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Philosophy of the Humanities 1 - Lecture Notes
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Lecture 1: FormsPhilosophy of the 20th century: major currents
1. What is philosophy of science and philosophy of humanities?
2. Two related key issues in philosophy of science and of humanities
Demarcation problem.
Relation theory and reality.
A tripartite division
1. Philosophy of natural sciences (truth)
2. Philosophy of social sciences
3. Philosophy of the humanities (interpretation)
Descriptive and normative philosophy
(Ch.1) 1. Both philosophy of science and philosophy of humanities have a double task, viz. a descriptive task
and a normative task (pp. 16-18 Leezenberg 2018). Explain these tasks.
- Descriptive = Merely giving a description/explication of scientific practices/products.
Reconstruction of context of scientific discovery: How did the scientist come to his
conclusion? What were the experiments consist of?
- Normative = Does something more: it also starts with descriptive analysis but also evaluates
that scientific practice.
Context of justification: How did the scientist write out and communicate their findings
within a shared language? Scientist X investigated Y, but did he use the right method?
Demarcation problem
(Ch.3) 2. What is the problem of demarcation (p. 91)?
The question of “What distinguishes good sciences from pseudoscience and opinion?”
Is essentially about the difference between episteme and doxa.
Episteme (science) = Statements that can be considered, tested, falsified; Timeless
necessary truths; knowledge.
Doxa (pseudoscience) = A governing opinion, perspective-dependent belief; Opinion
that is reducible to your specific standpoint.
Example: Conspiracy theories, fake news, climate change denial, flat earthers…
- Aristotle and Plato already asked this question – Philosophy of knowledge in antiquity:
What are the sources of knowledge?
Plato’s rationalism = knowledge comes from the use of the human mind/ratio.
Aristotle’s empiricism = knowledge comes from experience.
1
,Plato’s myth of the cave
Knowledge about unobservable essences/ forms in a supernatural reality.
Perception is perpetual flux
Perception can’t be the foundation of knowledge; Observations can’t be a reliable source
of information, because the world constantly changes.
Humans that take sensory experience as the ultimate source of knowledge are like prisoners in
the cave: they mistake appearance for reality (doxa).
You can’t rely on your senses for true knowledge, but only on reasoning capacities.
Aristotle disagrees: Essences are accessible through empirical inquiry – There is only one world
and we can learn it through empirical means.
3 different answers to the demarcation problem
1. Logical empiricism: Aristotle
Verifiability = Claim should be testable using sensory experience.
2. Critical rationalism: Plato (Popper’s alternative)
Falsifiability = Claim should have the potential to be refuted by some possible observation.
3. Kuhn’s philosophy of science: Kuhn
Normal science is governed by a paradigm.
__________________________________________________________________________________
1. Logical empiricism: Aristotle
Historical context
At the turn of the 20th century natural sciences flourished (e.g., Einstein’s relativity theory).
Science as the right model for philosophy.
Main aim: analysis of the nature, success, and growth of scientific knowledge.
Logical reconstructions of scientific results (theories, explanations).
Context of discovery vs. context of justification.
Vienna ‘reflective epicenter.’
Logical empiricism and Verification
3. Logical Empiricism endorsed a verification criterion of meaning (p. 77). Explain what this
criterion entails.
This means: a proposition should be formulated such, that you can use observation, aided or not by
the use of instruments and experiments, to test the truth or falsity of the proposition.
2
, Logical empiricism – Verifiability theory of meaning
Knowing the meaning of a sentence is knowing how to verify it by means of observation.
Verifiability = testability: Claim is testable by use of sensory experience.
Strong empiricist principle: experience is the only source of meaning (like Aristotle).
Scientific claims are verifiable and hence have meaning.
Other claims (most traditional philosophy) are therefore meaningless.
But verifiability does NOT mean that only true statements are scientific statements.
Logical empiricism and Behaviorism
- Like logical empiricism, for behaviorism (philosophical stream) the mind is a black box and
unobservable.
- If you want to study it in a scientific manner, you should only look at environmental
features/behaviors of the people/animals that can be observed.
Examples of not verifiable (cannot be checked for truth):
“I hear a melody in my head.”
“He gets angry.”
“Where do we seek the Nothing?”
Logical empiricism: These statements appear factive and hence verifiable but in fact are not.
2. Critical rationalism: Popper’s alternative (Plato)
Verifiability and problem of induction
4. According to Popper, the verification criterion is useless for distinguishing universal laws from
metaphysical statements (p. 90). Explain Popper’s argumentation for this claim.
- It is impossible to verify universal laws due to the problem of induction.
- It is logically impossible to conclusively verify every instance covered by a law.
- It is in principle always possible that the law will be refuted by future observations.
Example: the saying “all swans are white” was refuted by the discovery of black swans.
=> Logical empiricism’s verification/ confirmation & conclusion are no solution to the
demarcation problem.
Popper’s alternative to demarcation problem: Critical rationalism
Main aim: capture the nature and growth of scientific knowledge (same as logical
empiricism)
Approach: By means of falsifiability and deductive testing.
Justification of induction is impossible: all knowledge starts from hypothetical assumptions.
3
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