Philosophy 303 - Principles of Inquiry: Ways of Knowing
Assignment #2
Beginning to Develop Some Principles of Inquiry
(largely by reflecting on some common sources of
confusion and error)
Reading for this assignment:
- Chapters
1, 2, and 3 of How to Think About Weird Things (pp.1-87) (It would
not be a terrible thing, from my point of view, if you skipped some of the
examples of “weird things” described on pages 6-12 and in the ‘breakout
boxes’ in Chapter 2 – for example, the box on p.22 discussing quantum
mechanics and ESP. The authors
offer a lot of examples and illustrations in this book, and you may not be
that interested in all of them. The
important thing, from my point of view is to make sure that you understand
the principles of inquiry that they are articulating.)
- “Relativism
and the Constructive Aspects of Perception” by Chris Swoyer, online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement1.html
(Note: for now, we are primarily interested in the constructive aspects of
perception and the consequences they have for inquiry. We’ll come back later to the issue of
relativism. I include this brief piece in this assignment because it
offers some further illustrations and elaborations of the claim made in
Chapter 3 of Weird Things, that
what we perceive is actively constructed, not passively received, by our
minds.)
- Chapter
1 in Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science (pp.9-29).
- Optional
extras (not required reading):
- Part
of the work by Segal, Campbell, and Herscovitz on cultural differences in
visual perception (mentioned by Swoyer) is online at: http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/socialperception14.pdf
- There’s a great collection of
visual illusions online at http://dragon.uml.edu/psych/illusion.html
It includes clearer examples of some of
the illusions discussed by Swoyer, but many others as well. Highly recommended.
Writing Assignment:
1. Write
out brief answers to the study questions at the end of Chapter 2 (on pp.30-31)
of How to Think About Weird Things. (There are five of them – I do not
mean to include the “discussion questions” or the exercises headed “Evaluate
these claims…”)
2. According
to Chapter 3 of How to Think About Weird Things, what are some of the
ways that our personal experience can be misleading as a source of knowledge?
(Write a page or two.)
3. The
title of Brian Fay’s chapter 1 asks, “Do you have to be one to know one?” The answer seems to be, “No, you don’t.” Why not?
Your answer should be a page or two long and should include some
discussion of the following:
- The
different things that might be meant by “knowing;”
- The
reasons Fay gives for his preferred interpretation of that term;
- His
reasons for saying that others may know us better than we know ourselves;
and, finally,
- The
sense in which the claim he is rejecting does contain a (limited) kernel
of truth.
4. Schick and Vaughn focus their attention on
people’s beliefs about various occult and ‘paranormal’ phenomena (“weird
things”). But they also say that the
principles they are developing in their book should be applicable to thinking about
other sorts of things. How might the
ideas in Chapter 3 (about the limitations of personal experience as a source of
knowledge) apply to people’ beliefs about politics and public affairs? Do you think that your own beliefs about
these things (and your decisions about who to vote for) might be at least
partly the product of some of the unreliable processes described in Chapter
3? (Write a page or two; be as specific
as you can.)