PHL 255 Homepage

SYLLABUS

READINGS

• Science and Pseudoscience
  • 9/13 - Rene Descartes, First Meditation of Meditations on First Philosophy
  • 9/13 - Bertrand Russell, Chapters 1 and 4 of The Problems of Philosophy
  • 9/15 - William Bechtel, Chapter 2 of The Philosophy of Science: An Overview for Cognitive Science
  • 9/15 - A. J. Ayer, Chapter 1 of Language, Truth, & Logic
  • 9/20 - David Hume, excerpt from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • 9/20 - Karl Popper, Chapter 1 of The Logic of Scientific Discovery
  • 9/20 - Karl Popper, "Science: Conjectures & Refutations"
  • 9/22 - Sigmund Freud, "The Dream and the Primal Scene" (excerpt from The Collected Papers)
  • 9/22 - Adolf Grunbaum, "The Liabilities of Freudian Psychoanalysis"
  • 9/22 - Edward Erwin, excerpt from "Psychoanalysis: How Firm is the Evidence?"
  • 9/27 - Imre Lakatos, "Science and Pseudoscience"
  • 9/27 - Paul Thagard, "Why Astrology Is a Pseudoscience"
• Science, Religion, and God
• 9/29 - Michael Ruse, "Creation Science Is Not Science"
• 9/29 - Larry Laudan, "Science at the Bar -- Causes for Concern"
• 10/4 - Elliott Sober, "The Design Argument"
• Science & Society
• 10/13 - Janet Radcliffe Richards, "Why Feminist Epistemology Isn't"
  • Pages 385-404 (skip the final section)
• 10/18 - Kathleen Okruhlik, "Gender and the Biological Sciences"
• Science, Rationality, & Objectivity
  • 10/25 - Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
    • Read chapters 9-11
    • Ignore the notes in the margins (whoever scanned it has... interesting handwriting).
• Realism vs. Anti-realism
  • 11/1 - Bas van Fraassen, "Arguments Concerning Scientific Realism"
  • 11/3 - Peter Lipton, "Is the Best Good Enough?"
  • 11/8 - Larry Laudan, "A Confutation of Convergent Realism"
  • 11/15 - James Brown, "Explaining the Success of Science"
  • 11/17 - John Worral, "How to Remain (Reasonably) Optimistic"
  • 11/22 - Ian Hacking, "Experimentation and Scientific Realism"
  • 11/24 - Marc Lange, "Baseball, Pessimistic Inductions, and the Turnover Fallacy"

PAPER ASSIGNMENTS

• Important links:
  • Philosophy Essay Clinic
  • How Not to Plagiarize
  • Jim Pryor's Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper
  • Turnitin.com
• Assignment #1
• Assignment #2
• Assignment #3
• Assignment #4
• Assignment #5
• Assignment #6
• Assignment #7

STUDY QUESTIONS - Updated 11/26/10