Lecture 1: Introduction

Reading Notes

The Received View of Science

The standard view of the philosophy of science is the received view, which is a direct, antagonistic response to the logical positivist movement originating in Berlin und Vienna, making its way to the United States.

One of the core foundational documents of logical positivist program was A Scientific Worldview: The Vienna Circle, whose signatories included philosophers known as the Vienne Circle.

Logical positivism is an attempt to combine logicism (all scientific language is an extension of logic) and positivism (meaning empiricism or the idea that knowledge arise through information gathered through our five ‘main’ senses)

Logical positivism aims to demarcate science from “pseudo-“ or “non-science” and purify science of metaphysical or imagined content from scientific knowledge.

Logical positivists deny the existence of synthetic a priori propositions, and emphasizes that all propositions that are not true by definition be subject to empirical investigation. This belief can be contextualized with the political era of Germany and Austria as pseudoscience was used to justify atrocities and negatives attitudes that ultimately were damaging to their societies and the world over.

Empiricism, from the logical positivist point of view, consists of two theses: “(1) all evidence bearing on synthetic statements derives from sense perception in contrast to analytic statements which are true by definition (2) predicates are only meaningful if empirically verifiable

Their demarcation also concerned the definition of syntactics and semantics

Syntactics: the formal relation between signs or expressions in abstraction from their signification or interpretation

Semantics: deals with the signification of those signs of expressions

The summarized primary aims of the logical positivists:

1. To formulate precisely such central philosophical notions as a criterion of meaningfulness (the verifiability principle), and the distinction between synthetic and analytical statements

2. To develop precise definitions of scientific notions such as theories, paradigms etc.

Lecture Notes

The Received View of science

• Logical positivism is an attempt to combine logicism (all scientific language is an extension of logic) and positivism (meaning empiricism or the idea that knowledge arise through information gathered through our five ‘main’ senses)

• Logical positivism aims to demarcate science from “pseudo-“ or “non-science” and purify science of metaphysical or imagined content from scientific knowledge.

• One of the core foundational documents of logical positivist program was A Scientific Worldview: The Vienna Circle, whose signatories included philosophers known as the Vienna Circle.

Demarcation: Science and Non-Science

• Analytic Proposition: True by definition

• Synthetic proposition: all non-analytical propositions

  • Synthetic a posteriori: shown to be true by empirical evidence

  • Synthetic a priori: not shown to be true by empirical evidence, often denoted as having a nature of subjectivity. This is a non-scientific proposition

Verifiability Principle

A synthetic statement is meaningful only if it can be verified empirically

This principles hinges on a clear demarcation of what is theory and what is evidence

Facts are meant to be independent of theory

Induction vs Deduction

Deduction

moving from general statements to particular cases

The deductive-nomological (DN) model

Prediction and explanation are based on deduction from scientific laws

Induction

moving particular cases to general statements

The Problem of Induction

• The question of certainty: Even if each single case confirms the law, the next one might not

• There is always a leap of faith involved when moving from general cases to law

Two Responses to the Problem of Induction

• Instrumentalism: Scientific instruments are instruments not to be judged by a measure of truth but rather their usefulness for predicting phenomena

• Confirmationism: laws must be understood as giving probable knowledge rather that certain knowledge

Karl Popper: falsificationism

• It is not possible to verify something through induction as there is always a possibility that the next case may not reflect the previous case, not matter how many before it. Therefore it must be done through falsifiability.

• Theories that are more resistant to falsifiability are more reliable. Scientist must design theories and experimentation to be falsifiable.

Are Theories Really Falsifiable

• Duhem-Quine thesis: if we test a hypothesis (prediction), are we actually testing both the law and some auxiliary assumptions that are necessary for the test

• If a prediction is incorrect is it because the law is wrong or the initial conditions for the law have not been met

• Therefore, instances where beyond theory, the initial conditions are elusive, is it possible to falsify the theory.

Thomas Kuhn: scientific paradigms

• The history of science that science does not proceed in a linear fashion

• It proceeds through normal science, whereby scientists operate within accepted theories and paradigms. It more about development. It is then disrupted by scientific revolutions where alternative potential paradigms compete, spurred by dissatisfaction or restlessness in the scientific community and existing paradigms

• A scientific paradigm is a set of convictions, assumptions and practices that guide how scientists carry out their work

Incommensurability

• Only partial translation between paradigms

• If theories used belong to different paradigms, perception will too, be different

Theory-ladenness of data

• Are facts really independent of theory?

• Empirical test is not sufficient to prove a theory false (or true)

• Nor to adjudicate what paradigms is better

So what? Why does it matter for economists?

• Can we always demarcate science from non-science?

• In the case of economics, can we fully separate scientific practice from ethical assumptions, analytical assumptions, political viewpoints, etc.?

• Can we always objectively compare two paradigms?

• Can there be a truth that is objective independently of the paradigm within which it is found?

Science as a human (and social) activity

• You need to be aware that, when comparing theories belonging to different paradigms, we may not always be able to adjudicate which one is better. You need to know more than one theory, and compare their usefulness case by case