HU-Science&Religion

Quine’s overall argument is something like the following: Important Terms: Empiricism : minimally, the claim that all ideas (concepts, thoughts, etc) originate in sensory experience. Analytic : a statement is analytic if, and only if (iff) it is true in virtue of meaning alone Analytic truths are independent of wordly facts (facts in the world outside of language and our minds) Synthetic : a statement is synthetic iff its truth depends on the world outside our heads and language Reductionism : for the empiricist, reductionism is the thesis that all statements of fact can be reduced to statements about sensory experience Example: the statement ‘electrons are negatively charged’ can be (must be) reduced to a statement involving sensory experiences. Language : A language is set of terms (singular terms—terms that refer to an individual object like ‘Socrates’; general terms—terms that refer to collections of objects like ‘red’ and logical terms like ‘or’, ‘and’, ‘not’, e...

We have now seen two arguments against the rationality or justifiability of induction. In the first, Hume argues that there is no way to justify induction other than simply to assume it is a reliable form of reasoning and ignore the fact that one reasons in a tight circle when using it. In the second, Goodman argues that induction can never be formalized in such a way that rules out contradictory inferences. We have at least five ways of responding: (a) just shrug our shoulders and move on to Netflix or pizza or whatever; (b) agree with a number of others that induction should be abandoned; (c) attempt to uncover a mistake in the arguments of Hume and Goodman; (d) locate an assumption (or two or…) that is needed for the arguments to work and show that denying that assumption is rational or plausible; (e) embrace the conclusions and argue that they are not as problematic as they first appear. (a) is unsatisfactory for a few reasons. While it is perfectly acceptable to ignore a p...

Paper Guidelines—Science and Religion These are meant to guide you in your writing.  In my intro courses, I demand that students stick to these guidelines very closely. I will not make the same demands of you. You are free to follow them closely or you may modify them where you see fit.  Also, the structure of the paper presented below will obviously be different depending on what you choose to do.  If you are defending a claim then you need to argue for it and then defend your argument against at least one possible objection.  If you are not defending a claim but trying to give a survey of something (like the various attempts and failure to demarcate science from non-science) then the structure of your paper should be stated in the intro, but you don’t have to defend anything.   1.  No title page or title needed.  Write your name and the time of the class you are in on the BACK of the last page of your...

Thus far, our two discussion days have gone quite well. Thank you to both groups for doing a nice job! Here are some guidelines for the rest of the semester (since these guidelines were not available to the first two groups I bumped up their grade a bit): Each discussion leader has to chance to earn a total of 25 points per leadership session for a total of 50 points by the end of the semester. Here's how that is determined: Mastery of Material (see below for an alternative to this) : 10 points The student demonstrates a deep understanding of each of the readings we have done that week and the student is able to guide the discussion due to that understanding. The student is able to identify a deficiency in understanding in other students (or the prof) and is able to helpfully correct any misunderstandings or allow other students to do so. The language of the student is clear and the student is able to clarify difficult terms and concepts when prompted or when needed. Rel...

It is really easy to misunderstand Goodman’s article on the new riddle of induction. So, let me try to say a little something about (a) what he is attempting to show, and (b) what he is not attempting to show.  First, Goodman is trying to show that there a very common idea is false. What is this common idea? That there is a logic of induction. That is, that just as there is a logic of deduction, there is a logic of induction. What does that mean? If it is raining, then it is wet It is raining Hence, it is wet If cats are demons, then their father is Bob Cats are demons Hence, their father is Bob Notice that both arguments above have the exact same form. We can express that form as follows: If p, then q p Hence, q Any argument, no matter the content—no matter what the ps and qs get replaced with—that has the above form is valid. That is, any argument in the above form is such that if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true as ...

Induction: for class Basic Argument 1. We can’t have deductive justification for induction because then induction would not be induction. 2. We can’t have inductive justification for induction because induction would be circular. 3. If no deductive and no inductive justification for p, then no justification for p 4. Hence there is no justification for induction. Reasons for 1: If we had deductive justification for induction, then the justification for induction would be deductive justification. But that means that induction would actually be deduction, which it is not. Or, we would be basing induction on deduction. But the problem with this is that deduction and induction are quite different forms of reasoning. A valid deductive argument is one where the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion. A good inductive argument cannot guarantee the truth of the conclusion. To base induction on deduction is a kind of category mistake. Or, pretend th...

Problems for DN and ISN Account of Laws On DN laws are (a) exception-less generalizations (b) counterfactual supporting With (a): most laws are not (a); e.g. Mendel’s law of segregation (M) has a number of exceptions such as meiotic drive (39, Woodward). With (b): even Hempel’s example that all the rocks in the box contain iron supports the following counterfactual: if I were to pull out of the box a rock, then it would contain iron.  So, we need a much more fine-grained account of the type of counterfactual relevant. Laws in General : DN is committed to the relevance of laws and yet we do not have a satisfactory account of laws.   Some explanations that don’t cite laws seem perfectly adequate: the knee bumping the desk caused the water to spill General Problems for DN:  First : DN fails to respect the asymmetrical nature of explanation.  The height of the flagpole, the angle with the sun and so forth explain the length of the sha...

In an earlier post, we saw that understanding SE may matter for the demarcation problem. Since, the demarcation problem seems to matter for a bunch of different reasons, SE matter for all of those reasons as well.  But understanding SE may matter for a much more interesting reason (at least more interesting to me  J ). As we have begun to see, what constitutes a genuine SE is not at all easy to figure out and thus far there is no agreed-upon criteria. Perhaps this is not that surprising once you consider all of the different disciplines that we are typically willing to call ‘science.’ Should we really expect psychology and sociology to give the same type of explanation as physics and chemistry? How about biology? Indeed, one of the major controversies in science, especially psychology and sociology, is just this issue. A lot of people (myself included) think that when psychology and sociology attempt to do exactly what physics and chemistry do they wind up doing and sayin...