Long and detail paragraphs with citations

1. Does science make progress? If so, how?

2. Do philosophers of science need to attend to the details of how scientists work?

3. "Science is in the truth business." Do you agree?

4. "If two theories account for the evidence we have, then it is irrational to choose between them." Do you agree?

5. "It is not an epistemological principle that one might as well hang for a sheep as for a lamb." How, if at all, does this comment support van Fraassen's constructive empiricism?

6. Should we be structural realists?

7. Are there any important differences between experiments and simulations? If so, what are they? If not, why not?

8. Is String Theory science? Explain your answer.

9. Can we "intervene cellularly/molecularly, track behaviourally" (Bickle 2006)? What does the answer to this question imply about the reducibility of mental states to brain states?

10. What can scientific practice tell us about the possibility of reduction?

11. Is a model's capacity to facilitate inferences about its target necessary for scientific representation? Is it sufficient?

12. "Whether a scientific claim is a law depends on the agents who use it." Discuss.

13. How, if at all, are laws and regularities related?

14. "The probability of rolling a 2 on a fair die is 1/6." What does this statement mean?

15. What is the base-rate fallacy? What is its philosophical significance?