Professional Documents
Culture Documents
12/07/21 1
Domain of this talk
Epistemology:
Branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge
Ontology :
Study of conceptions of reality and the nature of being
12/07/21 3
Heliocentrism & Church
Western Christian biblical references:
Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30 include text stating that
"the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved."
In the same tradition, Psalm 104:5 says,
"the LORD set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.“
Further, Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that
"And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place, etc."[74]
Observation
Bacon (1561-1626)
Repetition
Induction(1)
Induction is dominant mode of inquiry
Hypothesis
Truth observed through empirical study and Deduction or generalization
experimentation
Consequence or prediction
Rational and unbiased examination of nature
Testing
Induction(2)
12/07/21 5
Laws of motion
"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot
explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all
things and knows all that is or can be done."[17]
Newton may have rejected the church's doctrine of the Trinity.
Newton refashioned the world governed by an
interventionist God into a world crafted by a God that
designs along rational and universal principles.[24] These
principles were available for all people to discover, allowed
people to pursue their own aims fruitfully in this life, not Sir Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727)
the next, and to perfect themselves with their own rational
powers.[25]
12/07/21 6
Epistemology
Knowledge is justified true belief
The Gettier problem
It is our ideas
which give form
to reality, not
Locke Berkeley Hume reality which
gives form to our Kant
12/07/21 8
Empiricism ideas.
Logical Problem of Induction
Deductive logic (drastically Inductive logic
oversimplified): All copper we have tested conducts
All A are B. electricity.
X is an A. X is a piece of copper yet to be tested.
Therefore X is B. Therefore X will conduct electricity.
12/07/21 9
Logical Positivism
Vienna Circle included Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Viktor Kraft,
Hans Hahn, and Herbert Feigl.
12/07/21 10
Goodman’s Riddle:
Grue and Bleen
Henry Nelson Goodman (1906-1998)
When there is more than one inductive conclusion that is consistent with
our observations, which one should we chose?
Grue: Observed before or at t and green or observed after t and blue.
Let t be midnight, Decmber 31 2009.
Then all observed emeralds are grue / green.
Should we infer by simple induction that all emeralds are grue or green?
Bleen: X is examined before the year 2000 and found to be blue, or X is not examined until after the
year 2000 and found to be green
Green: X is green if examined before the year 2000 and found to be grue, or X is not examined until
after the year 2000 and found to be bleen.
12/07/21 11
you can never justify any scientific theory, but you can falsify it
12/07/21 13
Falsification of
Darwinian Evolution
Human DNA should be more similar
Popper said that natural selection "is not a testable scientific theory but a to great apes than other mammals. If
metaphysical research program". this is not the case, then common
descent is falsified.
However, Popper later said "I have changed my mind about the testability
and logical status of the theory of natural selection, and I am glad to have the
opportunity to make a recantation."
"Darwin's own most important contribution to the theory of evolution, his theory of
natural selection, is difficult to test." However, "[t]here are some tests, even some
experimental tests; and in some cases, such as the famous phenomenon known as
'industrial melanism', we can observe natural selection happening under our very
eyes, as it were. Nevertheless, really severe tests of the theory of natural selection
are hard to come by, much more so than tests of otherwise comparable theories in
physics or chemistry."
The model of cultural evolution known as memetics is as of yet unfalsifiable
12/07/21 14
Popperian Cosmology
World 1: the world of physical objects and events, including biological entities
World 2: the world of mental objects and events
World 3: the world of the products of the human mind
12/07/21 15
Critical Rationalism
Critical Rationalism: Scientific theories, and any other claims
to knowledge, can and should be rationally criticized, and (if
they have empirical content) can and should be subjected to
tests which may falsify them.
Fallibilism
Critical Rationalism is the acceptance of human fallibility
Evolutionary Epistemology
The mere fact that a theory has survived the most rigorous
empirical tests available does not, in the calculus of
probability, predict its ability to survive future testing
Evolutionary epistemologists argue that units of knowledge
themselves, particularly scientific theories, evolve according to
selection
12/07/21 Brian Skyrms 16
Gm1m 2
F
r2
Is it really falsifiable
Newtonian Gravitation Theory: Predicts that every acceleration of
every body can be traced to an interaction with some other body,
according to their masses and the distance between them.
What to do when we observe an acceleration that has no visible source? Is the theory refuted?
12/07/21 17
Duhem-Quine Thesis
In the first half of the 19th century, astronomers were observing the path of the planet
Uranus to see if it conformed to the path predicted by Newton's law of gravitation;
It didn't.
Possible Explanations:
Telescopic observations were wrong because of some unknown factor Pierre Duhem (1861 – 1916)
Newton's laws were in error
God was causing the perturbation in order to show the hubris of modern science
underdetermination of theories
Dark Matter
12/07/21 18
Reductionism
Complex system is nothing
but the sum of its parts
Descartes argued the world was like a machine, its
pieces like clockwork mechanisms, and that the
machine could be understood by taking its pieces
apart, studying them, and then putting them back
together to see the larger picture. Daniel Dennett
Kuhn argues that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a "series of peaceful interludes punctuated by
intellectually violent revolutions", and in those revolutions "one conceptual world view is replaced by another".
Paradigm: Kuhn’s idea that a scientific theory is not just a set of theoretical principles. It is an entire world-view
12/07/21 20
Multiple Realizability
Contrary to the famous claim of type-identity theory, it was
not true that "pain is identical to C-fibre firing."
Against Type-Identity
Hilary Whitehall Putnam
functional isomorphism = "Two systems are functionally
isomorphic if there is a correspondence between the states of one
and the states of the other that preserves functional relations."
Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed
largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviorism. Its
core idea is that mental states (beliefs, desires, being in pain, etc.) are
constituted solely by their functional role — that is, their causal relations to other
mental states, sensory inputs, and behavioral outputs.
12/07/21 21
Radical Translation /
Indeterminacy of Translation
Imagine you come across a new tribe in the Brazilian jungle, and the task is to interpret their
language: to find out word-meanings and rules of grammar.
This situation is entirely different from second-language learning. There are no familiar-
sounding words, no teacher who speaks both languages, etc.
Walking along one day on the newly-discovered coast of Australia, Captain Cook saw an extraordinary
animal leaping through the bush.
"What's that?" he asked one of the aborigines accompanying him.
"Uh - gangurru." he replied - or something like that. Captain Cook duly noted down the name of the peculiar beast
as 'Kangaroo'.
Some time later, Cook had the opportunity to compare notes with Captain King, and mentioned the kangaroo.
"No, no, Cook", said King, "the word for that animal is 'meenuah' - I've checked it carefully.
"So what does 'kangaroo' mean?"
"Well, I think," said King "it probably means something like 'I don't know'...”
logic
12/07/21 24
Claims (Lessons) from this talk
Truth is almost unattainable
Theory of Meaning and linguistic plays an
important role in our knowledge
Metaphysics as part of our knowledge is
interconnected with other branches of
knowledge and therefore is (not) falsifiable
Depending on your lifestyle philosophy can
have pragmatic consequences for you
12/07/21 25