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Assignment 1
1. When studying philosophy of science, one needs to focus heavily on epistemology.
a. What is epistemology? To answer this question, consult your class readings and check it on Google. On Google, examine at least three credible discussions of epistemology. Provide the URLs of the sources you encounter. Integrate the arguments of the three sources. Present your findings in a 2-page discussion (single-spaced).
b. Let’s say you plan to conduct a study on the effectiveness of virtual teams in managing complex projects. As you put together your thoughts about how you will carry out this study, what epistemological issues are you addressing? (1-2 pages long, single spaced)
2. When studying the philosophy of science, one often deals with ontological issues. While the term ontology has different meanings, in philosophy of science, it addresses the question of whether something is real. (Note: A Google search on ontology is not enlightening. It brings in many uses of the term that lie outside the domain of philosophy in general and philosophy of science in particular.)
What are the ontological issues surrounding the following phenomena/constructs?
a. Atomic theory (an atom’s nucleus is comprised of protons and neutrons; atoms are surrounded by electrons traveling in orbits around the nucleus) (1/2 – 1 page long, single spaced.)
b. Gravity (1/2 to 1 page long, single spaced)
c. Altruism (1/2 to 1 page long, single spaced)
d. Intelligence (1/2 to 1 page long, single spaced)
Solution
Question 1. (a.)
Epistemology is the study of scope and nature of the justified belief and knowledge. The nature of knowledge is analyzed and then related to the notions of belief, truth and justification. The production of knowledge along with skepticism related to these knowledge claims have been related to epistemology. Therefore it deals with the creation as well as dissemination of knowledge in the inquiry areas. It consist of a vast array of concepts, notions and views regarding the propositional knowledge, however the fact that knowledge is the true belief is one virtually universal presupposition however not merely a true belief. For instance, true beliefs or luck guesses cannot be addressed as knowledge as they result from some wishful thinking. Epistemology discusses propositional knowledge i.e. Where the “knowledge-that” instead of “knowledge-how”. This can be discussed by stating the example of 3+3= 6 instead of the knowledge of addition of numbers.
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What is knowledge?
The understanding and awareness of the aspects related to reality is known as knowledge. In clear terms, the data and information gained using the process of applying reasons to the reality is knowledge. Traditionally, three sufficient and necessary conditions are required for knowledge so as to define knowledge in the terms of “justified true belief”.
Truth: in case the propositions are to be counted as knowledge, they have to be true and factual.
Belief: this is important as it is not possible for one to not know something the other one doesn’t believe it.
Justification: in contrast to have a belief on thing which is just a matter of luck.
In term of evidentialism, a belief is justified with the help of possession of evidences. The various theories of Reliabilism can be suggested by the fact that either knowledge does not require any justification if it is reliably-produced true belief or the fact that any reliable cognitive process like touch or vision are enough for the justification.
Another theory of Infallibilism states that a certain belief does not have to be justified or true but this justification must be able to necessitate the true meaning of it therefore any justification for that certain belied has to be infallible in nature.
How is knowledge acquired?
On the basis of the source, the propositional knowledge is sorted out into two parts,
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a. A non-empirical or priori: The knowledge is present irrespective of any experience and only maintains the reason and its usage. For example, the logical truths, abstract claims etc. and the knowledge behind it.
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b. Empirical or posteriori: The knowledge is related to any sense experience, or posterior along with the reason and its usage. For example, the shape and colour of the object, geographical locations and their knowledge.
The knowledge regarding the physical world and its empirical facts are usually seen to include the use of senses or perception. But some reasoning is required along with data analysis and inferences. The transfer of knowledge is seen to be transmitted using the testimony. The knowledge acquisition can be explained by the following primary theories.
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a. Empiricism emphasizing on the experience and its role on the basis of experience of perceptual observation using the five sense whereas the notion of innate concepts and ideas has to be discounted. This basic principles with some refinement has led to development of Positivism, Phenomenalism, Logical positivism and Scientism.
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b. Rationalism expressing that knowledge is acquired using the innate, priori or intuitive process not are not derived from the experience.
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c. Representationalism: holds the fact that the universe and world around is not real but it is actually a replica version of the miniature virtual-reality of the internal representation of that world.
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d. Constructionism: is based on presupposition that knowledge is basically constructed where the knowledge is contingent on the human perception, convention and social experience.
The knowledge and its justification depends on the some other beliefs as the justification process is seen leading to an infinite regress. The apparent impossibility for completion of the infinite reasoning chain begins from skepticism further arguing that the beliefs are not justified and people do not have much information. The absolute certainty regarding the knowledge, according to Fallibilism, is highly impossible and further seen that the claims associated with knowledge are mistaken. But fallbilism is different from skepticiosm as it does not imply the necessity to abandon the knowledge as the further observation can be helpful in revising the empirical knowledge and the knowledge might turn out to be false.
This regress issues have the following concerning thoughts:
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Foundationalism claiming that the beliefs which are seen to support another beliefs are foundational in nature and do not require any justification using other beliefs.
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Instrumentalism where the theories and concepts are used as useful instruments whose worth is evaluated by determining how predicting and explaining things. Therefore the truth-evaluable theories are denied by instrumentalism.
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Pragmatism holds true only when they are working and are seen to have practical consequences.
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The infinite series when are potential are defined by Infinitism and the person should have the ability to present it in times of need. Therefore, this theory considers the infinite regress to have an effective and valid justification.
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When an individual belief is justified circularly in a manner to cohere as per the belief system it is a part of, so that the regress is not processing as per the linear justification pattern.
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Foundherentism reflects the unison of coherentism and foundationalism.
Question 1. (b.)
While conducting a study on effectiveness of the virtual teams so as to manage complex projects, various challenges can be encountered. While presenting the case study of virtual team for managing the complex project, four concepts i.e. the task, time, transition and teams are considered.
The challenges and issues have been mentioned below:
a. Communication issues: communication being the key factor in complex projects and require communication efforts. The complexity of the project defines its communicative efforts. Therefore, the complex the projects, the more communicative efforts are required. Communication difficulties are seen to increase when the teams are changed and foundation for communication is established again (e.g. Kayworth and Leidner 2000). In case the teams are seen to change constantly, it is imperative for the organization to set up proper communication standards. The main role of the virtual teams in order to attain specific goal is to have task orientated communication. Lots of communication efforts in the project will justify to the fact that work is being performed in the organization.
b. Trust issues: The project provides a justification to the project and its existence (Lundin and Söderholm, 1995). Motivation towards project team will become challenging if the project task is not trusted. The task and its importance is not important but the task must be meaningful and it must be about the project team behind it. Therefore along with a proper communication channel, the organization must also support trust in the task. In order to success, the trust must be present at high level in the project teams. Team participation and active communication lead to acquiring of confidential and important knowledge which further strengthens the trust. The parent organizations must trust in the project team for effecting the project in a right manner. Whereas the implementation phase of the project is considered to be highly important for non-trusting parent organization.
c. Leadership issues: The main finding regarding the leadership challenge are related to the task and transition elements of temporality. Due to the task orientation of temporary projects, transactional leadership style was favored in the case company. Communication and coordination were seen the main leadership activities. Project managers and project sponsor was seen as the responsible persons for the success of the project in the transition. Without successful implementation of the project to the organization in stake, the project should be considered as a failure. The complex projects have the tendency to bring out a radical change in the organization and therefore a right leadership will strive to provide a justification to the parent organization (Lundin and Söderholm, 1995) and might cause rifts among the project group and parent organization.
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a. Atomic Structure:
Leucippus proposed the materialist atomism and was indeterminist in nature and was further developed by Democritus in a deterministic manner. Epicurus again took the original atomism as the indeterministic and confirmed that in reality it is composed of infinite unchangeable and indivisible atoms or corpuscles and later on gave weight for characterizing the atoms which were initially characterized by an order, a figure and a position in the cosmos. These are responsible for creating the whole with various strange intrinsic actions and movements in the vacuum leading to production of diverse flux of being. Parenklisis is seen to influence their movements and actions and are highly determined by the chance. All these present a tremendous challenge until 20th century when the nature of atoms were actually discovered.
b. Altruism:
If one argues that all the human beings are altruistic in nature then we have to figure out various methods of living in harmony with each other irrespective of all the factors or else our well-being along with the civilization’s progress will be stymied. Furthermore, if considered in an optimistic manner various contemporary practices are used by various authors for drawing out valid reasons and relations. Some of the practices have been implemented by the society and institutions promoting the altruistic behavior for proposing practices in order to solve the controversial and ethical issues like war, genocide, corruption etc. This presents a complete scientific theoretical argument have been presented for describing human ontology.(Okasha, S., 2003).
c. Gravity
The issues of ontology and quantum spacetime is closely related to the issue of time. Usually it is seen that the quantum theory resists the straightforward ontological reading and thereby doubles the quantum gravity. In quantum field theory one possess particles but these are secondary to fields albeit the varying properties. The only difference in quantum gravity is that the quantum field becomes quantum field stressing on the fact that the spacetime and its properties become indefinite. The time and space are seen to play central part in the individuating objects along with their properties and therefore the quantization poses a real issue for ontology. The investigation of the relational observables which are estimated to be necessitated by the diffeomorphism invariance is seen to benefit the philosophers. The gauge symmetries related with the constraints are seen to have metaphysical baggage associated with them therefore these moves usually include philosophically weighty assumptions. The presence of symmetries, for example, usually is seen to allow more than more possibilities therefore eradication of such symmetries by reducing them to physical phase space by solving these constraints would mean that eradication of states which are thought to be physically equivalent in spite of formal differences associated with representation. The constraints are therefore seen to involve critical modal assumptions. As the traditional positions of the ontology of substantivalism and relationalism (spacetime) involves a commitment for counting possibilities, very serious implications can be seen on ontology if the decision to eliminate the symmetries is taken place. If, elimination or retaining of symmetries were to depict success in quantizing gravity, one would always be seen to have valid scientific reasons for supporting relationalism or substantivalism (Weinstein, S. & Rickles, D., 2005).
d. Intelligence
With the emergence of artificial intelligence and computers, the literature has modified the definitions of ontology and most of them contradict with one another. Therefore ontology has been considered to be a formal explicit description of concepts where the concepts and its properties are used for describing the attributes and features of all the concepts. A knowledge base is seen to be constituted from the ontology along with the individual stances and their sets. In the recent years, explicit formal specification in the relations and domains have been seen to move from the Artificial-Intelligence and their laboratories to the domain experts desktops. The ontologies are common on the World Wide Web and range from the categorization of various sale products and large taxonomies etc. This has raised issues and problems of other minds and is posing problem of consciousness. John Searle has therefore segregated the term of strong AI and weak AI depicting the arguments that the computer program cannot act like a human mind and raises various philosophical questions. A direct answer to the question “can a machine display general intelligence?”has been a valid issue. Various researchers also believe that consciousness is one of the critical element in the terms of intelligence.
Anything that can be simulated by the artificial computer brings out the point leading to the fact that all the processes that can take place technically are a part of computation and just a mere mimicking of brain and its functioning is a direct admission of ignorance towards nature of mind and its intelligence (Searle, J. R., 1980).
References
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Three sources:
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Epistemology | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2016). Iep.utm.edu. Retrieved 6 October 2016, from http://www.iep.utm.edu/epistemo/#H1
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Epistemology - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of Philosophy. (2016). Philosophybasics.com. Retrieved 6 October 2016, from http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_epistemology.html
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Steup, M. (2005). Epistemology. Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 6 October 2016, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/#WIK
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Kayworth, T., Leidner D. (2000) “The Global Virtual Manager: A Prescription for Success” European Management Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 183-194
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Lundin, R., Söderholm, A. (1994) “A Theory of the Temporary Organization” Scandinavian Journal of Management, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 437-455
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Okasha, S. (2003). Biological Altruism. Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 6 October 2016, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/#AltCoOpeMut
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Searle, J. R. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and brain sciences, 3(03), 417-424.
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Weinstein, S. & Rickles, D. (2005). Quantum Gravity. Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 6 October 2016, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-gravity/#5.2
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