Take home test COR1002 Philosophy of Science May 26 2020

Name: Antonia Torfs-Leibman

ID number: i6177196
Please fill in both name and id number. As your tutors will grade the tests, it makes it
easier to retrieve your test from the SafeAssign list on BB.

Explanation and Instructions

The online, take home, test has the form of a concept map. You all received a full sample
test, and have practiced with constructing a concept map. Here are some final
explanations and instructions for the test.
On page 2 you find a list of concepts/terms from the material of course COR1002. Here
you will also find a figure containing 6 text boxes connected by lines. From the list of
concepts on page 2 you must select 5 items and place them each in a separate space. For
the 6th space you choose and select a term or concept of your own. That concept may be
taken from another course, or from a topic you are particularly interested in.
The boxes on the wheel are editable. Click once in a box, which will select the underlying
picture, click again in the box and you will have a text box for your concept.
What you will need to do is explain the relationships between items you put in the spaces.
So if you put an item in space 1, you will have to explain how the item relates to the
items you put in space 2, 3 and 6. For the item that you have put in space 6 you will
further have to explain how it relates to the items you put in 4 and 5 (the relation between
item 1 and 6 you have already dealt with). You do this until all spaces are filled and all
relations are explained.
An explanation has a maximum of about 100 words. For the description of the
relationship between the item that you introduce yourself and the others there is a
maximum of 150 words. These maximum numbers of words are mostly guidelines for
your answers. They are not strict borders where transgression leads to a penalty. The
strong advice though, is to stay within these boundaries, and the idea is that you can make
the links you want to make within these limits.
The concept map you are constructing is not a puzzle in the sense that there is a correct
solution. Even two identical sets of concepts may be linked by different students in
different ways. Identical answers are not to be expected.
Furthermore, it is not the aim that you provide just dictionary definitions. From the
answer you give, the links you explicate, it should become clear what content from the
course you use in order to formulate your answers. Also, when we talk about
relationships between terms or concepts, we are talking about relationships that are
clearly informed by what you learnt during the course COR1002. Therefore making the
links just on the basis of general information from outside what we have been dealing
with in COR1002 will not be sufficient.

Good luck!
The concept map

Name: Antonia Torfs-Leibman

ID number: i6177196

Fill in your choice of concepts in the map:

Practical World 3
1. 2.
knowledge interest

3. Knowledge/power 4. Language games

5. Progress in science 6. Relativism

1. Convergent thinking 11. Reasons

2. Epistemological anarchism 12. World 3
3. Corroboration 13. Progress in science
4. Individualism 14. Instruments
5. Practical knowledge interest 15. Prediction
6. Requirement of maximum specificity 16. High testability
7. Positive heuristic 17. Knowledge/Power
8. Experiment 18. Explanation sketch
9. Distributed knowledge 19. Language games
10. Anomalies 20. Induction
The relationships

Relationship Concept 1: Practical knowledge and 2: World 3

interest
The practical knowledge interest concerns the norms/rules of society—essentially all
knowledge that helps humans understand others in order to be more similar to each other.
World 3 is Popper’s idea of all products (tangible and intangible) of the minds of humans. The
practical knowledge interest, by its nature, pushes humans to create values, cultures, and
traditions in order to better relate to one another. All of these entities are products in World 3.
If the minds of humans are trying to find practical ways to fit in society—as is the point of the
practical knowledge interest—then all of those ways they have come up with are entities in
World 3.

Relationship Concept 1: Practical knowledge and 3: Knowledge/power

interest
The practical knowledge interest is a useful tool to adapt behavior to other social beings. Once
knowledge of how to do this is acquired, humans have a much easier time relating to other
humans and can use that advantage to control other humans. The relationship between
knowledge and power is that the more knowledge one has, the more power they can attain as
they are advantaged over those who do not have the knowledge on how to gain power. Once
this power is attained, people can be controlled, and more norms, values, and cultural
traditions can be spread and enforced. The practical knowledge interest is a way to get the
right knowledge to gain power.

Relationship Concept 1: Practical knowledge and 6: Relativism

interest
The practical knowledge interest is an overarching term that encompasses the garnering of
many differing societal norms. In some societies, certain norms are more valued than others,
and sometimes the norm that is valued in one society is considered a disgrace in another. In
order for humans to best serve their practical knowledge interest, they must understand the
relativism of societal norms. All units of knowledge within the practical knowledge interest
are relative, given they apply differently in different societies. There is no way of measuring
which unit of knowledge within the practical knowledge interest will yield the best behavioral
results, since society is time and place specific. Change either of these variables, and the
outcome of your practical knowledge interest changes too.

Relationship Concept 2: World 3 and 4: Language games

Popper distinguishes between world 1 (the physical world), world 2 (the mental world),
and world 3 (the products of the mental world that can either come in abstract form or
in the form of entities in world 1). Language games are a world 3 product, given that
they are abstractions made from world 2 that humans have created to communicate
what was before trapped in world 2. The structural makeup of a language with its set of
intonations, grammar, spellings, etc. makes up the rules of a language, and at that point,
the language becomes a language game. One must learn the rules of a language game
in order to effectively communicate through it. Once the language game is mastered,
humans can use this world 3 entity to exchange ideas that go back into world 2 or out
into world 1… and the cycle continues.

Relationship Concept 2: World 3 and 5: Progress in science

While it is heavily debated, many philosophers of science agree that progress in science
happens through proposing hypotheses, testing such hypotheses, and using the results of those
tests to confirm or falsify the hypotheses and create general laws. These steps and their
theoretical frameworks are, according to Popper, entities of world 3. They are all products of
the minds of scientists and philosophers who have observed world 1, reasoned through world
2, and then created hypotheses, theories, experiments, instruments, observation statements, and
methodologies which all fall under world 3. It is these world 3 entities that make progress in
science, the theories and laws and facts that allow philosophers of science to constitute what’s
modern and what’s the past in science.

Relationship Concept 3: and 4: Language games

Knowledge/power
Language games are needed to communicate knowledge to others. One must understand the
rules of a language game in order to not only speak it, but to have the right definitions and
intonations to effectively use it in an exchange of knowledge. Thus, language games and their
rules are a needed form of knowledge in order to gain power. A human playing one language
game cannot gain power over humans playing a different language game, thus stressing the
need to learn regulatory rules. A human not playing any language game also of course could
not gain power over any humans at all, thus stressing the importance of learning constitutive
rules.

Relationship Concept 3: and 5: Progress in science

Knowledge/power
Those with knowledge can move forward in science, and those with power can determine what
‘moving forward’ in science even means. Any progress in science is determined less by
theoretical or methodological innovations, and more by which people have the knowledge to
understand theoretical/methodological shifts at all, and which people have the power to
publicize the correct shifts to the scientific community and beyond. Sometimes the most
knowledgeable people do not affirm the progress made in the scientific community (despite
having scientific consensus), or manipulate it in some way, because their power has a higher
influence on their decision-making than their knowledge.

Relationship Concept 4: Language games and 6: Relativism

There are two types of rules that determine language games: constitutive and regulatory.
Constitutive rules are those that actually make the game—if you don’t know these rules then
you don’t know what language even is. Regulatory rules are those that decide the other rules
of any language game—what is normal/accepted in that language versus what is not.
Constitutive rules are not relative, they stay the same per language. Regulatory rules are
relative, they change per language based on the norms of the community playing that language
game. But those norms are not hierarchical; there is no community of language players that are
playing their language game any better than another, since the content of what they
communicate through their game can be the same as in another language. This is what makes
language games relative.

Relationship Concept 5: Progress in and 6: Relativism

science
As established in the explanation of the relationship between knowledge/power and progress
in science, it is clear that anything determined as ‘progress’ in science is utterly relative. A
large chunk of this course has been about the different arguments posed by various
philosophers on what constitutes progress. Popper says that it is through falsificationism, Kuhn
says that it is through paradigms, Lakatos through research programs, Feyerabend through
epistemological anarchism, etc. What was also made clear from this course is that no one has
found the one ‘right’ answer yet, and the whole point is that we never will. Each of these
philosophers has his own way of understanding progress in science, but the fact that each one
is allowed to keep his argument shows the relativity of them all. While they all make
justifiable claims—and make just as many justifiable accusations against the validity of the
other arguments—there is no way to completely measure which argument in fact is the most
valid in determining progress in science, thus they remain relative forever.