Science and society

1
Science and society

• How do scientific theories (or philosophical
  theories about science) impact commonsense views,
  public policy, etc.?
• And vice versa?
• CWU summer program visit signing chimps
  FriendsofWashoe.com
• The case of Genie
• Animal rights and our closest cousins (film)
• Science at the Bar determining what is science
  and what is not (demarcation again!), and using
  philosophy of science to do so...

2
Science and society

• Ordinary chimps and Bonobos apparently
• Have self-awareness, learn from a rich social
  (cultural?) environment, have complex social
  emotions and arrangements, can learn from each
  other, can use tools, have a developed (often
  troop specific) gesture-based means of
  communication, can learn 100s of words of human
  natural language vocabulary and follow commands,
  and can communicate, using sign language and
  lexigrams, their needs and intentions to humans.
• Should they be granted rights and/or recognized
  as having rights similar to those granted to or
  attributed to humans?

3

• Clearly, the view they that are mindless,
  driven solely by instinct, and in other ways
  dumb brutes is no longer tenable.
• What to make of this?
• Peter Singer, Australian philosopher at the
  University of Melbourne, and often controversial
• Yes, they should be granted rights that we grant
  to other humans
• For Singer, rights arent god-given or inherent
  and real independent of society so-called
  human rights are created and granted by
  societies.

4

• Peter Singer
• A utilitarian, Singer accepts (socially-defined)
  rights as a principle that follows from
  minimizing suffering
• Animal Liberation, published in 1977, he argued
  against speciesism discrimination based on the
  grounds that one belongs to a specific species
• He also argued that critics of Mary
  Wollstonecrafts 18th century defense of womens
  rights were correct in equating granting rights
  to women with granting rights to brutes
• But then turned the argument on its head by
  arguing that all beings capable of suffering are
  worthy of equal consideration and that giving
  lesser consideration to beings based on their
  having wings, fur, or female genitalia is no more
  justified than giving consideration to skin color.

5

• Peter Singer
• Animals should be granted rights based on their
  ability to feel pain (emotional, psychological,
  as well as physical) more than on the basis of
  their intellectual capacities.
• After all, many severely retarded humans are no
  more intelligent than some animals, yet we grant
  them rights.
• Moreover, it is clear that nonhuman primates can
  be highly intelligent and at least as intelligent
  as human children. As we grant the latter rights,
  why not intelligent animals?
• And should intelligence be the sole criterion?

6
Science at the bar

• Larry Laudan v. Michael Ruse
• Laudan
• McLean vs. Arkansas was a hollow victory
• Aka Ruses ruse
• How the philosophy of science had a role in the
  case

7
Science at the bar

• Judge Overton (and Ruse et al)
• Creation Science is not science because it does
  not contain the essential features of science
• It does not appeal to natural law
• Its claims are not testable or falsifiable
• Its proponents and claims are dogmatic rather
  than tentavie
• Laudans alternative CS is testable and many of
  its claims are patently false.

8
Science at the bar

• Laudan A far more serious problem is that the
  way science was portrayed in the case is a false
  stereotype
• Many scientific claims also cannot be tested in
  isolation and the logic of falsification is
  severely limited by that (Hempel and Duhem)
• Many scientific claims are not viewed by
  scientists of the day as open to negotiation
  there is a degree of dogmatism about core
  commitments among scientists (Kuhn and Duhem)
• We dont insist that in order for something to
  have happened or to exist we must know what laws
  explain it (for example, we know evolution
  occurred and continues to but there are no laws
  in evolutionary theory) (van Fraassens account
  of explanation)

9
Science at the bar

• Laudan A far more serious problem is that the
  way science was portrayed in the case is a false
  stereotype
• Add to all these problems, the fact that
  (scientific, all) observations are theory laden.
• This compromises, to some extent (a matter of
  controversy to what extent), the impact of
  sensory experiences and/or experimental results
  that are supposed to confirm or falsify a given
  hypothesis

10
Science at the bar

• In what respects was the portrait of science a
  false stereotype?
• Not all sciences have laws in the sense presumed
  here
• It is not clear that there really is any
  definition, or single criterion, or set of
  criteria, that succeed in defining science and
  demarcating it from other endeavors
• In short, the pro-science defenders are
  defending a philosophy of science which is every
  bit as outmoded as the science of creationism

11
Pro Judice Ruse

• To say that science appeals to law is not
  asserting that we know all the laws.
• Does this answer the critique that not all
  sciences include laws?
• The bottom line of all the various criteria
  offered
• Science does not break with law it does not
  appeal to miracles.
• If in terms of a singularity, what about The Big
  Bang? Not miraculous, but for some theories,
  singular
• Laudans response is insufficient because the
  Constitution does not prohibit the teaching of
  weak or bad science. It prohibits the teaching of
  religion which CS/ID is.

12
Wrap up

• Have your views about science changed in any way
  because of readings, films, or discussions?
• If so, how? If not, why not?
• If you were designing the course, is there any
  part of it (topics, readings, films) that you
  would
• Spend less time on?
• Spend more time on?
• What was
• Your most favorite topic?
• Your least favorite topic?
• And why?