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. How do Everitt and Fisher propose to ‘solve’ the problem of induction?
2. How does Susan Haack use the model of a crossword puzzle to explain the nature of empirical inquiry (including science)?
3. What does it mean to ‘naturalize’ epistemology?
4. Why might someone think that epistemology cannot be ‘naturalized’?
5. 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)
6. 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?
7. How, according to Haack, is it true that ‘science is social’ and how is it false?
8. 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?
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. How, according to Kwame A. Appiah, is traditional African religion like and unlike modern science?
12. 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?
13. 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?