Study Questions for Midterm (Answers)
Philosophy 125
G. Randolph Mayes
Instructions:
There are 10 essay questions below. The exam will consist of 4 of these questions worth 6 points each. You get 1 pt. for showing up and putting your name on the essay. Students who are unsatisfied with their performance on this midterm may opt, within one week of receiving the grade, to remove it from the record and have the final exam count 50 pts. This decision, once made, is not reversible.
Materials: Writing implements, notebook paper or blue book. You may not use a laptop, your textbook, notes, or any other materials or form of communication with external reality if it exists. Your essays will be handwritten, but otherwise they will be held to the same standards of thoroughness, clarity and organization as your weekly study questions. Be especially sure that your answers explicitly demonstrate a comprehension of the relevant concepts. For example, do not begin discussing grue without first demonstrating that you understand what grue is and how it is used in the literature..
1. Of the two theories of truth we have discussed, is one better suited to realism than the other? Explain.
2. Explain how one could be an instrumentalist with respect to a particular scientific theory, but a realist about scientific theories in general.
3. Consider the following statement: "Our mental representations arise as a result of our causal interaction with an external reality." If this is a fact, is it properly regarded as conceptual or empirical in nature? Explain.
This claim may be regarded as conceptual or empirical depending on how it is interpreted.
We may properly regard it as an empirical claim if we can identify empirical conditions that would falsify it. For example, if we were to think of "external reality" as the environment inhabited by a sentient being, then we could imagine a scientist putting a person in a well-defined environment and asking her to report on her mental representations. If the representations seem not to correlate in any way with controlled changes in the environment, then this would tend to falsify the claim.
On the other hand, if we think of "external reality" in metaphysical terms- i.e., as the way the world actually is, rather than the way it is experienced- then it seems to be a conceptual claim. This is because observational data are experiential by definition Since no scientist is capable of collecting data on a world beyond experience, nothing could count as evidence for or against such a claim. In this case a mental representation is most properly regarded as something that, by its very nature, arises from causal interaction with an external reality. In the absence of such an interaction, it would represent nothing at all.
4. How does the Quine-Duhem thesis bear on the logic of scientific confirmation and disconfirmation?
5. What is the axiomatic method? What is it's value? Why doesn't it work in empirical science?
The axiomatic method is a method of proof essential to geometry, mathematics, and logic. In an axiomatic system, the axioms are the basic general propositions whose truth is taken to be self-evident or necessary. Axioms themselves are not proven. Rather, the axioms, in combination with definitions of the terms they employ, are used to prove other propositions to be true.
As noted, the axiomatic method is essential to geometry, mathematics, and logic. It's value consists in the fact that any proposition properly demonstrated by this method is going to be as certain as the original axioms. If the axioms are necessarily true, then the derived propositions will be necessarily true as well.
The axiomatic method does not work in empirical science simply because there are no empirical axioms; there are no self-evident, necessary truths about the empirical world from which we may derive all of our empirical knowledge. Our beliefs about the world are informed by observation, and observation is inherently fallible. Even if our observations were infallible, they would not do the work required in empirical science because they are not general and can not by themselves be used to derive any particular empirical theory.
6. Does Humes' problem of induction point out anything beyond the well known fact that inductive arguments do not guarantee the truth of their conclusions? Explain.
7. Is it possible to confirm the theory that worms crawl by observing that birds fly? Explain.
8. Discuss the difference between empirical and conceptual facts in terms of the concept of falsifiability. Does your discussion support the author's claim that falsifiability is best understood more as a psychological attitude than an aspect of a theory itself? Explain.
A fact is a state of the world. Empirical facts are states of the world that can be verified by appeal to experience. Conceptual facts are states of the world that can be demonstrated by appeal to conceptual relationships. The following sentence represents an empirical fact: The earth has one moon. This is empirical because it can be confirmed by observation. Given that the earth has a moon, the following sentence represents a conceptual fact: The earth's moon orbits the earth. It is conceptual because it is simply part of the concept of a moon, that it orbits a planet. If the earth's moon were to fly off into outer space, then it would simply cease to be the earth's moon.
The criterion of falsifiability is best understood as follows. It is essential to any statement of empirical fact that it be possible to bring evidence to bear against the truth of the statement. However, it is possible for someone to become so committed to the truth of an empirical statement that he seems unable to acknowledge any such evidence. In this case we say that he holds the statement unfalsifiably. For example, many people believe that vitamin C prevents the common cold. There is considerable evidence against this view, but true believers are inclined to dismiss this evidence on the basis of their personal experience with taking vitamin C. They might say: " I don't care what any study shows, I know it works for me." This is an unfalsifiable position.
Falsifiability relates to the distinction between empirical and conceptual facts insofar as we often think of conceptual claims as being inherently unfalsifiable. Another way of saying this is that true conceptual claims are necessarily true. For example, it does not simply happen to be the case that one physical object can not be in two places at the same time, it is necessarily the case. Thus we may say that to hold an empirical claim unfalisifiably is to twrongly treat it as if it were a conceptual claim.
The analysis may be taken to support the author's view that falsifiability has more to due with the attitude of the believer than the claims themselves. All truly empirical claims are falsifiable. But when we say that a statement is being held unfalsifiably, we are really criticizing the person who holds it in this way rather than the statement itself.
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9. Is the apparent retrograde motion of planets evidence against a stationary earth? Explain.
10. If you were transported to ancient Greece with the assignment to convince an Aristotelian that one of the arguments they give for believing in a stationary earth is flawed, which would you choose? Explain. (Assume you will be able to speak the language and that if you tell them you are from the future they will kill you.)
The best answer to this question is the argument from motion. The argument from motion depends on the empirically falisifiable claim that if one were to throw a ball into the air while moving it would come down in the spot from which it was thrown. This is easily shown to be false by conducting the experiment. (Note: many people selected this argument but characterized the result inaccurately as something that would not occur if the earth were stationary.)