation in science)
We don’t have a theory of representation yet
The idea of looking closely at the relation between the reward structure in science and epistemological issues is a big advance in theories of testing and evidence..
The field is less dominated by questions about language, instead focusing on model-building as a crucial part of scientific work