1. Ann Kemper Raivydas Simenas
Ethics and Philosophy
Ann Kemper
Raivydas Simenas

2. Intro to Philosophy of Science
History of philosophy of science
Logical positivism
Popper and Kuhn
Discussion on Kitcher’s piece

3. Logical Positivism Originated in 1920’s in Germany and Austria
Heavily influenced by the developments in logic, mathematics, and physics in 19th-20th centuries
Initially concentrated in Vienna and Berlin
Vienna Circle: Moritz Schlick, Rudolph Carnap, Otto Neurath. Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper closely related
Society for Empirical Philosophy in Berlin: Hans Reichenbach
After the Nazis took over in Germany and Austria most logical positivists emigrated to Great Britain and the U.S.
Logical positivists made a major impact to Anglo-American analytical philosophy, especially in the areas of the theory of knowledge, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science
Out of fashion since 1960’s chiefly due to the reaction led by W. V. Quine and Thomas Kuhn

4. Prehistory of Logical Positivism: Kant
Immanuel Kant – one of the most significant Western philosophers
Kant’s thought was shaped by the debate between empiricists (priority to sensory experience) and rationalists (priority to reason)
Kant’s synthetic/analytic and a priori/a posteriori distinctions. The importance of synthetic a priori judgments
Among other things, Kant was interested in the philosophical foundations of mathematics and natural science
Kant developed an extensive theory demonstrating how the Euclidean-Newtonian world picture is grounded in the structure of human reasoning

5. Prehistory of Logical Positivism: Helmholtz, Mach, and Poincare
The developments in mathematics and physics posed serious problems for Kantians
Non-Euclidean geometry
Einstein’s theory of relativity
Hermann von Helmholtz
The right geometry should be determined empirically through studying movement trajectories of rigid bodies
Division between the external world of objects and the internal world of thoughts. Correspondence between the two
Ernst Mach
Rejected the external/internal dualism
Primacy to the immediate sense experiences
The role of science is to describe the relations/structure of the immediate experiences. Science should be unified
Henri Poincare
A rigid body is an idealization without counterparts in the physical world
In order to conduct an experiment, we need to agree on the way the world is. Conventionalism

6. Logical Positivists and Theory of Relativity
Theory of relativity posed questions about the relationship between world and theory
Schlick, Reichenbach, and Carnap
Agreed that theory of relativity arose from the critical reflection on the empirical significance of the concepts about spacetime
Disagreed about the status of synthetic a priori judgments
Schlick
A priori synthetic judgments are impossible
Reichenbach
Distinguished between necessary a priori truth and necessary presuppositions of a given conceptualization of the world
Thought a scientific undertaking must involve some presuppositions

7. Vienna Circle
1929: manifesto Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung: any meaningful (scientific) proposition is reducible to propositions about immediate experience
Focus on the details about how the reduction can be achieved
: split on the status of basic propositions
Carnap: basic propositions must express private experiences
Neurath: basic propositions must be intersubjectively verifiable and thus expressible in public language. A significant move away from pure empiricism

8. Karl Popper Two problems The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1935)
The problem of induction: what is the relation between theory and data. Pre-Popperian view: theories are devised from the accumulated empirical evidence
The problem of demarcation: what distinguishes science from metaphysics, mathematics, and logic. Pre-Popperian view: science uses induction, while the others do not
The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1935)
Hypotheses come prior to empirical evidence
Falsificationism: empirical evidence does not conclusively confirm a hypothesis. However, a hypothesis is refuted (falsified) by contradicting evidence
Focus on methodology
A theory can be saved from contradicting evidence by adding ad hoc hypotheses
Popper’s answer: good scientific theories must be formulated in such a way so that they could in principle be falsified

9. Thomas Kuhn (1)
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) – arguably the most influential book on philosophy of science ever written
As opposed to logical positivists, Kuhn stressed the importance of history in understanding the role of science
Traditional view
Scientific knowledge increases in a cumulative fashion
History of science traces the continuous development of scientific theories, concepts, and methods

10. Thomas Kuhn (2)
History of science is characterized by a succession of incommensurable paradigms
Life cycle of a typical paradigm:
Competition between different schools of thought,
One school becomes dominant through solving a certain research problem in a sufficiently vague way to leave space for further research
Normal science – a process of scientific research characterized by a consensus over important problems and valid methods
Extraordinary science (science in crisis) – an emergence of a significant anomaly which normal science methods cannot incorporate into the current scientific framework
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