2 <strong>Topic II. A Common Shared Reality and Scientific…
Topic II. A Common Shared Reality and Scientific Advancement
- Science is grounded in belief in a common, shared reality with some degree of regularity.
- Science is based in the assumption that we all share a public reality. We will contrast theories of truth as correspondence vs truth as coherence, as well as underdetermination and social factors in science. Despite many limitations, science is effective primarily because it is self-correcting; that is, it involves a constant critique of the reliability and validity of our measures and the reality of the entities they seek to measure. Science assumes (or has come to believe in) an objective reality that we all share, which is at least in part knowable.
- Addressing the Question: Why is Science Effective?
- The Reality Assumption
- Science as Self-Correcting
TOPIC RESOURCES
EXAMPLES
- Introductory Examples
- When scientists first developed thermometers, several different substances were used. The problem was, these substances had different rates of expansion, yielding different ways to quantify "temperature." For example, water, alcohol, and mercury expand at different rates: if you set up thermometers with "0 degrees" equalized, each of the substances will hit "100 degrees" at a different temperature. How, then, do we know which kind of thermometer to use? Is the temperature "really" 100 degrees when a mercury thermometer says so, or when a water thermometer says so?
- Exemplary Quotes
- “Science means, first of all, a certain dispassionate method. To suppose that it means a certain set of results that one should pin one’s faith upon and hug forever is sadly to mistake its genius, and degrades the scientific body to the status of a sect.” – William James, “What Psychical Research Has Accomplished,” in Will to Believe
- “They seem to think that anybody’s opinion is as good as anybody else’s on this matter where there is only one reality out there. It may be hard to figure out, but it’s still there anyway.”
- “Either the earth is going to warm by >4 degrees over the next 50 years because of human-added greenhouse gasses or not—whether or not the proponents on each side of the debate are biased! ‘Nature always bats last.’”
- Cautionary Quotes: Mistakes, Misconceptions, & Misunderstandings
- Commonest mistakes are: (a.) taking the logs of the science-raft for "ideals" rather than claims and (b.) not grasping just how science is self-correcting.
- “Well, I just happen to think that if you punish people whenever they misread a word they will learn to read much faster—and most people agree with me. So...”
- "Science is just another religion, no better and no worse than any other. They use textbooks as their scripture, and scientists are their priests. You should choose whichever authority feels most right to you or stick with the authority you were raised with, because there's no other way to choose between them."
LEARNING GOALS
- A. ATTITUDES
- Appreciate how scientific theories can be trustworthy even though past theories have turned out to be wrong.
- Appreciate how science can be both always subject to challenge, yet (often) rightly depended on for practical decision-making.
- Optimism in capacity of science to help solve problems & improve representations, for both political & personal decision-making.
- B. CONCEPT ACQUISITION
- Assumption of Reality
- Scientists assume an external reality, which is shared by and affects all people and has enough regularity to lend itself to induction. This external reality is what scientists seek to describe accurately.
- Empirical Evidence
- Science is based on appeal to empirical evidence, which is publicly accessible on the assumption of reality (although may require special instruments and/or expertise to acquire).
- Validity of Concepts
- The extent to which a scientific concept is responding to some real external thing.
- Science vs. Priesthood
- Science gains its authority from its self-questioning character, not from the concentrated power of individuals.
- The process of science leads to self-correction through:
- a. Active experimentation & observation
- b. Peer review
- c. Rewards for better theories, even those that contradict current theories
- d. Responsiveness to new evidence/actively open-minded thinking
- e. Replicability and replication
- f. Multiple approaches to each problem allow convergent evidence
- g. Interconnected nature of science, and ongoing attempts to connect the pieces that are not yet connected (e.g. Biological Synthesis of genetics & natural selection as a successful instance, cognitive neuroscience as an instance of integration currently in progress, the challenge of connecting quantum physics to general relativity…).
- The Raft vs. the Pyramid metaphors for science
- a. The Raft: Every scientific claim is subject to question and reevaluation; we can use the rest of our scientific knowledge to question any one claim at a time, though we cannot question the entire edifice at once.
- b. The Pyramid: Science builds on fixed foundations to ever higher levels of knowledge.
- Different approaches to truth in science
- a. Operationalism
- Whatever definitions work for the time being are equally valid.
- b. Conventionalism
- There is one correct answer, fixed by society.
- c. Realism
- There is one correct answer, fixed by the world.
- Social Constructivism
- “The reality [of a scientific entity or fact] is formed as a consequence of stabilization [of a controversy].” (Latour & Woolgar, 1986)
- Badging
- The phenomenon of people using claims of fact to express their identity or group affiliation.
- e.g. Midwestern farmers denying that climate change is real, even while they buy equipment and make preparations for climate change that will affect their crops.
- C. CONCEPT APPLICATION
- Defend critiques of science based on its provisionality by appeal to its self-correcting properties
- Explain and contrast the metaphors of raft vs. pyramid for science
- Identify strengths/weaknesses in Raft & Pyramid metaphors for science
- e.g. Some scientific theories are more central than others, and harder to replace. But all scientific theories are, in principle, open to revision in light of new evidence.
- Distinguish concept validity from (1) a social-constructivist picture of scientific concepts free-floating in a world of mutual agreement among power brokers, not moored to a universally shared reality, and (2) subjective preferences.
- a. Identify cases where concept validity is expected
- e.g. What is a quark/electron/boson? What is an animal?
- b. Identify cases where social constructivism might be a good approach
- e.g. What is her name? What is the name of this city?
- c. Identify cases where preference might be sufficient
- Which chocolate is tastiest? Which color palette is prettiest?
- Use the concept of validity to assess scientific claims, contrasting cases where the validity of the concept is on stronger vs. weaker footing.
- a. In straightforward cases
- e.g. Everyone or nearly everyone can agree about which animals are cats, and consequently agree that most cats have fur, etc.
- b. In less straightforward cases
- e.g. Claims about bosons, dark energy, what sort of black hole is at the center of the Milky Way
- c. In difficult cases
- e.g. Disagreement is rife over what intelligence is, so claims about the relative intelligence of two groups of people are more questionable.
- Distinguish when operationalist, conventionalist, and realist approaches to scientific claims & definitions are being used.
- Recognize cases where apparent claims of fact may also be characterized as expressions of affiliation or identity (i.e. badging).
- e.g. Stated acceptance of creationism and rejection of evolution is only very weakly responsive to education and strongly associated with affiliative factors like religion, religiosity, and political ideology, suggesting that it may be (to some extent) a result of badging.
- Falsifiability: Scientific claims are taken more seriously if they are testable.
CLASS ELEMENTS
- Suggested Readings & Reading Questions
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- Reading Question: What is the “fundamental philosophical puzzle” that faced scientists trying to calibrate thermometers in the eighteenth century? Explain the key point in your own words.
- Chapter VI of The View from Nowhere: Thought and Reality, by Thomas Nagel.
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- Clicker Questions
- ‘Autism’ should be defined:
- a. Operationally, in terms of observable symptoms. There could be different, equally good definitions.
- b. Conventionally, by arbitrarily fastening onto one set of symptoms.
- c. There’s a real phenomenon out there,‘autism’, but room for continuous progress indefining it.
- Suppose there is such a condition as autism 'out there.' Who should be deciding whether it's a disorder or merely part of unproblematic neurodiversity?
- a. Psychiatrists
- b. People diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder
- c. Everyone
- d. Some other group
- Discussion Questions
- If every belief were truly just as good as any other, what implications would that have for...
- A. How we should reason about what to believe?
- B. How we should reason about what to do?
- C. Human communication?
- D. What could be meant when someone calls a claim “true”?
- If there were not a shared reality, what would that mean for...
- science?
- group decision-making?
- communication?
- Can you think of other epistemic frameworks that, like science, are self-correcting? If so, how are they similar? How different?
- What differentiates science from a religion? Describe two elements of science that are not true of religion.
- Suppose there is scientific consensus on an issue, but you have an intuition that runs against that scientific consensus. Imagine you are obliged to advocate one side or the other (at least provisionally).
- A. Under what conditions, if any, should you go with the scientific consensus?
- B. Under what conditions, if any, should you go against the scientific consensus?
- Class Exercises
- Homework
- Why wouldn't it be possible to throw out all our beliefs and start completely from scratch?
- We have mental representations of all kinds of entities that we have never observed with our naked senses, like microbes, the rings around Jupiter, and black holes. How are our representations of these things different from our representations of directly observed entities like kittens and mangoes?