HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE (2): Philosophy of Science
SECTION A
1 “Historians worry about why scientists believe what they do; philosophers worry
about whether these beliefs are true.” Discuss.
2 Is scientific reasoning fundamentally different from common sense?
SECTION B
3 “I can now prove that two human hands exist. How? By holding up my two hands,
and saying, as I make a gesture with the right hand, ‘Here is one hand’, and adding, as I
make a certain gesture with the left, ‘and here is another’. By doing this, I have, at the same
time, proved the existence of external things.” (G.E. MOORE) Is this a convincing
response to the sceptic?
4 Either (a) Does the rationality of induction depend on whether it is reliable?
Or (b) Do laws of nature explain regularities in nature?
5 Critically assess Lewis’s counterfactual theory of causation.
6 Is it better to believe that a theory is true, than to believe that its observable
consequences are true?
7 Either (a) Does the raven paradox show that no observation is irrelevant to a
hypothesis?
Or (b) What does explanation have to do with inference?
8 Either (a) What is the significance of a failed prediction?
Or (b) Has Kuhn shown that science is not methodological?
9 Are there any good reasons to think animals have rights?
10 “Mental terms such as ‘belief’ and ‘desire’ refer to inner, private, psychological
events and should play no role in scientific psychology.” Discuss.
11 Does the sociology of scientific knowledge reduce science to politics?