Chapter 8

Question 1

What did Wittgenstein say about language? 3

Answer 1

• words were shaped by the way they are used in society in a social context
• language game: words often have different meanings in different language games → “God is good” has meaning in a religious language game, but is meaningless in a scientific one.
  • language rules constitute a language game → to be able to obey the rules I need to explain them to someone else so we know there are illegitimate moves
    → rules of any game are public rules (publicly testable)

Question 2

How can the language game be related to relativism? 3

Answer 2

• opportunities for relativism: the truth of statements depends on the paradigm in which they are made
  • no objective answer to question, merely different options → vary from culture to culture → we see what we expect to see
  • Hanson: interpretation is present in observation, when our theories change the facts that make up reality also change with them
    → reality as our own construction (constructivism)

Question 3

What is the The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis from Linguistics?

Answer 3

• what one can think about or perceive depends on the language that that person speaks
  → ex. we just know the word “snow”, while the Inuit have all sorts of different words for snow

Question 4

What is Thomas Kuhn’s theory?

Answer 4

→ in a science like physics, the scientists always worked with a certain paradigm (framework) which shaped their ideas, even though these paradigms are often wrong
* pre-scientific → “normal science”-> crisis → paradigm shift

* find out the old theory was wrong and a new theory is developed, which will serve as the new paradigm

Normal science: research firmly based on past scientific achievements → trying to get rid of problems (anomalies), dogmatic framework: scientists try to hold onto their theories

Crisis: paradigm shifts occur abruptly, if paradigm gets more and more problems it becomes untrustworthy → result is crisis, start of abnormal science: discussion about accepted truths → if there is no alternative paradigm yet → scientific revolution

scientific revolution: abnormal science end in: all problems get resolved and if some problems are left, crisis gets managed and trust is restored, or new paradigm → solving of revolution

Question 5

What is theory-ladenness? 4

Answer 5

humans see what they expect to see which is determined by the framework they share with others

-what does not fit these expectations is left out of our observation

→ reality and truth are subjective

→ relative to a group of scientists in a certain period of time within a certain paradigm (scientific relativism).

Question 6

what is Incommensurability?

Answer 6

past and current paradigm are not comparable and therefore it is impossible to determine whether the new paradigm is closer to the truth

There are 3 reasons they cannot be compared:

• the same terms apply but in different relations
  • scientists from different paradigms would be unable to communicate, because there is no objective language
• theories not only determine what we see, but also what is → we cannot see spirits be we might not live in their world but that doesn‘t mean they don‘t exist

criticism: paradigms merely change the world as we see it

Question 7

Why is a Paradigm Shift a Revolution? 3

Answer 7

Political and scientific revolutions share a few features:

-start with a few people recognising the crisis

-cannot be changed from within: the ruling theory/authority has to be overthrown.

-consensus cannot be achieved if one wants to make such a big change to the common way of thinking. People will always oppose

Question 8

What does Kuhn think about social sciences?

Answer 8

• Kuhns version offers advantage to social sciences → his criterion of science: if a paradigm is present in the disclipline, it can be classified as science
• hermeneutic character of social sciences prevent it from becoming a normal science → they change constantly, switching perspective