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PHIL 0610/0612

Philosophy and Science

Midterm Review

I. Logistics

The midterm will take place via Canvas on February 21st. It is worth 20% of the final grade for PHIL 0610    students. It is worth 10% of the final grade for PHIL 0612 students. The midterm will cover all material up to the end of module 2 (i.e., all material up to and including the lecture on the 16th  of February).

You may take the exam at any time between 9am and 11:59pm on that date. You will have one hour to complete the exam once you begin (unless I have been informed by DRS that you are entitled to additional time). You       may consult your notes during the exam. You may not consult other students during the exam.

•   You may consult your notes during the exam. You may not consult other students during the exam. All work you submit must be entirely your own.

•   Each student’s exam will be drawn from a pool of questions, so no two exams will be the same.

•   There will be no lecture on the day of the exam, to allow you time to take it.

II. Overview

The role of the midterm exam is to assess your understanding of the course content. Accordingly, the midterm will focus on definitions, argument summaries, and basic factual questions. You will not be asked to come up  with original objections during the exam.

The midterm will have two sections: six true/false questions and two short essays. Each true/false question is

worth 1 point, each short essay is worth 7 points (for a total of 20 points for the exam).

The true/false questions will concern straightforwardly factual course content.

The short essay questions will ask you to reconstruct a philosophical argument or explain a point that we went   over in lecture. These essays need not be more than a paragraph or two, but you must define any technical terms used in the essays. There will be a choice among topics for each essay.

Grading of the short essays: The short essay will be graded solely according to whether responses accurately define or describe all the relevant concepts. Therefore, it is important that you answer all parts of the question and make sure you define all technical terms (e.g., those terms given in the list below) in your answers.

III. Terms to Know

The criterion of verifiability, factual significance, literal significance, emotional significance, analytic sentence,     synthetic sentence, strong verifiability, weak verifiability, analytic-synthetic distinction, holism about testing, web of belief, self-refuting nature of verificationism, the demarcation problem, falsification, risky predictions, falsificationism, corroboration, confirmation, induction, rational prediction, the Duhem problem, paradigm, normal science, anomaly, revolutionary science, scientific revolution, (what Kuhn thinks about) scientific progress, incommensurability, theory-ladenness of observation, relativism,  research programs (hard core, protective belt, heuristic), progressive research programs, degenerating research programs, epistemological anarchism, descriptive vs. normative claims.

IV. General Advice

The midterm is simply a test of your mastery of the course content. There should be no surprises: all of the material will be drawn from what we went over in lecture. Many of the arguments, positions, and definitions are available in the handouts themselves, so review these materials as you study for the exam. I recommend learning the definitions of all of the philosophical terms on the list given above; this will help you in every section of the

exam.

As always, feel free to discuss any questions you have with me or your TA during office hours, or set up an appointment with one of us.