Possible Final Exam Questions Principles of Inquiry

Note: each of the following questions asks you to explain some claim, argument, or idea found in one or more of the readings. I will also, sometimes, ask you to say what you think about the ideas (etc.) I have asked you to explain.

1. According to a more traditional understanding of science, scientific revolutions lead to new interpretations of “observations that themselves are fixed once and for all by the nature of the environment and of the perceptual apparatus.” (Kuhn, p.120) Kuhn rejects this view, insisting that, in some sense, “after a revolution scientists are responding to a different world.” (p.111) What reasons does Kuhn give for thinking that the traditional view must be rejected?

2. Some readers have taken Kuhn to be a relativist. What aspects of his discussion of the way scientific revolutions are resolved give credence to this interpretation of his view? Why does he think his view is not relativist?

3. In what sense does science make progress according to Kuhn? What conception of scientific progress does Kuhn think we can no longer hang on to? (How does an analogy with biological evolution help to explain this point?)

4. How does Susan Haack use the model of a crossword puzzle to explain the nature of empirical inquiry (including science)?

5. How does Potter use the metaphors of ‘the mirror’ and ‘the construction yard’ to illuminate two different approaches to thinking about knowledge?

6. How does Potter deal with the problem of ‘reflexivity’, i.e., the problem that arises from the fact that his ‘constructionist’ analysis of descriptions must apply to his own descriptions? (This is also called the tu quoque or ‘you too’ problem.)

7. What does Richard Rorty mean by suggesting that we abandon the quest for objectivity and, instead, seek solidarity?

8. According to Haack, Richard Rorty has “stripped ‘justification’ ... of essential content” (p.20) by ignoring the connection between justification and evidence and thinking of justification as simply a matter of what is acceptable to some audience. Similarly she criticizes several other writers for downplaying or ignoring the distinction between ‘warrant’ and ‘acceptance’. (pp.110-114) What is her point ? How might someone like Rorty respond to it?

9. How, according to Haack, is it true that ‘science is social’ and how is it false?

10. If you had five minutes to explain ‘postmodernism’ to a friend, what would you say?

11. According to Dabniya and Alcoff, mainstream (malestream?) epistemology focuses on ‘knowing that’ and ignores ‘experiential knowledge’ and ‘knowing how’. As a result it is ill equipped to appreciate the knowledge possessed by midwives. Explain.

12. Explain three ways that, according to Elizabeth Anderson, women’s ‘social location’ might give them access to knowledge that would be more difficult (or even impossible) for men to acquire.

13. Haack says that there is no interesting connection between feminism and epistemology. Explain at least one of her reasons for thinking that ‘feminist epistemology’ is a mistake.

14. How, according to Kwame A. Appiah, is traditional African religion like and unlike modern science?

15. How does Appiah try to argue that Africans who accept their traditional religious beliefs (in spirits and spiritual causes for events) are no less rational (reasonable) than Westerners who believe in, say, planets?

16. 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?