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22 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is realism? 4 points |
- belief in both the observable and unobservable - science goes beyond the observable - a world exists independent from perception - theories describe reality |
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What is the correspondence theory of truth? |
a scientific theory is true of the world if the world is the way the theory says it is |
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What is scientific realism? 3 points |
- science aiming at true statements about the world and how it behaves - strong form - theories are at least approximately true |
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What is conjectural realism? 4 points |
- fallibility of knowledge (POPPER) - weak form - aim of science is to discover truth, however truth cannot be proven // don't expect to reach it - praise theories to the extent that they fulfil this aim: CORROBORATION |
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What is structural realism? |
- characterising structure of reality while representations might change - AIM: find underlying structures, science became increasingly accurate in doing so - theories might be right but representations are wrong sits between scientific realism and conjectural realism |
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What is the problem of realism? 4 points 2 counterpoints |
- claims about unobservable must be hypothetical - theories have often been rejected -- BUT entities become real once we know how to manipulate them - Duhem: idealisation of theoretical descriptions - cannot be taken literally -- BUT idealisation enables useful predictions |
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What is the problem of the correspondence theory of truth? 2 points |
- paradoxes possible! (e.g. i am a liar) - Tarski: criticises Realists because they cannot describe relations between a statement and the world - but only between statements - they have to do that otherwise we have paradoxes |
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What is anti-realism? |
science can only have claims about what is observable (distinguish between observational and theoretical knowledge) |
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How does anti-realism work? 3 points |
- Theories can be useful despite the fact that they don't represent reality - maintains that the content of a scientific theory involves nothing more than the set of claims that can be substantiated by observation and experiment - desire to restrict science to those claims that can be justified by scientific means
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Problems with anti-realism? 2 points |
1) judging from predictive success, theories must be approximately true 2) distinguishing between observable and theoretical knowledge not possible |
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What is global anti-realism? 5 points |
worlds can only be viewed from perspectives + described using the language of theories --> no direct link to reality - cannot distinguish between observable and unobservable - no access to reality - believe in observable but no commitment - not literally construed |
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What is instrumentalism? 3 points |
Theories are nothing more than useful instruments for helping us to correlate and predict the results of observation and experiment - not concerned with truth or falsity - theory should be general! - distinction between observable and unobservable but no ontological commitment |
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What is constructive empiricism? van Fraassen 6 points |
science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate - anti-realist but not instrumentalist - concerned with theories that are true or false: ontological commitment - distinguish between observable and unobservable - ontological commitment about observables only - theories are literally construed - if this is the case then they can say something about the observable |
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What are the criticisms of anti-realism? |
- observations have been shown to be wrong too - no reason to call theories insecure and observation secure - anti-realists need to show how we can use observations and understand them without theory - predictive success of theories: they must be approximately true it they work so well - anti-realists ignore difficult issues: concerned with what rather than why |
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What is the difference between realism and anti-realism? |
Realism: causal account of laws Anti-Realism: obliged to capture the functioning of laws in science with some version of the regularity view (WHY questions) Realist: cannot clearly draw the line between observable and unobservable Anti-Realist: you CAN draw a line between observable and unobservable |
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What is Maxwell's argument? |
Everything can be observed through some sort of device ---> although some devices may not have been invented yet! |
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What is positivism? |
- you can have two things that say something different but have the same consequence - theoretical terms have meaning only through their connection with the observable. Hence they hold that two theories may in fact say the same thing although in form they contradict each other |
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What is the anti-realist belief in empirical adequacy? |
what they say about the observable is true and at least one model that all actual phenomena fit inside --> what is observed has to fit into your theory |
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What is Maxwell's perspective on theory? |
1) terms and concepts are theoretical 2) language cannot be divided into theoretical + non-theoretical part --> cannot distinguished 3) language is theory infected |
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What is Maxwell's perspective on observation? |
1) entities are observable and unobservable 2) new tech + conditions to observe need not be right all the time 3) principally unobservable does not exist --> we might at some point be able to observe 4) truth depends on community's belief what is currently observable |
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What is the fundamental point of van fraassen? |
theory should be semantically literal (what is observable by the present scientific community) and empirically adequate
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What is the fundamental point of Churchland? (scientific realist) |
everything we observe is influenced by our views of the world/social experiences |
