Science, Reason, and Epistemological Frameworks
This domain tests whether you can separate epistemic claims from methodological ones and evaluate appeals to science without over- or under-claiming.
Knowledge and justification
The standard analysis treats knowledge as justified true belief; Gettier cases show justification plus truth is not sufficient. Responses include foundationalism (Descartes; Plantinga's properly basic beliefs), coherentism, and reliabilism (Goldman). Rationalism (Descartes, Leibniz) and empiricism (Locke, Hume) disagree about the source of concepts; Kant's synthesis is a standard reference point.
Science as method
- Popper: falsifiability demarcates science from pseudo-science; confirmation never proves a universal law. Falsifiability is a demarcation criterion, not a theory of meaning.
- Kuhn: paradigms, normal science, anomaly, revolution, incommensurability. Kuhn denied relativism, though he is often misread that way.
- Lakatos: research programmes with a hard core and protective belt; progressive versus degenerating.
- Duhem–Quine: theories meet evidence as a body, so underdetermination permits rival explanations of the same data; observation is theory-laden (Hanson).
Science and worldview
Scientism - that science is the only reliable route to knowledge - is not itself a scientific claim and is widely charged with self-referential incoherence. Barbour's typology (conflict, independence, dialogue, integration) organizes science–religion relations without assuming hostility.
Worked example
Claim: 'Neuroscience has proved free will is an illusion.' Test it: what observation would count for or against? Libet-style experiments measure readiness potentials, but interpretation depends on prior commitments about determinism and about what 'free' means (libertarian or compatibilist). The claim is not a raw deliverance of data but a philosophical conclusion resting on contested premises. That is underdetermination, not proof.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating falsifiability as a meaning criterion or as a demand for proof.
- Reading Kuhn as claiming science is arbitrary; he described paradigm change, not irrationality.
- Confusing a scientific theory with a hypothesis.
- Using scientism as a universal standard while exempting itself from it.
- Confusing explaining a belief naturalistically with refuting it.