Part II Paper 4: Philosophy and Scientific Practice

Paper manager: Tom McClelland

Also offered as an optional paper in Part II of the Psychological and Behavioural Sciences Tripos (PBS).

Lectures are held in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

What philosophical puzzles arise in individual sciences such as physics, biology, cognitive science, medicine and climate science, and how can they be resolved? This paper explores the ways in which different scientific projects might exhibit different methods and paradigms, how they relate or fail to relate to each other, and whether they assume different approaches to testing, measurement and concept formation depending on their proximity to technology, medicine and policy.

Aims and learning outcomes

• to develop in students a broad understanding of central issues in the philosophy of specific sciences;
• to develop in students the ability to compare and contrast methodological and metaphysics issues in different sciences;
• to strengthen students' analytic writing and communication skills, especially in relation to topics in philosophy, science and medicine.

Lectures

Philosophy of the Biomedical Sciences: Concepts and Evidence

Tom McClelland, Stephen John (8 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

Medicine is among our most important institutions. Though its aim is practical, medicine is shot through with conceptual commitments and theoretical assumptions, its basic tools rely on causal hypotheses supported to varying degrees by inductive inferences, and medical research is developed in a complex political and economic nexus. Thus medicine is a prime subject for philosophical analysis. This eight-week sequence of lectures will examine conceptual, normative, epistemological, methodological, metaphysical and political questions underlying medicine and medical science.

Philosophy of Climate Science

Ahmad Elabbar (4 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

The field of climate science, narrowly conceived, concerns itself with the dynamics of the Earth's climate system. Its aim is to uncover the fundamental structures and mechanisms that shape the global, regional and local climates over varying periods. To achieve this, climate scientists combine knowledge and theories from diverse areas such as meteorology, oceanography, physics, chemistry, ecology, and other sciences, to build evermore complex digital models that simulate changes in the climate system. More broadly conceived, the field of climate science also covers research in social sciences, as understanding human behaviour and patterns of economic development is essential to anticipating changes to the physical climate. This course offers an overview of philosophical work that has engaged with climate science, broadly conceived. The course covers fundamental questions, such as the definition of climate and atmosphere; epistemological questions relating to the skill and adequacy of climate models, and tensions between various strands of climate evidence; methodological debates over the attribution of extreme weather events to climate change; as well as ethics of 'climate repair' or 'geoengineering' to avoiding extreme climate change.

Metaphysics of Physics

Matt Farr (4 lectures, Lent Term)

Modern physics has forced us to reconsider many of our basic concepts about the nature of reality. Relativity theory has led to new understandings of the nature of time and the relationship between time and space, and quantum mechanics appears to suggest that nature is neither deterministic, local or causal. This course focuses on whether and how physical theories should inform our metaphysics. Each lecture addresses a different metaphysical question and how it has been informed by developments in the foundations of classical, relativistic, quantum and statistical physics.

Philosophy of Psychiatry

Matt Farr (4 lectures, Lent Term)

Philosophy of psychiatry stands at the intersection of philosophy of medicine, philosophy of psychology/cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. This course considers various topics within philosophy of psychiatry, focusing on how the study of psychopathology interacts with the study of mind and brain. We will consider several key questions, including: What are mental disorders? Are they disorders of mind, brain or society? How are conceptualisations of mental disorder influenced by culture? How are they influenced by developments in neuroscience? Is there such a thing as a 'normal' mind? What can psychopathology tell us about 'normal' mental functioning?

Philosophy of Space Time

Neil Dewar (4 lectures, Lent Term)

The nature of space and time is a long-standing concern of both physics and philosophy. In these lectures, we will review questions such as: are space and time ontologically independent from matter, or merely relations between material things? What is the relationship between space, time, and motion? And is there a matter of fact about the geometrical structure of space and time, or is it merely a matter of convention?

Philosophy of Biology

Tim Lewens, Harriet Fagerberg (4 lectures, Lent Term)

The first two lectures in this series focus on biological functions, the second two focus on the related topic of 'Universal Darwinism'. Biological research is sometimes dedicated to answering questions about the functions of biological traits. For example, are zebra stripes for camouflage, do they instead have the function of deterring biting flies, or do they have some altogether different function? Philosophers of biology have wondered whether function attributions are just claims about what traits as a matter of fact do, or whether they are somehow bound up with ideas of purpose, or design. An influential response –the 'selected effects' account – says that functions are effects which were favoured by natural selection. In the first half of the course, we will critically assess this account of function and consider to what extent the selected effects account can (or should) be applied beyond evolved traits or even beyond biology. In the second half, we will move on from the question of functions to consider the broader prospects for a generalised approach to Darwinism. Universal Darwinism sees selection as a substrate-neutral process that can act on entities of many different kinds – everything from organisms to ecosystems to pieces of cultural know-how. Here, discussion will focus on the concept of cultural selection; that is, the idea that adaptation in humans is often a matter of building up bodies of know-how that are shaped by selection processes acting on information people learn from each other.

Philosophy of Cognitive Science

Tom McClelland (4 lectures, Lent Term)

The cognitive sciences invite a variety of pressing philosophical questions. What is the mind and how does it fit into the natural order? How should the mind be studied and what methodological problems does it present? When, if at all, should we attribute mental states to non-human animals or to AI? What value do different kinds of mind have and how should this shape our ethical conduct? We explore how these questions play out in relation to four key topics: folk psychology, consciousness, the self and extended cognition.

Natural Kinds in Biomedical and Social Sciences

Alexander Bird (4 lectures, Lent Term)

These four lectures look at the idea of a natural kind – a division of things into natural groupings – such as chemical elements and biological species. They then look in particular at the application of this idea in biology, in psychiatry and social science, and concerning matters of race and sex.

Preliminary reading

• Cartwright, Nancy, The Dappled World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
• Clark, Andy, Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
• Cooper, Rachel, Psychiatry and Philosophy of Science (London: Routledge, 2007)
• Garson, Justin, What Biological Functions Are and Why they Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)
• Godfrey-Smith, Peter, Philosophy of Biology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014)
• Kosso, Peter, Appearance and Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
• Lewens, Tim, Cultural Selection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024)
• Maudlin, Tim, The Metaphysics Within Physics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Murphy, Dominic, Psychiatry in the Scientific Image (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006)
• Price, Huw, Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Rosenberg, Alex, and Daniel McShea, Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 2008)
• Solomon, Miriam, Making Medical Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)
• Stegenga, Jacob, Care and Cure: An Introduction to Philosophy of Medicine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018)

Resources for Paper 4 on Moodle