Sisp 202/Phil 287 Philosophy of Science

SiSP 202/Phil 287--Philosophy of Science

Joe RouseSpring 2013

Office Hours (Russell House 202; Allbritton 219; phone x3655; email ):

Mondays 10-11 (RH); Thursdays 11-12 (All), Fridays 1-2 (All) or by appt. (RH)

Texts (Broad Street): Carl Hempel, The Philosophy of Natural Science

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Ian Hacking, Representing and Intervening

On-Line Reserve:

Otto Neurath et al.,"The Vienna Circle, or The Scientific Conception of the World"

Richard Boyd, “Realism, Approx. Truth, and Phil. Method,” pp. 215-16, 221-24, 226-31

Helen Longino, "Essential Tensions Phase II”

Elisabeth Lloyd, “Bias” (The Case of the Female Orgasm, ch. 8)

Arthur Fine, The Shaky Game, pp. 2, 9-11, 112-37, 147-50

Michael Friedman, “Explanation and Scientific Understanding”

Wesley Salmon, “Scientific Explanation: Causation and Unification”

Nancy Cartwright-1, “From Causation to Explanation and Back”

Philip Kitcher, “Scientific Significance”

Catherine Elgin, “Understanding in Art and Science”

James Bono, “Science, Discourse, and Literature”

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things, ch. 2, 9

Jessica Bolker, “Model Systems in Developmental Biology”

Robert Brandon, “Does Biology Have Laws? The Experimental Evidence”

Sandra Mitchell, Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism, pp. 147-56

William Bechtel, Discovering Cellular Mechanisms, ch. 2

Paul Teller, “Twilight of the Perfect Model Model”

Andrea Woody, “Telltale Signs”

Marc Lange, “Laws and Theories”

Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, pp. 3-18

Nancy Cartwright-2, The Dappled World, pp. 1-10,16-19, 23-28, 31-34, 49-52

William Wimsatt, Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings, ch. 1-2 (pp. 3-25)

Annemarie Mol, The Body Multiple, ch. 2-3

Karen Barad, "Meeting the Universe Halfway"

Text Reserve: T. Nickles, ed, Thomas Kuhn (Rouse, “Kuhn’s Philosophy...” pp. 101-21)

Course Requirements: 1) Successful completion of at least 9 of 14 designated 1-page, pass/fail graded discussion papers (assigned topics at end of the syllabus!); these papers, due at the beginning of the relevant class, help articulate and clarify your grasp of central issues in the reading (10% of grade for completing these papers)

2) One comparative, expository paper, to aid and check your grasp of issues, claims, and arguments among Hempel and Kuhn (30%)

3) Two papers (approx. 5-7 pp. each) on topics of your choice to take and defend a position on an issue relevant to the course material (each 30% of grade). Grading will assess the accuracy and depth of your understanding of the readings and discussions, and your own critical analysis and argument.

Grading Options: This course may be taken either for a letter grade, or on a CR/U basis; however, in order to receive a grade of CR, all assigned work must be successfully completed, and the graded papers must be designated at least "satisfactory" (roughly equivalent to a C grade)

Moodle: All course assignments, both graded and ungraded, should be submitted electronically in Microsoft Word through the drop-boxes on the Moodle course calendar.

HONOR CODE: All course assignments are submitted under the Honor Code, as a commitment to the ethos of an academic community. Philosophical work is collaborative, but you must then take responsibility for your own contribution to that common conversation. Reference to or use of published or posted materials outside of the assigned readings must be properly cited. Please include the following pledge at the end of all graded assignments:

In accordance with the Honor Code, I affirm that this work is my own and all content taken from other sources has been properly acknowledged.

DISABILITIES: It is Wesleyan University’s policy to provide reasonable accommodations to students with documented disabilities. Students, however, are responsible for registering with Disabilities Services, in addition to making requests known to me in a timely manner. If you require accommodations in this class, please make an appointment with me as soon as possible during the the semester, so that appropriate arrangements can be made. The procedures for registering with Disabilities Services can be found at

Course Expectations: This course is designed for informal lectures mixed with discussion. It will not work, and you will not get much from it, unless you come to each class having already read the assigned readings. Your contribution to the class sessions is important (although you will likely not all want to participate in the same ways or with the same frequency). Thoughtful and informed questions, comments and arguments do not merely develop your own understanding; they also contribute to what your fellow students and I will learn from the course.

Course Description:

This course is a basic introduction to the philosophy of science, organized to follow some of the main developments in philosophical reflection upon science over the past half century. It also serves as a core course for the Science in Society Program, which aims to provide students with a broader understanding of science and medicine as historically and socially situated ways of knowing and acting in the world.

What do the sciences aim to achieve? Why are those achievements valuable or important? Put another way, what norms govern scientific work, and why are they authoritative for us? How should scientific success or failure be assessed, and how can successes in one area of science be emulated elsewhere? Moreover, what would be good grounds for accepting one answer to these questions over another? Such questions initially motivate philosophical reflections upon science.

Philosophical discussions of science bear a complex relation to how scientific work is actually done and what it achieves. Simply to identify the aims and norms of science with what a particular science actually seeks or achieves would trivialize the questions of whether it is successful, and whether it could be done better or should be done differently. Yet if the norms are too far removed from actual scientific practice, why presume that these norms are relevant to the assessment of science? Some philosophers think we can presume that science seeks knowledge of the natural world, and can begin by asking about the standards of justification genuine knowledge must meet. Such epistemological questions make skepticism a live option; perhaps no human inquiry has met, or can meet, the standards for genuine knowledge.

Philosophy of science takes a different tack. Some scientific achievements are sufficiently impressive that they should guide conceptions of what genuine knowledge or understanding of nature involves. Reflection might still yield aims and norms with respect to which science can do better, but it cannot yield norms with respect to which scientific practices fail across the board (although perhaps some aspiring scientific practices fail). Yet we must still identify what aims and norms actually do govern our best scientific practices (including whether all sciences should answer to the same norms, or whether there might be different epistemic aims and standards for different sciences).

The course divides into two parts. The first part introduces some interpretations of science (and of philosophical reflection on science) that have influentially shaped subsequent philosophical work, even though these views are now widely criticized and rarely accepted as a whole. The second part of the course will take up some of the more interesting issues and approaches currently being pursued by philosophers of science. The first, "historical" part of the course begins with the logical empiricist project of understanding science in terms of its logical structure and its accountability to empirical evidence, an approach which was widely accepted from the 1930's into the 1970's. We then consider Thomas Kuhn’s influential “post-empiricist” account of science as successively developing alternative practices and worldviews, with their own standards of justification that cannot be neutrally evaluated when they conflict. The issues raised in our critical discussions of logical empiricism and Kuhnian post-empiricism will inform our understanding of subsequent claims and arguments.

Here are some questions we will ask: Does science have a distinctive logical structure, method, or goal? How are scientific theories related to experiments and observations? What are theories, and what do they accomplish? What is scientific explanation, and how does it enable better understanding? What contributions do laboratories and experiments make to scientific understanding? What about thought experiments, models, and simulations? Can scientific knowledge be understood apart from the activity of research that produces it? Is scientific knowledge cumulative, or are there "revolutionary" reconstructions in science? Are revolutions rationally justifiable according to shared or objective standards? Should science aim to find out what the world is "really" like (and can it do so?), or should it just try to help us cope with it better, organize and predict experience, or make sense of the world in ways intelligible to us? Should science seek general laws (showing what is necessary in nature), or is there a place for sciences of what is variable or contingent? Does (or should) science aim for a systematic, unified understanding of the world as a whole, or does the disciplinary structure of the sciences result from an ineliminable disunity of science and/or the world? What role should "values" and social or political interests play in science? Can science be understood apart from its social and political context? How is science related to technology? How have changes in the resources available or needed for research, the scale and capacities of instrumentation, professionalized disciplines, and science/technology relations affected scientific practices and norms?

SCHEDULE OF TOPICS, READINGS, AND ASSIGNMENTS

*dates of ungraded papers

1. Logical Empiricism

JanM 28 Topic: Introduction

Reading: Neurath (OL)

W* 30Topic: Confirming & Falsifying Hypotheses

Reading: Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science, ch. 2-3

Assignment: 1ST UNGRADED PAPER

FebM 4Topic: Confirmation (cont.)

Reading: Hempel ch. 4

FebW* 6Topic: Scientific Explanation

Reading: Hempel, ch. 5

Assignment: 2ND UNGRADED PAPER

M 11Topics Theoretical Explanation; Logical Empiricism Wrapup

Reading: Hempel, ch. 6

2. Kuhn and Post-Empiricism

W* 13Topic: Normal Science and Paradigms— MAKE-UP CLASS

Reading: Kuhn, SSR chapters 1-5, and pp. 174-91

Assignment: 3rd UNGRADED PAPER

M 18 Topic: From Anomalies to Crisis

Reading: Kuhn, chapters 6-8

W*20Topic: "Revolutions" and Incommensurability

Required Reading: Kuhn, ch. 9-12; Rec.Reading: Rouse (Reserve)

Assignment: 4th UNGRADED PAPER

Th214:15 p.m., Philosophy/Science in Society Colloquium, Professor Philip Kitcher, Columbia University, Russell House, topic TBA

M 25Topic: Rationality and Progress

Reading: Kuhn, chapter 13 and pp. 191-210; Hacking, R&I Intro

Assignment: PAPER TOPICS HANDED OUT–DUE Thu March 7

3. Current Topics I: Realism, Antirealism, and Nonrealism

W* 27 Topic: Scientific Realism

Reading: Boyd (OL)

Assignment: 5th UNGRADED PAPER

MarM 4Topic: Empiricism as a Critical Stance

Req Reading: Longino (OL); Recommended Reading: Lloyd (OL)

W 6Topic: Nonrealism: a More Natural Attitude?

Reading: Fine (OL)

Th 7Assignment: KUHN/HEMPEL PAPER DUE 9 a.m.

SPRING BREAK

4. Current Topics II: Explanation, Understanding, and Scientific Significance

M*25Topic: Explanation as Unification

Reading: Friedman (OL: skim/skip p 16-17)

Assignment: 6th UNGRADED PAPER

W 27Topic: Causality and Causal Explanation

Reading: Salmon (OL); Cartwright-1 (OL)

SCHEDULE OF TOPICS, READINGS, AND ASSIGNMENTS (cont.)

AprM* 1Topic: Explanation and Scientific Significance

Reading: Kitcher, “Scientific Significance” (OL)

Assignment: 7th UNGRADED PAPER

W 3Topic: Metaphor and Scientific Understanding

Reading: Elgin (OL), complete; Bono (OL), pp. 59-67 (top), 72-82

5. Current Topics III: Experimentation

AprM* 8Topic: Experiment & Experimental Phenomena

Reading: Hacking, ch. 9, 13, 16

Assignment: 8th UNGRADED PAPER

W 10Topic: Experimental Systems and their Dynamics

Reading: Rheinberger (OL), p. 24-37, 133-141

Recommended Reading: Weinberg (OL)

Assignment: 11th UNGRADED PAPER

MayW* 1Topic: Unity and Multiplicity in Medical Science

Reading: Mol (2 OL selections)

Assignment: 12th UNGRADED PAPER

May M 6Topic: Agency and Measurement

Reading: Barad (OL), pp. 161-79

W* 8Topic 1: Agential Realism, or Living in the Material World

Topic 2: Reflections on the Course

Reading: Barad, 179-89

Assignment: 13th UNGRADED PAPER

Tu 14 2ND OPEN-TOPIC PAPER & 14TH UNGRADED PAPER DUE 5 p.m.

Ungraded Paper Assignments

These "working papers" enable you to articulate succinctly your initial understanding of a central concept or issue in a text you have read for the class. They should not exceed 1 double-spaced page with normal margins! The rhetorical niceties of introductions and conclusions should be dispensed with. You also need not repeat the question. Imagine your paper as a transcript (edited for grammar) of what you would ideally like to say if the assigned question were asked at the beginning of class. In some cases, the main question is accompanied by a preparatory or follow-up question (marked BRIEFLY:) intended to be answered in one or two sentences. Assume in every case that you are simply presenting the position taken by the author of the assigned text.

ASSIGNED TOPICS

1. Wednesday, January 30: BRIEFLY: What does a test of a scientific hypothesis consist in? QUESTION: What are "auxiliary hypotheses" and how do they matter to scientific tests?

2. Wednesday, February 6: BRIEFLY: What does a scientific explanation accomplish? QUESTION: What are "laws," and why are they important for explanation?

3. Wednesday, February 13: What is a "paradigm" (i.e., what kind of thing is it?), and what are its principal functions in "normal science?"

4. Wednesday, February 20: Why is it supposedly difficult to compare and assess the merits of competing paradigms?

5. Wednesday, February 27: Neither Kuhn nor the logical empiricists accepted “scientific realism” (roughly, the view that there really are unobservable entities in the world that correspond, at least approximately, to our best theoretical descriptions in the “mature” sciences). QUESTION: What is Boyd’s principal line of argument in favor of the “metaphysical” view that theoretical claims about unobservable entities are at least approximately true?

6. Monday, March 25 BRIEFLY: What does Friedman mean by “unification?” QUESTIONS: Why is unification in this sense supposed to explain the phenomena that are unified by an explanatory account? How (if at all) does Friedman’s view differ significantly from Hempel’s account of explanation as logical deduction from laws?

7. Monday, April 1: BRIEFLY: How are familiar philosophical questions about explanation related to Kitcher’s question about why some truths are scientifically significant? QUESTION: What is the most important difference between Kitcher’s conception of why scientific claims are significant and Hempel’s or Friedman’s implicit answer to the same question (don’t worry about differences between Hempel and Friedman)?

8. Monday, April 8: BRIEFLY: In your own words, what is a "phenomenon" in Hacking's preferred sense? MAIN QUESTION: Why does Hacking think that most (but not all) phenomena are created rather than found in nature? FOLLOW-UP QUESTION: How is this view supposed to be compatible with his commitment to a kind of scientific realism?

9. Monday, April 15: PRIMARY QUESTION: Why do the contingency and the complexity of biological systems raise doubts about the possibility of finding biological laws? SECONDARY QUESTION: What are the principal differences between Brandon’s and Mitchell’s responses to these doubts?

UNGRADED PAPER ASSIGNMENTS (cont.)

10. Monday, April 22: BRIEFLY: What is a “model” on Teller’s view, and what do models accomplish? QUESTIONS: For any ONE of Woody’s three examples (the ideal gas law, the periodic table, molecular orbitals) discuss whether and how this fits or conflicts with Teller’s account of theoretical modeling and its functions.

11. Monday, April 29: Both Cartwright and Wimsatt argue that philosophers of science (and some scientists) have given a misleading picture of how science does (or should) function in the world we actually live in. MAIN QUESTION: For one of these two philosophers, which features of us, the world, or science are the principal locus of this misunderstanding, in which respects? MORE BRIEFLY: What are the primary adjustments that they think are needed to give us a more “realistic” philosophy of science? BRIEF FOLLOW-UP: For whichever philosopher you did NOT write about (Cartwright or Wimsatt), what are the primary differences in emphasis on the first question from the philosopher you did write about?

12. Wednesday, May 1: Why does Mol think that an adequate understanding of medical practice requires acknowledging both a multiplicity of conceptions of patients’ bodies, and a recognition of their unity, expressed in the title “The Body Multiple”? How does Mol claim that such unity within multiplicity is primarily achieved without contradiction or incoherence?

13. Wednesday, May 8: Barad describes her conception of science as "agential realism." QUESTIONS: What features of her view is she highlighting by calling it "realist?" What does she mean by its being "agential" or "intra-active?"

14. (With Final Paper) QUESTION: What has been the most significant single contribution (or challenge) to your understanding of science that has emerged from this course, and why has it been important to you?