Suggested Essay Topics for Philosophy 3412, Spring 2008
1. Explore the reasons why so many philosophers uncomfortable with treating the entities of
theoretical physics (electrons, photons etc.) as real. How do you feel about realism in the
philosophy of science? Do you believe in atoms? In geological history? In evolution (all
life descended from one or a few common ancestors)? By natural selection? Does science
aim at truth (and reference) for its theories? Does it vary from field to field? Or must all
scientists set their sights on more modest goals? Discuss & defend your position.
2. Explain Hume’s problem of induction. Do you think Hume was right to conclude that we
simply have no reason whatsoever to suppose that induction will work? Do you think that
Popper succeeds in giving an account of science that is free of any use of induction works?
Is there any satisfactory way to understand science without appealing to induction in some
form or other? What does your position imply for the status of induction? Of science?
3. Explain how Nicod’s criterion and the principle of equivalence give rise to the Ravens
puzzle. Do you think this shows that instances (per se) can’t confirm a generalization? Or
does it show that what confirms one sentence may not confirm a logically equivalent
sentence? Or ...? Justify your position.
4. Consider how descriptive claims about the sociology of science relate to normative claims
about how science should be practiced. Do you agree with the sociological view of science
(as it has come to be practiced in our recent history) as a well-structured approach to
investigating and finding out about the world? What is it, in your view, that does (or doesn’t)
make science as we practice it a good way to go about seeking knowledge of the world?
Consider some of the alternative approaches we’ve discussed (Kuhn’s, Hull’s, Kitcher’s...)
Can you think of any better ways of organizing such an investigation, or of understanding
how it is that science works, in sociological terms, that might be preferable?
5. In what ways, if any, do you think science has made progress (and towards what)? What are
we aiming at when we do science, and how successful are we/ have we been? Consider
empiricist views, realist views, and what kinds of evidence might be used to decide what the
goals of science really are, or really should be.
6. Explanation has been described as a central feature in our ideas about confirmation (One sort
of ‘induction’ that G-S considers is the explanatory induction, from some facts to a
hypothesis which, if true, would explain those facts—diagnosis in medicine and auto
mechanics often seems to work this way!). But what is an explanation, and what makes
explanations so important to our ideas about what is rational to believe and what isn’t? Try
to find a way of describing explanations and confirmation that makes the two fit together.
7. Scientific laws are central to many, if not all scientific explanations. But what makes a law
different from a mere regularity? How does ‘Every body attracts every other body with a
force proportional to its mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance
between them’ differ from ‘Every bolt on my car is rusty’?
8. Consider the asymmetry problem for explanation. Is the direction of causation enough to
deal with this problem? Then how can we tell the direction of causation? Is it the direction
of time? Then how do we tell the direction of time? (There is some very interesting
literature on these issues which I’d be glad to point you towards.)