Science and the self practice questions.

A researcher holds that the regularities psychology describes will in time be shown to follow from laws about neural systems, while every psychological category now in use is retained. This position is best described as

• eliminativism, the view that the categories in question pick out nothing real
• emergentism, the view that higher-level properties are not derivable from lower-level facts
• interpretivism, the view that an action is understood by recovering its meaning
• reductionism, the view that one science's laws are consequences of another's

Answer: reductionism, the view that one science's laws are consequences of another's

Reduction preserves the reduced vocabulary and derives it, whereas elimination discards it, so the retention of every psychological category is the decisive detail; emergentism denies exactly the derivability that reduction asserts.

Haraway's notion of situated knowledges is standardly distinguished from relativism because it

• still holds enquirers answerable for the claims they make
• denies that the social location of enquirers affects what they notice
• treats every perspective as equally good
• restricts knowledge to what instruments can measure

Answer: still holds enquirers answerable for the claims they make

Haraway treats the view from nowhere and the equal validity of all perspectives as two ways of escaping accountability; situated knowledge keeps the demand for responsibility that relativism gives up.

Hacking observes that when a new classification of people is introduced, those classified may learn of it, come to see themselves in its terms, and alter their behaviour, so that the category no longer picks out quite what it did. He calls this

• a looping effect, which distinguishes classifications of people from classifications of things
• a category mistake, since a classification cannot be applied to itself
• the observer effect, a purely instrumental disturbance introduced by measurement of the classification
• confirmation bias, since researchers find the behaviour they expect to find

Answer: a looping effect, which distinguishes classifications of people from classifications of things

The point is not that human research is imprecise but that its objects are aware: a quark does not read the paper about quarks. This makes stability of kinds an achievement rather than a starting point in the human sciences.

Eliminative materialism about the mind claims that

• beliefs and desires are identical with states of the brain, described in a different vocabulary, so the vocabulary of belief will survive
• beliefs and desires are functional states that could be realised in many different materials
• our everyday psychology is a theory that is radically false, so its categories will not survive a mature science of the brain
• beliefs and desires exist but their contents cannot be known by anyone other than their subject

Answer: our everyday psychology is a theory that is radically false, so its categories will not survive a mature science of the brain

The eliminativist expects folk psychology to go the way of phlogiston rather than to be identified with something else, which is precisely what separates the position from identity theory. The standard objection is that the claim is self-undermining, since stating it requires believing it.

A researcher holds that statements about institutions, classes and nations are ultimately made true by facts about individual people and their relations, so that explanations should be given in those terms. This position is

• methodological individualism, which the holist denies by treating social wholes as explanatorily basic
• reductionism about the mind, since it explains mental states by physical ones
• behaviourism, since it restricts evidence to what can be publicly observed
• constructivism, since it treats institutions as products of interpretation rather than as real in their own right

Answer: methodological individualism, which the holist denies by treating social wholes as explanatorily basic

The holist's reply is that some social facts cannot be restated without loss: what makes a piece of paper money, or a person a judge, involves an institution that cannot be specified without reference to further institutions, so the individualist's translation never terminates.

Quine proposes that epistemology be naturalised. His proposal is that the theory of knowledge should

• be abandoned entirely, since questions about justification are meaningless
• become a chapter of empirical psychology, studying how human beings in fact arrive at theories from the input they receive
• restrict itself to a priori analysis of the concept of knowledge, with no reference to the sciences
• be replaced by the sociology of scientific communities, since justification is a matter of consensus within a scientific community

Answer: become a chapter of empirical psychology, studying how human beings in fact arrive at theories from the input they receive

The move follows from his rejection of a first philosophy standing outside the sciences: if no such standpoint exists, the study of knowledge is continuous with the study of knowers. The standard objection is that it changes the subject, since a descriptive account of how beliefs are formed does not tell us which are justified.