1 Does the history of science give us good reason to think that our current
best theories will also turn out to be badly mistaken?
2 ‘Believing that atoms exist involves no more than believing that the atomic
theory is predictively successful.’ Discuss.
3 Could the observation of a white swan ever count as evidence that all
ravens are black?
4 What does Goodman’s ‘new riddle of induction’ tell us about induction?
5 ‘To explain an event, you need to know what causes it.’ Discuss.
6 ‘The distinction between laws of nature and accidental generalizations is
just a matter of our attitudes to them.’ Discuss.
7 Should we be Popperian falsificationists?
8 Either (a) ‘On Kuhn’s view, scientific revolutions are never rational.’
Discuss.
Or (b) What is the incommensurability thesis? Should we
believe it?
9 ‘The function of the heart is to pump blood.’ How should we analyse the
notion of function here?
10 ‘Evolution cannot explain altruism.’ Discuss.
11 Either (a) What does Lewis’s Principal Principle tell us about objective
chance?
Or (b) Is there a defensible form of the frequency interpretation of
probability?