Philosophy of Science: Difference between revisions
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==August | ==August 29: Introduction on Science and Models == | ||
:What is science? | |||
: | :What is logic? | ||
: | :What is mathematics? | ||
: | :The taxonomy of scientific models | ||
==September | ==September 5: Labor Day Observed== | ||
==September | ==September 12: == | ||
==September | ==September 19: Aristotle, Scotus, Peirce and the Metaphysics of Science== | ||
:An introduction to truthmaking | :An introduction to truthmaking | ||
:The metaphysical realism of Duns Scotus | :The metaphysical realism of Duns Scotus | ||
:Peirce's metaphysical realism | :Peirce's metaphysical realism | ||
::Peirce and chemical diagrams | ::Peirce and chemical diagrams | ||
::Peirce on the continuum | ::Peirce on the continuum | ||
::Peirce and mereology | ::Peirce and mereology | ||
[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Peirce-and-Scotus Slides] | [https://buffalo.box.com/v/Peirce-and-Scotus Slides] | ||
| Line 98: | Line 78: | ||
::Campbell, ''[https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10039485/1/Chris%20Campbell%20Final%20Thesis%20Submitted.pdf The Chemistry of Relations]'' | ::Campbell, ''[https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10039485/1/Chris%20Campbell%20Final%20Thesis%20Submitted.pdf The Chemistry of Relations]'' | ||
::Pihlström, "[http://www.minerva.mic.ul.ie//vol9/Truthmaking.html Truthmaking And Pragmatist Conceptions Of Truth And Reality]". | ::Pihlström, "[http://www.minerva.mic.ul.ie//vol9/Truthmaking.html Truthmaking And Pragmatist Conceptions Of Truth And Reality]". | ||
::Smith, "[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/charuniv.pdf Characteristica Universalis]" | ::Smith, "[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/charuniv.pdf Characteristica Universalis]" | ||
::Stjernfelt, ''[https://buffalo.box.com/s/ybkrfsmmc7h95piypzq8fhl58urjulb5 Diagrammatology]'' | ::Stjernfelt, ''[https://buffalo.box.com/s/ybkrfsmmc7h95piypzq8fhl58urjulb5 Diagrammatology]'' | ||
::Stjernelt, "[https://philpapers.org/archive/STJMAS.pdf Mereology and Semiotics]" | ::Stjernelt, "[https://philpapers.org/archive/STJMAS.pdf Mereology and Semiotics]" | ||
==September 26: Biological Sciences== | |||
==September | |||
''Ontology of Niches, Affordances, Settings, Places, Habitats: From Aristotle to Gibson and Barker and the Hutchinsonian Niche'' | |||
[[ | :[https://buffalo.box.com/s/6wmxnd9vvuhd9ubrldeptaerydqzkbct Slides] | ||
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/u0yz6ddfaa6k34gwfw48su4q19y78z0o Video] | |||
==October 3: Medical Sciences== | |||
: | ==October 10: Psychological Sciences== | ||
'''Behavior settings as emergent relational structures in everyday life''' | |||
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Heft-On-Affordances Slides] | :[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Heft-On-Affordances Slides] | ||
| Line 237: | Line 106: | ||
:Smith, "[https://philpapers.org/archive/SMIOAT.pdf Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Psychology]" | :Smith, "[https://philpapers.org/archive/SMIOAT.pdf Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Psychology]" | ||
== | ==October 17: == | ||
==October 24: == | |||
==October 31: == | |||
==November 8: == | |||
==November | ==November 15: == | ||
: | ==November 22: == | ||
==November | ==November 28: == | ||
==December | ==December 5: Student Projects == | ||
== '''Background Reading: Primary Literature''' == | == '''Background Reading: Primary Literature''' == | ||
Revision as of 12:51, 22 February 2022
Philosophy of Science
(PHI 5XX)
Fall Semester 2022, Monday 1-3:40pm
Venue: TBD
Registration: Class#: [1]
Course Description: This course will be based on a series of discussions in the philosophy of science
Instructor: Barry Smith Prerequisites: Open to all persons with an undergraduate degree and some knowledge of philosophy.
Office hours: By appointment via email at phismith@buffalo.edu
The Course
Course Description:
Course Structure: This is a three credit hour graduate seminar.
The final session will be structured around powerpoint presentations by the students in the class. These presentations will be recorded.
Target Audience: The course is open to all interested students with an undergraduate degree and some knowledge of philosophy.
Sample Topics
- What is a scientific model?
- Descriptions, Explanations, Interpretations, Predictions
- Classifying sciences
- Science as a habit
- Simple and complex systems
- The reproducibility crisis
- The applicability of mathematics
- Philosophy of explicit and implicit mathematics
- Carl Stumpf: Philosopher in the Lab
- Do the mathematical entities mathematicians use exist independently of the mathematicians who use them?
- Popper and after: Four modern irrationalists
- Can we discover new scientific theories using AI?
- The role of ontology in information-driven science
- Nancy Cartwright
- The Metaphysics Research Lab
- Powers and dispositions
- Singular dispositions (chemistry and interpersonal attraction, charisma, intersubjectivity ...)
- Philosophy of mathematics
- Explicit vs. implicit mathematics
- Structural, patterns, Wesenszusammenhänge
- Units of measure, measurement results, equations
August 29: Introduction on Science and Models
- What is science?
- What is logic?
- What is mathematics?
- The taxonomy of scientific models
September 5: Labor Day Observed
September 12:
September 19: Aristotle, Scotus, Peirce and the Metaphysics of Science
- An introduction to truthmaking
- The metaphysical realism of Duns Scotus
- Peirce's metaphysical realism
- Peirce and chemical diagrams
- Peirce on the continuum
- Peirce and mereology
- Boler, Peirce and the Medievals
- Campbell, The Chemistry of Relations
- Pihlström, "Truthmaking And Pragmatist Conceptions Of Truth And Reality".
- Smith, "Characteristica Universalis"
- Stjernfelt, Diagrammatology
- Stjernelt, "Mereology and Semiotics"
September 26: Biological Sciences
Ontology of Niches, Affordances, Settings, Places, Habitats: From Aristotle to Gibson and Barker and the Hutchinsonian Niche
October 3: Medical Sciences
October 10: Psychological Sciences
Behavior settings as emergent relational structures in everyday life
Readings:
- Heft, "Perceptual Information of 'An Entirely Different Order'"
- Heft, "Places: Widening the Scope of an Ecological Approach to Perception"
- Heft, Ecological Psychology in Context
- Smith, "Toward a Realistic Science of Environments"
- Smith, "Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Psychology"
October 17:
October 24:
October 31:
November 8:
November 15:
November 22:
November 28:
December 5: Student Projects
Background Reading: Primary Literature
- Barker, Roger "On the Nature of the Environment", Journal of Social Issues, October 1963.
- Brock, Jarrett, "An Introduction to Peirce's Theory of Speech Acts", Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 17 (4), 1981, 319-326.
- Dewey, John. (1884). "The new psychology". Andover Review, 2, 278-289. [Possibly the first use of the phrase "new psychology."]
- Dewey, John. (1894). "The ego as cause". Philosophical Review, 3, 337-341.
- Dewey, John. (1896) "The reflex arc concept in psychology". Psychological Review, 3, 357-370. [The article that defined the modern concept of the reflex.]
- Dewey, John. (1938) Logic. The Theory of Inquiry
- Gibson, James J. (1966) The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems
- Gibson, James J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
- Holt, Edwin Bissell (1931) Animal Drive and the Leaning Process. An Essay Toward Radical Empiricism
- Holt, E. B. et al. (1912) The New Realism
- James, William (1890). The Principles of Psychology.
- James, William, "Pragmatism, a New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking", in: Popular Lectures on Philosophy, Longmans, Green, and Co (1907)
- Langfeld, Herbert (1931) "A Response Interpretation of Consciousness", The Psychological Review, 38(2), 1931, 87-107.
- Mead, George H. (1913). "The social self". Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 10, 374-380. [Major article by the "social behaviorist"]
- Mead, George H. (1934) Mind, Self and Society
- Parsons, Talcott (1951) The Social System
- Peirce, C. S. "How to Make our Ideas Clear"
- Schiller, F. C. S. Humanism: Philosophical Essays
- Schiller, F. C. S. Studies in Humanism,
- Skinner, B. F. (1935). "Two types of conditioned reflex and a pseudo type". Journal of General Psychology, 12, 66-77. [Major statement of operant behaviorism.]
- Skinner, B. F. (1937). "Two types of conditioned reflex: A reply to Konorski and Miller". Journal of General Psychology, 16, 272-279. [Reply to major critique of Skinner (1935).]
- Skinner, B. F. (1950). "Are theories of learning necessary?", Psychological Review, 57, 193-216.
- Thorndike, Edward Human Learning, 1931
- Watson, John B. (1913). "Psychology as the behaviorist views it". Psychological Review, 20, 158-177. [The classic manifesto of behaviorism.]
Background Reading: Secondary Literature
- Michael K. Bergman, Hierarchy from the perspective of Peirce, Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization
- M. E. Bitterman Classical Conditioning Since Pavlov, Review of General Psychology, 2006, 10 (4), 365–376
- J. F. Boler, Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism: A Study of Peirce's Relation to John Duns Scotus, University of Washington Press, I963
- J. F. Boler, Peirce on the Medievals: Realism, Power and Form
- Maria Brinker, "The Backside of Habit: Notes on Embodied Agency and the Functional Opacity of the Medium", in: Fausto Caruana & Italo Testa (eds.), Habits, 2020
- Chris Campbell, The Chemistry of Relations. The periodic table examined through the lens of C.S. Peirce’s philosophy, University College London, 2017
- Fausto Caruana and Italo Testa (eds.) Habits: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
- Jorge Castro and Enrique Lafuente, “All You Need is Holt”—Is the Socio-cultural Phenomenon a Problem for a Neorealist Ecological Psychology?
- E. P. Charles, Seeing Minds in Behavior: Descriptive Mentalism, August 2011, Review of General Psychology 15(3):267-276.
- A. Chemero, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, MIT Press, 2009
- A. Chemero, "[2] An Outline of a Theory of Affordances]", Ecological Psychology, 15(2), 181–195
- Willard F. Day, On certain similarities between the Philosophical investigations of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the operationism of B. F. Skinner, Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1969 May; 12(3): 489–506.
- Christopher D. Green, "Introduction to Watson (1913)"
- Bernard Guerin, Gibson, Skinner and Perceptual Responses, Behavior and Philosophy, Spring/Summer 1990, Vol. 18, Number 1
- Susan Haack, "Pragmatism Old and New" (2006).
- Henry Jackman, "James' Pragmatic Account of Intentionality and Truth", Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 34, No. 1, 1998, 155-181
- Peter Hare, G. H. Mead's Metaphysics of Sociality, Dissertation, Columbia University, 1965
- Peter Hare, Neglected American Philosophers in the History of Symbolic Interactionism [on Mead's precursors Chauncey Wright and Josiah Royce]
- Harry Heft, Ecological Psychology in Context : James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism
- Harry Heft, "Perceptual Information of 'An Entirely Different Order': The 'Cultural Environment' in The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems", Ecological Psychology, 29 (2), 2017, 122-145
- Heft, Harry, "Places: Widening the Scope of an Ecological Approach to Perception–Action With an Emphasis on Child Development", Ecological Psychology, 30, 2018, 99-123
- Hongwei Jia Foundations of the Theory of Signs (1938), Chinese Semiotic Studies 15(1): 1–14.
- Catherine Legg and Joshua Black “What is Intelligence For? A Peircean Pragmatist Response to the Knowing‑How, Knowing‑That Debate”, Erkenntnis, 2020.
- Willem J. M. Levelt, Speech Acts and Functions, ch. 9 of Levelt, A History of Psycholinguistics: The Pre-Chomskyan Era, Oxford University Press, 2013 [on Bühler and speech act theory]
- Peter T. Manicas, "John Dewey and American Psychology", Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 32:30021–8308
- Edward C. Moore, "The Scholastic Realism of C. S. Peirce", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, March 1952, 12 (3), 406-417
- Kevin Mulligan, "How to Marry Phenomenology and Pragmatism - Scheler's Proposal", Pragmatism and the European Traditions: Encounters with Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology Before the Great Divide, Edited by Maria Baghramian and Sarin Marchetti, Routledge, 2018, 37-64
- Peter Munz, Philosophy and the Mirror of Rorty, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 14 (2):195-238 (1984)
- Thomas Natsoulas Gibson's Environment, Husserl's "Lebenswelt," the World of Physics, and the Rejection of Phenomenal Objects, The American Journal of Psychology, Autumn, 1994, Vol. 107, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 327-358
- Sami Pihlström, "Truthmaking And Pragmatist Conceptions Of Truth And Reality". Minerva (2005) 9:105-133.
- Matthieu Queloz, The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering (open access) [On Peirce]
- Richard Rorty, Review of Boler on Scholastic Realism
- John Sowa, "Peirce, Polya, and Euclid: Integrating logic, heuristics, and geometry"
- John Sowa,"Reasoning with diagrams and images", 2018
- John Sowa, "Natural logic is diagrammatic reasoning about mental models", 2020
- John Sowa "Peirce's Contributions to the 21st Century".
- Barry Smith (ed.), Foundations of Gestalt Theory, Munich, 1988.
- Barry Smith, "Characteristica Universalis", in K. Mulligan (ed.), Language, Truth and Ontology, Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1992, 48–77.
- Barry Smith, "Toward a Realistic Science of Environments", Ecological Pschology 21 (2), April-June 2009, 121-130
- Barry Smith “Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Psychology”, in Andrew Frank, Jonathan Raper and Jean-Paul Cheylan (eds.), The Life and Motion of Socio-Economic Units (GISDATA 8), London: Taylor and Francis, 2001, 79–97. [On Roger Barker on behavior settings]
- Frederik Stjernfelt, "Mereology and Semiotics", Sign Systems Studies 28:73-97 (2000)
- Frederik Stjernfelt, Diagrammatology, Springer, 2007
- Frederik Stjernfelt, "Peirce as Truthmaker Realist"Signs Conveying Information: On the Range of Peirce's Notion of Propositions – Dicisigns", in: Empirical Research on Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric, 2018 (pp.177-192)
- Frederik Stjernfelt,"Riddle of Dependences. How to connect entities, across pragmatism, phenomenology, and structuralism"
- Frederik Stjernfelt: "Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions: An Amazing Peircean Idea and Some Implications for the Semiotics of Truth"
- Fumiaki Toyoshima and Adrien Barton "A Formal Representation of Affordances as Reciprocal Dispositions", TriCoLore (C3GI/ISD/SCORE), 2018
- Rob Withagen and Anthony Chemero Affordances and classification: On the significance of a sidebar in James Gibson’s last book, Philosophical Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 4, August 2012, 521–537
- Robert H. Wozniak, "Commentary on Watson (1913)"
Background Reading: Repositories
- Mead Project Inventory: see especially items by Dewey, E. B. Holt, and G. H. Mead
- Peirce resources
- Harry Heft: Works
- Munich Schedule of Lectures on Peirce
- Frederik Stjernfelt on Peirce
- E. P. Charles' papers on Holt
- Classics in the History of Psychology
Student Learning Outcomes
| Program Outcomes/Competencies | Instructional Method(s) | Assessment Method(s) |
|---|---|---|
| The student will acquire a knowledge of the history of American philosophy, of its influence on the development of psychology and the social sciences, and of its contemporary relevance. | Lectures and class discussions | Review of reading matter and associated online content and participation in class discussions |
| The student will acquire experience in using the methods employed in intellectual history, especially as applied to philosophical theories and systems | Participation in practical experiments | Review of results |
| The student will acquire experience in communicating the results of work in the history of philosophy in such a way as to demonstrate their contemporary relevance. | Creation of youtube presentation and of associated documentation | Review of results |
How to Write an Essay
- Jordan Peterson's Essay Writing Guide
- Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style, Penguin Books, 2014
- Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
- Harvard's guide to writing philosophy
- Jim Pryor's guide to writing philosophy
Important Dates
| Sep 7 | - about now start to discuss by email the content of your essay or essays with Dr Smith |
| Sep 25 | - submit proposed title and abstract |
| Oct 10 | - submit a table of contents and 300 word summary plus draft of associated ppt slides |
| Oct 20 | - submit first draft of essay (~1000 words) and associated powerpoint (~10 slides) |
| Nov 15 | - submit second draft of essay (~2000 words) and associated powerpoint (~10 slides) |
| Nov 22 | - class presentation |
| Dec 11 | - submit final version of essay and powerpoint and upload final version of video to youtube |
Grading
Grading will be based on two factors:
I: understanding and criticism of the material presented in classes 1-13
All students are required to take an active part in class (and where relevant on-line) discussions throughout the semester.
II: preparation of an essay, and associated powerpoint slides and recorded presentation.
Content and structure of the essay should be discussed with Dr Smith.
Grading Policy: Grading follows standard Graduate School policies. Grades will be weighted according to the following breakdown:
Weighting Assignment
- 20% - class discussions
- 15% - youtube video presentation
- 15% - powerpoint slides
- 50% - essay
Final Grades
Percentages refer to sum of assignment grades as listed above
Grade Quality Percentage
| A | 4.0 | 90.0% -100.00% |
| A- | 3.67 | 87.0% - 89.9% |
| B+ | 3.33 | 84.0% - 86.9% |
| B | 3.00 | 80.0% - 83.9% |
| B- | 2.67 | 77.0% - 79.9% |
| C+ | 2.33 | 74.0% - 76.9% |
| C | 2.00 | 71.0% - 73.9% |
| C- | 1.67 | 68.0% - 70.9% |
| D+ | 1.33 | 65.0% - 67.9% |
| D | 1.00 | 62.0% - 64.9% |
| F | 0 | 61.9% or below |
An interim grade of Incomplete (I) may be assigned if the student has not completed all requirements for the course. An interim grade of 'I' shall not be assigned to a student who did not attend the course. The default grade accompanying an interim grade of 'I' shall be 'U' and will be displayed on the UB record as 'IU.' The default Unsatisfactory (U) grade shall become the permanent course grade of record if the 'IU' is not changed through formal notice by the instructor upon the student's completion of the course.
Assignment of an interim 'IU' is at the discretion of the instructor. A grade of 'IU' can be assigned only if successful completion of unfulfilled course requirements can result in a final grade better than the default 'U' grade. The student should have a passing average in the requirements already completed. The instructor shall provide the student specification, in writing, of the requirements to be fulfilled.
The university’s Graduate Incomplete Policy can be found here.
Related Policies and Services
Academic integrity is a fundamental university value. Through the honest completion of academic work, students sustain the integrity of the university while facilitating the university's imperative for the transmission of knowledge and culture based upon the generation of new and innovative ideas. See http://grad.buffalo.edu/Academics/Policies-Procedures/Academic-Integrity.html.
Accessibility resources: If you have any disability which requires reasonable accommodations to enable you to participate in this course, please contact the Office of Accessibility Resources in 60 Capen Hall, 645-2608 and also the instructor of this course during the first week of class. The office will provide you with information and review appropriate arrangements for reasonable accommodations, which can be found on the web here.
University suppert services: Students are often unaware of university support services. For example, the Center for Excellence in Writing provides support for written work, and several tutoring centers on campus provide academic success support and resources.
Available resources on sexual assault: UB is committed to providing an environment free of all forms of discrimination and sexual harassment, including sexual assault, domestic and dating violence and stalking. If you have experienced gender-based violence (intimate partner violence, attempted or completed sexual assault, harassment, coercion, stalking, etc.), UB has resources to help. This includes academic accommodations, health and counseling services, housing accommodations, helping with legal protective orders, and assistance with reporting the incident to police or other UB officials if you so choose. Please contact UB’s Title IX Coordinator at 716-645-2266 for more information. For confidential assistance, you may also contact a Crisis Services Campus Advocate at 716-796-4399.
Counseiling services: As a student you may experience a range of issues that can cause barriers to learning or reduce your ability to participate in daily activities. These might include strained relationships, anxiety, high levels of stress, alcohol/drug problems, feeling down, health concerns, or unwanted sexual experiences. Counseling, Health Services, and Health Promotion are here to help with these or other concerns. You learn can more about these programs and services by contacting:
- Counseling Services: 120 Richmond Quad (North Campus), phone 716-645-2720
- Health Services: Michael Hall (South Campus), phone: 716-829-3316
- Health Promotion: 114 Student Union (North Campus), phone: 716- 645-2837
