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Category Archives: Philosophy
What scientists believe and what they can prove (with a flowchart for Sir Karl Popper).
On the post in which I resorted to flowcharts to try to unpack people’s claims about the process involved in building scientific knowledge, Torbjörn Larsson raised a number of concerns:
The first problem I have was with “belief”. I have seen, and forgotten, that it is used in two senses in english – for trust, and for conviction. Rather like for theory, the weaker term isn’t appropriate here. I would say that theories gives us trust in repeatability of predicted observations, and that kind of trust counts as knowledge. In fact, already the trust repeated observations gives count as knowledge.
The second problem I have is with “the problem of induction”. Science has a set of procedures that observably generates robust knowledge, and the alleged problem is seldom seen. When the terrain and the map doesn’t agree, junk the map.
The third problem I have is with the specific diagrams. Real scientific knowledge production will not yield to any one diagram. So for the philosopher that raises a hypothetical “problem of induction” we could turn around the question and ask why the obvious “problem of description” (which ironically is a real problem of inductionisn’t bothersome. The scientist answer would probably be as above: “e puor si muove”.
… Without feeling like testability is the end-all of science the diagram is slanted away from testing towards a weaker and in the end nonfunctional descriptive science. Whether we call tested knowledge “a conclusion” or “a tentative conclusion” is irrelevant IMHO, it is a conclusion we will (have to) trust in.
The fourth (oy!) problem I have is with the conflated description the diagram alludes to. In the text there is a distinction between individual scientists and the scientific enterprise. Different entities will obviously use different approaches to knowledge, and if the individual doesn’t need to trust her findings the enterprise relies on such a trust.
These are reasonable concerns, so let me say a few words to address them.
What do scientists mean by ‘theory’?
In my basic concepts post on theory testing, I set out what I take to be a fairly standard understanding of “theory” in philosophy of science discussions:
Basic concepts: theory testing.
I’m a little cautious about adding this to the basic concepts list, given that my main point here is going to be that things are not as simple as you might guess. You’ve been warned.
We’ve already taken a look at what it means for a claim to be falsifiable. Often (but not always), when scientists talk about testability, they have something like falsifiability in mind. But testing a theory against the world turns out to be more complicated than testing a single, isolated hypothesis.
Basic concepts: falsifiable claims.
Here’s another basic concept for the list: what does it mean for a claim to be falsifiable, and why does falsifiability matter so much to scientists and philosophers of science?
Basic concepts: arguments.
As my first contribution to the growing list of basic terms and concepts, I’m going to explain a few things no one asked about when I opened the request line. But, these are ideas that are crucial building blocks for things people actually did ask about, like falsifiability and critical thinking, so there will be a payoff here.
Philosophers talk a lot about arguments. What do they mean?
Getting down to basics.
Chad and Tara have spilled the beans on a highly classified backchannel discussion we ScienceBloggers have been having. Since the cat is already out of the bag (presumably a bag of beans), I suppose I’ll chime in.
What basic concepts would you like me to explain here?
Best final exam doodle EVER!
I’m sure I’m not the only academic who receives final exams with doodles (as well as “thank you for the class” and “please don’t fail me!” messages). But I need to share a piece of exam artwork that transcends the bounds of doodling.
Indeed, it is a cartoon illustration that demonstrates good mastery of the concept about which the student was asked on that exam page. (In addition to the drawing, the student presented a perfectly correct and crystal clear written answer to the question. The drawing was an added bonus.)
Let me set up the cartoon with a brief explanation of the question so you can fully appreciate how wonderful it is:
When academics IM …
… Page 3.14 shares the transcript. Go read what we said when Ben Cohen and I shot the cyberbreeze about Karl Popper and the allure he holds for scientists.
I can’t promise it will leave you ROTFLYAO, but it might make you
TTFN.
Has the demarcation problem been solved?
Revere stirs the pot (of chicken soup) to ask why alternative therapies are presumptively regarded as pseudo-science. The reflexive response of the quackbusters has been that alternative therapies fall on the wrong side of some bright line that divides what is scientific from what is not — the line of demarcation that (scientists seem to assume) Karl Popper pointed out years ago, and that keeps the borders of science secure.
While I think a fair amount of non-science is so far from the presumptive border that we are well within our rights to just point at it and laugh, as a philosopher of science I need to go on the record as saying that right at the boundary, things are not so sharp. But before we get into how real science (and real non-science) might depart from Sir Karl’s image of things, I think it’s important to look more closely at the distinction he’s trying to draw.