+1 862 207 3288 Writing Across the Curriculum, Philosophy of Science
Assignment: You will write a ten-page thesis defense essay. A thesis defense essay includes a statement of what you believe (thesis) and why you believe it (reasons). Putting the two together—thesis and reasons—you will construct an original philosophical argument on some topic in the philosophy of science. What follows are topic suggestions together with some source material. The argument that you construct can be a critique of someone else’s argument, a proposal of a new solution to an old problem, a defense of someone else’s thesis by responding to an objection to the thesis, or a defense of someone else’s thesis with a new argument. Your paper might combine several of these elements.
Intended Audience: The intended audience, the reader, is an intelligent peer with no prior background in the philosophy of science. In writing to communicate knowledge, your paper must consider the background knowledge of your reader—i.e., what concepts require explanation, what counts as common knowledge, etc.
Format: Use a standard font with font size 12 and standard margins. Your paper should include a separate title that includes the title of your paper, your name, and the name of the course. Choose a standard format for citations and stick with it. Bibliographical information should be included on a separate page. Use footnotes rather than endnotes. The title page does not count as one of the ten pages of the essay.
Outside Sources: A minimum of three outside sources is required for this assignment. This does not include the textbook, assigned readings, and encyclopedia articles. Sources must be scholarly articles, not Wikipedia entries, blog posts, or other informal writing. Following are databases you might find helpful in locating relevant source material: Jstor.org, Philosophers Index, Philpapers.org, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Peer Commentary: You will be placed into groups of three. You will read and comment on partial drafts. It is important that you stay up to date with the writing assignments.
Suggested Paper Topics: You have the freedom to write on any topic of relevance to this course. Possible topics include David Armstrong’s theory of the laws of nature, the ravens paradox, Popper’s demarcation problem and his proposed solution, Munson’s argument that medicine cannot be a science, a solution to the problem of induction, the concept of approximation to the truth, Kuhn’s ideas on the nature of scientific discovery, among others.
The following are suggested paper topics, together with some suggested sources. If you choose to write on a topic other than those listed below, you must first run the proposal by me.
(1) Fodor and Churchland disagree whether, and to what extent, observation is theory-laden. Analyze this disagreement and the arguments advanced by both Fodor and Churchland.Your paper should also situate the concept of theory-ladenness within the broader context of science.
Churchland, P. M. (1988), “Perceptual Plasticity and Theoretical Neutrality: A Reply to Jerry Fodor”, Philosophy of Science 55: 167-187.
Fodor, Jerry (1984), “Observation Reconsidered”, Philosophy of Science 51: 23-43. (1988).
(2) Critically examine Goodman’s own proposal to his new riddle of induction. Goodman proposes that we must look to our actual records of past projections as a constraint on projectable hypotheses when two hypotheses are equally well supported by a body of evidence but disagree about unexamined cases. Goodman writes, “the answer, I think, is that we must consult the record of past projections of the two predicates. Plainly, “green,” as a veteran of earlier and many more projections than “grue,” has the more impressive biography. The predicate “green,” we may say, is much better entrenched than the predicate “grue .”” Does the concept of entrenchment adequately distinguish between the projectable and the non-projectable predicates? In addition to Goodman’s own work on the topic, a useful resource is: Grue: The New Riddle of Induction edited by Douglas Stalker.
(3) Critically evaluate either the no-miracles argument for scientific realism or the pessimistic induction argument against scientific realism.
(4) Choose an episode in the history of science that Kuhn classifies as a scientific revolution and evaluate the evidence to determine whether the paradigms separating the revolution are incommensurable. This paper will be a critical evaluation of Kuhn’s theory of the development of science through the concept of incommensurability. This topic will require an analysis of the historical record in addition to the philosophical concept of incommensurability.
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