HU3700: Study Questions for Second Exam
I. Define/Explain/Describe/Identify:
absolutism
accidental regularity
ad hoc hypothesis
anarchism
anomaly
anti-realism, global
anti-realism, scientific
“anything goes”
Bayes’s theorem
Bayesianism
conditional probability
conjectural realism
conservation of energy
consistency condition
correspondence theory
of truth
counterfactual
crisis
cumulative
degenerating
degree of belief
disposition
disturbing influence
experimental knowledge
experimental law
faith
Feyerabend, Paul
Galileo
Gestalt switch
hard core
high-level theory
idealization
incommensurable
instrumentalism
irradiation hypothesis
Kuhn, Thomas
Lakatos, Imre
large-scale theory
lawlike regularity
negative heuristic
new experimentalism
normal science
objective Bayesianism
paradigm
paradigm shift
persuasion
positive heuristic
posterior probability
pre-science
prior probability
progress, scientific
progressive
protective belt
rational
realism, scientific
regularity view
regularity view
(conditional form)
relativism
religious conversion
research program
revolution
scientific community
scientific method
structural realism
structures, theories as
subjective Bayesianism
telescopic observation
thermodynamics
truth
unrepresentative realism
updated probability
II. Discussion:
1. What does Kuhn mean when he says that competing paradigms are
“incommensurable”? What reasons does Kuhn give for claiming that competing
paradigms are incommensurable? What sorts of arguments are used in debates
between the proponents of competing paradigms, according to Kuhn? What factors
determine who eventually wins those debates? Explain.
2. What does Kuhn mean by “normal science”? What sort of research do scientists
engage in during periods of normal science? What is an anomaly? How do scientists
deal with anomalies during periods of normal science, according to Kuhn?
3. What does Kuhn mean by “scientific revolution”? Under what circumstances do
scientific revolutions occur? What differences do scientific revolutions make in the
way science is practiced? Describe those differences in the case of the Copernican
revolution.
4. What does Lakatos mean by “research program” in science? What are the
components of such a program? Compare and contrast Lakatos’s notion of a research
program with Kuhn’s notion of a paradigm. According to Lakatos, how are research
programs evaluated? Under what circumstances do scientists replace one research
program with another?
5. Discuss whether Lakatos is an absolutist or a relativist in his views about scientific
change. What are his views on scientific progress? What does scientific progress
consists of, according to Lakatos? What is the source of tension between his views
about evaluating research programs and his views about rationality in science?
6. In what ways is Feyerabend’s philosophy of science “anarchistic”? On what grounds
does Feyerabend argue that there is no universal scientific method? Why does
Feyerabend devote so much attention to Galileo and his role in the Copernican
revolution? What specifically are Chalmers’s objections to Feyerabend’s analysis of
Galileo’s role?
7. What essentially is the Bayesian approach to the philosophy of science? What role
does Bayes’s theorem play in that approach? What are the main differences between
objective and subjective Bayesianism?
8. What specific problems in the philosophy of science is subjective Bayesianism
intended to solve? Explain how it solves them. Be specific. Describe and explain 3
objections to subjective Bayesianism?
9. What precisely is “the new experimentalism”? In what ways is it a departure from
other approaches in the philosophy of science? What are its claims about the nature of
progress in science? About the respective roles of experiment and theory in science?
About the theory-dependence of experimental results?
10. What is the regularity view of scientific laws? What is the conditional form of the
regularity view? How exactly do the 2 views differ? What are the pros and cons of
each view?
11. What is meant by “laws as characterizations of powers and dispositions”? How does
that view differ from the two forms of the regularity view of scientific laws? What are
its main pros and cons?
12. What are the main considerations in favor of scientific realism? What are the main
considerations in favor of scientific anti-realism? What sorts of support do proponents
of each view claim to receive from the history of science?