Topic II. A Common Shared Reality and Scientific Advancement
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LEARNING GOALS
- B. CONCEPT ACQUISITION
- Validity of Concepts
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LEARNING GOALS
- B. CONCEPT ACQUISITION
- Validity of Concepts
- The extent to which a scientific concept is responding to some real external thing.
- C. CONCEPT APPLICATION
- Distinguish concept validity from (1) a social-constructivist picture of scientific concepts free-floating in a world of mutual agreement among power brokers, not moored to a universally shared reality, and (2) subjective preferences.
- a. Identify cases where concept validity is expected
- e.g. What is a quark/electron/boson? What is an animal?
- b. Identify cases where social constructivism might be a good approach
- e.g. What is her name? What is the name of this city?
- c. Identify cases where preference might be sufficient
- Which chocolate is tastiest? Which color palette is prettiest?
- Use the concept of validity to assess scientific claims, contrasting cases where the validity of the concept is on stronger vs. weaker footing.
- a. In straightforward cases
- e.g. Everyone or nearly everyone can agree about which animals are cats, and consequently agree that most cats have fur, etc.
- b. In less straightforward cases
- e.g. Claims about bosons, dark energy, what sort of black hole is at the center of the Milky Way
- c. In difficult cases
- e.g. Disagreement is rife over what intelligence is, so claims about the relative intelligence of two groups of people are more questionable.
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LEARNING GOALS
- C. CONCEPT APPLICATION
- Explain how the validity of human classifications (e.g., race, gender) can be problematic and contribute to such abuses (e.g., because there isn’t any there, there are a number of things there, there is one thing there but it doesn’t have the significance you take it to).