Review of Philosophy of Science the Central Issues 2nd Edition Pdf
Chapter One: Down the Philosophical Rabbit Pigsty
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: one time or twice she had peeped into the science textbook her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice "without pictures or conversation?"
Then she spotted a Philosophical Rabbit running by. "Maybe he tin help brand sense of this," she
Affiliate Ane: Down the Philosophical Rabbit Hole
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: one time or twice she had peeped into the science textbook her sister was reading, but information technology had no pictures or conversations in information technology, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice "without pictures or conversation?"
Then she spotted a Philosophical Rabbit running past. "Perhaps he can help make sense of this," she thought. Burning with curiosity, she ran across the field afterward it, and fortunately was merely in time to see it popular downward a large rabbit-pigsty under the hedge. Down went Alice after it. Alice had not a moment to call back nearly stopping herself before she institute herself falling down a very deep well.
Chapter Ii: The Reduction
At the bottom she saw a tiny door. "How e'er can I get through that?" she wondered. Nearby there was a large mushroom growing, with a caterpillar on tiptop of it. It got downwardly and crawled away, merely remarking as information technology went, "One side will make you lot grow taller, and the other side will make you abound shorter. We call that a reduction in Wonderland." Alice nibbled the left side of the mushroom, and sure enough she became small enough to fit through the door.
On the other side she was greeted by some of the strange inhabitants of Wonderland. "I am certain glad that reduction let me fit through the niggling door!" Alice exclaimed.
A mouse named Quine replied, "Reductionism is the doctrine that every meaningful synthetic statement is logically equivalent to some sentence containing merely experiential terms joined together with logical connectives."
Alice was confused. "Can yous," she asked, "explain that to me?"
"Certainly," he replied. "An explanans gives an explanation about an explanandum..."
"No, no," interrupted Nagel, a curious looking mole, "that is a homogeneous reduction because disparate phenomena are reduced to a single gear up of laws."
Alice thought that seemed more like a unification, merely because she had just arrived she said nothing.
And so Nickles the Turtle interjected, "That is a Reduction 1, the achievement of postulational and ontological economy obtained by derivational reduction. On the other paw, Reduction 2 is a varied drove of intertheoretic relations rather than a unmarried, distinctive logical or mathematical relation."
"Only that is what I mean by an inhomogeneous reduction," said Nagel.
"Not really," Nickles retorted. "All your reductions corporeality to domain combining."
Alice was wondering why none of them described reduction the way scientists normally practise when a Mad Hatter named Tom arrived on the scene.
Chapter 3: The Mad Hatter'due south Tea Parties
The Mad Hatter took Alice by the hand and told her, "Let me explain the structure of all this scientific thinking to yous." He led her to the house of the Ptolemy Hare. In that location was a round tabular array set out under a tree in front of the house, with a tea party in progress. Alice exclaimed, "I love tea parties!"
The Mad Hatter replied, "We call them paradigms in Wonderland."
At that place was a teapot at the center of the table and teacups all effectually it. The table was spinning around and effectually.
Ptolemy Hare, who was seated at the table, noticed Alice. "Welcome to my paradigm. Accept you noticed that everything goes in circles?"
"Oh, yep, so many things do that here. Fifty-fifty the logic sometimes," replied Alice.
The Hare so told Alice that all the circles must circumduct around him, because, later on all, it is his paradigm.
The Mad Hatter muttered under his jiff, "(Just similar the philosophy of science revolves effectually me ever since I wrote my book.)"
The Hare added, "I tin tell where all the cups are by inventing epicycles that get around the circles the tabular array is making."
Alice asked if that was not a complicated way to find the cups. The Hare replied "Young lady, we accept been doing it this way for a k years, so by now we have it all figured out."
This all made Alice's head spin. She left the tabular array and spun round and round until she came to another tea political party, or paradigm she supposed, in progress.
Affiliate 4: Alice Shifts to a New Prototype
The Mad Hatter explained to Alice that her revolutions had led to a epitome shift. Alice thought to herself that so many revolutions would soon make her dizzy. At the party she had shifted to, the table was also spinning, with the teacups going effectually the teapot at the center. The Mad Hatter introduced Alice to Copernicus, who was seated and quietly watching the cups get around. He said, "Y'all can clearly run across the cups are revolving around the central teapot. This is a much simpler way to discover the teacups."
"I do call up this is a rather more sensible tea party than that of the Hare," Alice said. "But he did accept a very pretty teacup over in that location. Can I bring information technology here?"
"No!" replied the Mad Hatter emphatically. "A teacup in 1 prototype is not the same as i in some other. What one takes to be facts depends on the theory that describes them. It is as if they are speaking a different language at the other political party. One cannot fifty-fifty hold both paradigms in listen together and compare them."
"But whatsoever language can be translated into any other one," thought Alice. "And surely a teacup is nonetheless a teacup."
The Mad Hatter continued, "At that place is no reason to recollect that successive theories approximate more and more closely to the truth. The notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its 'real' counterpart in nature at present seems to me illusive in principle. The appeal of the Copernicus tea party is aesthetic rather than pragmatic."
Alice'south caput was kickoff to injure. Surely the Copernicus tea party had the ameliorate explanation. But good explanations did not seem to thing much around here.
The Mad Hatter then pointed out that there were many more tea parties, hosted by creatures chosen Newton and Einstein, among others. But he had studied the Copernicus political party first, and as information technology was very revolutionary compared to Ptolemy Hare's, information technology must follow that all the other parties are equally revolutionary.
"Well, revolutions were oh so very popular in the sixties when you lot wrote that stuff," thought Alice. But she said, "I remember learning about that in my cognitive psychology lessons. They called information technology 'priming'. The way you interpret later events is filtered on the basis of your first experience."
From the wait the Mad Hatter gave her, Alice realized 1 does not mention such things in Wonderland.
Chapter 5: Newton's Vacuous Party
The Mad Hatter and then led Alice to Professor Newton's party. But on the fashion they met a duck named Mellor, who told them, "Don't waste material your time going there. Their talk is all vacuous."
"How so?" asked Alice.
Mellor replied, "Newton'due south starting time constabulary of motility says bodies not acted on by other forces volition motility at a constant speed in a straight line. But his gravitational theory says all bodies exert gravitational forces on each other, meaning there cannot be a torso without other forces acting on it. Thus the police force is about something that cannot exist, therefore information technology is vacuous."
"Simply if we subtract the gravitational forces the law of inertia will apply!" exclaimed Alice.
Alice turned toward the Duchess Nancy, who had only joined them. "And then ladies can come up to these tea parties too?" she asked.
"As long every bit we are fifty-fifty more obtuse than the gentlemen," the Duchess replied, "That is the only way we tin can get tenure at this political party."
To demonstrate this, she explained, "It is not valid to apply vector arithmetic to subtract the gravitational forces because vectors are not real things. A effect based on something that is not existent cannot itself exist real."
Alice asked, "Could nosotros use this every bit an opening to explore the human relationship between mathematics and science?"
"Not in Wonderland," was her reply. "We simply utilize information technology to evidence science does not describe reality."
"So this is still another meaning of reduction," thought Alice, "Reducing everything to vacuous nonsense."
Chapter Six: Therapy for Reverend Bayes
At that moment, a Mr. Horwich joined the gathering. He announced, "Consider the hypothesis that all ravens are black."
"Well," said Alice, "I have never seen a white one."
Mr. Horwich replied, "Ah, only your shoe is white. That shows a not-black object is a non-raven."
"What does a shoe have to do with a raven?" asked Alice, thinking such logic is non-sense.
"Let me explain," Mr. Horwich continued. "Wittgenstein regarded philosophy equally therapeutic: its goal is to dissolve issues and resolve paradoxes past untying the knots in our thinking. A good philosophical theory is one that unravels and connects the misleading assumptions that take led united states into defoliation and error."
"You see," he added, "In Wonderland we love to lift a sentence from Wittgenstein to support our statement."
"And then you argue the opposite," said Alice, pleased with herself for learning the ways of Wonderland.
"Not necessarily, my dear," he responded, "You are bold we take some idea of what he was talking about in the beginning place."
"But let me keep. Therapeutic Bayesianism uses probability theory to shed lite on problems with theory verification. Let H be the hypothesis that all ravens are black, and E is the prove of your white shoe. The factor past which the rational degree of conventionalities in H is enhanced by E is indicated by the ratio of subjective probabilities, P(H|E) / P(H), for a rational person…" He then wrote a whole page of Bayesian probability notation on the blackboard to illustrate his signal.
"But all y'all did is bury the assumption that there is little connection between shoes and birds in all that math!" cried Alice. "You but created confusion past tying everything up in notational knots. I could employ some therapy for the headache you accept given me."
Affiliate Seven: The Trial
Alice was still recovering from her Bayesian headache when a cry of "The trial is starting time!" was heard in the distance. "Come on!" cried the Mad Hatter, and taking Alice by the hand they hurried off. The Rex and Queen of Hearts were seated on their thrones when they arrived, with a dandy crowd assembled about them. In the very middle of the court was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon information technology: they looked then good that information technology made Alice quite hungry to look at them— "I wish they'd go the trial washed," she thought, "and hand round the refreshments!"
'Herald, read the allegation!' said the Rex. The Herald read:
"The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
All on a summertime solar day:
The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,
And took them quite away!"
The King thanked the Herald, and said, "We must find the cause for the condition we discover ourselves in. After all, a cause is an insufficient but necessary office of an unnecessary but sufficient condition. I thereby phone call the first witness, Professor Fire Curve!"
The professor took the stand and began, "Showtime, we must consider the phrase 'he stole those tarts'. We must not attach as well bully an importance to 'what nosotros mean' by a phrase, and nosotros must be prepared to change whatever little we have said concerning this meaning as soon as the need arises. Flexibility and even sloppiness in semantic matters is a prerequisite of scientific progress."
"Hear, Hear!" cried some of the audience.
"It is important to have as many alternative hypotheses every bit possible," he continued. "It is bound to happen that the alternatives do not share a unmarried statement with the theories they criticize. The exist also facts which cannot exist unearthed except with the help of alternatives to the theory to exist tested and which get unavailable as presently as such alternatives are excluded."
He then concluded, "The kickoff step will therefore be the formulation of fairly full general assumptions that are not even so directly connected with observations; this means the first step will be the invention of a new metaphysics." To much cheering, the professor returned to his seat.
The Rex said, "Indeed, we must consider all verification-transcendent truth-conditions. Call the side by side witness."
The Mad Hatter stood up and said, "If some of these hypotheses are different paradigms, there may be no meaningful correspondence between them. Call back that the option of paradigm is a matter of aesthetics."
Eddington the Comport interjected, "For example, which tarts are really there: the solid ones we can gustatory modality, or those equanimous of speeding electrical charges and are therefore mostly emptiness?"
"If the meaning is empty," said the King, "that saves a world of problem, you know, as nosotros needn't try to observe whatever. But allow me telephone call the showtime witness for the prosecution."
Musgrave the Muskrat took the stand. "Realists," he began, "retrieve science explains facts near the world and they think a realist philosophy of science explains facts about science."
A murmur of disapproval rose from the oversupply. He continued, "Can yous not all run into the tarts in question? A real caption does not remove ane mystery past postulating another one."
The Duchess cried out, "Take off your glasses. What exercise yous see at present?"
The Muskrat removed his thick spectacles, and blinked a few times. "I can't see a matter. Everything is a blur," he finally said.
The Duchess exclaimed, "And then the tarts are conspicuously a event of the instrument with which you notice them. The instrument is based on theory, as is the existence of the tarts. The tarts, your glasses, indeed all of our linguistic communication is thoroughly theory-laden, or theory-infected, fifty-fifty theory-impregnated."
"That is non entirely appropriate language for a children'southward book," the King of Hearts warned. "Nonetheless, if one cannot show the reality of the Knave or the tarts, and it is not possible to distinguish betwixt alternate hypotheses, I must detect the Knave innocent. Court dismissed!"
"Everything is getting curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice. "This whole affair is nothing but a business firm of cards!"
Final Affiliate: The Awakening
At this the whole pack of cards rose up into the air, and came flying downward upon her: she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sis. "Wake up, Alice love!" said her sister; "Why, what a long sleep y'all've had!"
"Oh, I've had such a curious dream!" said Alice. "I was in a very strange world. For a place chosen Wonderland there was lilliputian sense of wonder about the mystery and beauty of science. All the creatures were obsessed with staking out intellectual territory for themselves based on a selective interpretation of the meaning of words. They love to talk about how science is underdetermined…"
"Yous mean that there are no definitive proofs?" asked her sister.
"Aye," replied Alice, "Only philosophy is even more underdetermined. Yous tin can never prove objects or theories stand for real things, any more than you can evidence any particular philosophy is correct. Information technology makes more sense to ask how the choice of a certain philosophy affects the practice of science. Maybe instrumentalists and realists have different biases, and it is simply all-time to have some of each."
"Instead nosotros become a lot of talk about reductionism, while they all reduce science into arbitrary collections of components," Alice continued. "And non once did they mention the concept of emergent backdrop, which are rather key to understanding science."
Her sis tried to console her, "It all sounds like a bit of a nightmare."
"Yeah," Alice sighed, "If we ever applied the demarcation trouble to philosophy, the results might non be pretty."
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31844.Philosophy_of_Science
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