Final Exam
Principles of Inquiry: Ways of Knowing
Summer, 2001
Instructions:
Answer
all of the following questions. Answer
each question as completely and clearly as you can in about half a page (for a
total of about three typed, double-spaced pages. Mail your answers to Tom Atchison, 3734 17th Ave. So.,
Mpls, MN 55407 or e-mail them to tomatchison@bigfoot.com. If you use e-mail, make sure that it is
clear to me which answer goes with which question. I need to receive your exam (and everything else you might
want to turn in) by Friday August 24.
If you want your exam and or paper returned I will need a
self-addressed, stamped envelope. If
you want comments e-mailed, let me know.
- How
does Susan Haack use the model of a crossword puzzle to explain the nature
of empirical inquiry (including science)?
- What
does Richard Rorty mean by suggesting that we abandon the quest for
objectivity and, instead, seek solidarity? (In “Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism” he says,
“there are no constraints on inquiry save conversational ones ...
constraints provided by the remarks of our fellow inquirers.” Alcoff,
p.340) What do you think about his
views?
- How,
according to Haack, is it true that ‘science is social’ and how is it
false?
- Genevieve
Lloyd says, “our ideals of Reason are in fact male.” (Alcoff, p.389) Lorraine Code says, “ideal objectivity
is a tacit generalization from the subjectivity of quite a small
social group” (“educated, usually prosperous, white men”). (Alcoff, p.129)
What, specifically, is supposed to be male about reason and objectivity as
they have been understood by the Western philosophical tradition? What do you think about this idea?
- How,
according to Kwame A. Appiah, is traditional African religion like and
unlike modern science? Does this,
in your opinion, support or undermine the idea that there is a distinctive
African ‘way of knowing’?
- In
“Multiculturalism and Objectivity” Susan Haack distinguishes a variety of
forms of multiculturalism. The
form she finds most problematic she calls “epistemological
counterculturalism.” What is this
view, and why does she think it is dangerous and wrong? What do you think?