Reflections on Theme 1: Theory of Science

This week’s theme, The Theory of Science, involved reading and analyzing Bernand Russell’s “The Problems of Philosophy” (1912). Russell begins the discussion on knowledge by asking is there is any knowledge in the world so certain which no reasonable man can doubt.

In regards to my studying, I would like to mention that I found reading “The Problems of Philosophy” to be quite challenging, but nevertheless an interesting experience. Reading the literature enabled me to understand the main concepts and the reasoning behind them. But if I had to choose the most important part of my learning process, that would be reading on other students’ blog posts how they understood and interpreted the literature.

For me, the most interesting part was of this week’s theme was Russell’s approach on the difference between appearance and reality. Another important discussion in “The Problems of Philosophy” was the difference between knowledge- true beliefs- erroneous beliefs and probable opinions. I found it intriguing that for Russell, the biggest part of what we consider knowledge is actually probable opinions. Furthermore, I re-evaluted the importance of doubting and the necessity of critical thinking of things and theories. 

Concerning my peer’s blog posts, I found them helpful in the sense that they provided me with connections on subjects and notions presented in the literature. Plus, reading what other students wrote enabled me to focus on the important things. To be more specific, I understood that knowledge by definite description concerns things that we are not acquainted with, but we know that there is a thing answering to that definite description.  But it was my peer’s blog posts that enabled me to better understand the importance of this notion-it allows us to obtain knowledge about something that we are not immediately acquainted with. And as Russell (1912) discusses in the “Limits of Philosophical Knowledge”, there are no limits in our knowledge by descriptions- as there are limitations concerning our knowledge from experience on what exists. 

I had also understood that propositions and statements of facts differ from other kinds of verbal expressions in the sense that they are carriers of the truth-value through reading other students’ blog posts. Plus, through reading from my peers’ posts that a proposition thoroughly examined and tested is accepted as a statement of fact I understood that it is the consensus that makes a proposition a statement of fact.  A couple of my peers mentioned that sense data varies from individual to individual, so I realized that I might have missed the importance of that.

Coming back on the question of if there knowledge in the world so certain which no reasonable man can doubt, I should mention that as a reasonable woman, I doubt on my knowledge on The Theory of Science...

In the end, I would like to point out that I would feel more comfortable if I had the possibility to participate in discussions at lectures and seminars.