Kitcher vs Popper Assignment | Essay Help Services

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Prompt, please follow: Consider Kitcher’s criticism that Popper’s criterion of falsifiability either debars nearly all scientific theories or lets nearly any theory count as scientific. Is Kitcher’s criticism damning for Popper’s view? Is there a modified Popperian criterion that is able to withstand Kitcher’s criticism

Writing Short Philosophy Papers
1 Formatting
Structure your paper with named and numbered sections and subsections. Include in-text
citations and aWorks Cited/References page in the style of APA, Chicago, or MLA; or just pick
an academic philosophy journal such as Analysis and emulate their formatting and citation
practices.
Introduction
The introduction should comprise one to three paragraphs totaling about half a page and not
more than one page long. The first or second paragraph should include a phrase such as ‘In
this paper I argue. . . ’, or ‘The central aim of this paper is to show that. . . ’, This phrase is
then followed by the conclusion or point you want to make.1
The next sentence goes: ‘My argument for this conclusion is that. . . ’ or ‘My reasons for
this conclusion are. . . ’
The next (i.e., second or third) paragraph looks like: “The paper proceeds as follows. In
Section 1. . . In Section 2. . . In Section n. . . ”. Each of these sentences should clearly state the
goal of the section it describes.
So the first paragraph tells your reader about the content of your argument and its structure,
and the second paragraph tells your reader about the order of presentation. Keep in
mind that in the introduction you are presenting your argument for someone who has not
read your paper, so frontload the conclusion and the juicy or important points about your
argumentation.
Body of the Paper
The body should be comprised of several sections, each of which presents a crucial piece of
exposition or presents a piece of your argument or defends a piece of your argument.
One strategy is to first present critical background information for your reader, followed
by a presentation of your argument dealing with objections as they arise. An alternative
strategy is to devote a section to critical background information, another section devoted to
presenting your argument, and another section titled ‘Objections and Replies’ that deals with
objections and replies.
Conclusion
Half to one page starting with the sentences: “In this paper I argued. . .My arguments/reasons
for this conclusion are. . . ”. The conclusion differs from the introduction in that you can now
give a succinct, and precise summary of the structure and content of your paper in a way that
would not be understandable to someone who had not yet read your paper.2
1
Notes
1 In many academic disciplines, use of the word ‘I’ in the way suggested above is considered bad practice. In
academic philosophy using the word ‘I’ is fine.
2 This writeup is heavily influenced by Richard A. Watson’s Writing Philosophy: A Guide to Professional
Writing and Publishing. SIU Press, 1992.
I recommend Watson’s book for anyone who wants to improve their argumentative essays. The book can be
helpful for all sorts of writing aimed at argumentation and clarity, and it is easy to read casually.
2

1
SCIENCE: CONJECTURES AND REFUTATIONS
Mr. Turnbull had predicted evil consequences, . . . and was now doing the best in his power to bring
about the verification of his own prophecies.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
I
WHEN I received the list of participants in this course and realized that I had been asked to speak to philosophical
colleagues I thought, after some hesitation and consultation, that you would probably prefer me to speak about those
problems which interest me most, and about those developments with which I am most intimately acquainted. I
therefore decided to do what I have never done before: to give you a report on my own work in the philosophy of
science, since the autumn of 1919 when I first began to grapple with the problem, ‘When should a theory be
ranked as scientific?’ or ‘Is there a criterion for the scientific character or status of a theory?’
The problem which troubled me at the time was neither, ‘When is a theory true?’ nor, ‘When is a theory acceptable?’
My problem was different. I wished to distinguish between science and pseudo-science; knowing very

well that science often errs, and that pseudo-science may happen to stumble on the truth.
I knew, of course, the most widely accepted answer to my problem: that science is distinguished from pseudoscience–
or from ‘metaphysics’–by its empirical method, which is essentially inductive, proceeding from
observation or experiment. But this did not satisfy me. On the contrary, I often formulated my problem as one of
distinguishing between a genuinely empirical method and a non-empirical or even a pseudo-empirical method–that is
to say, a method which, although it appeals to observation and experiment, nevertheless
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does not come up to scientific standards. The latter method may be exemplified by astrology, with its stupendous
mass of empirical evidence based on observation–on horoscopes and on biographies.
But as it was not the example of astrology which led me to my problem I should perhaps briefly describe the
atmosphere in which my problem arose and the examples by which it was stimulated. After the collapse of the
Austrian Empire there had been a revolution in Austria: the air was full of revolutionary slogans and ideas, and new
and often wild theories. Among the theories which interested me Einstein’s theory of relativity was no doubt by far the
most important. Three others were Marx’s theory of history, Freud’s psycho-analysis, and Alfred Adler’s so-called
‘individual psychology’.
There was a lot of popular nonsense talked about these theories, and especially about relativity (as still happens
even today), but I was fortunate in those who introduced me to the study of this theory. We all–the small circle of
students to which I belonged–were thrilled with the result of Eddington’s eclipse observations which in 1919 brought
the first important confirmation of Einstein’s theory of gravitation. It was a great experience for us, and one which had
a lasting influence on my intellectual development.
The three other theories I have mentioned were also widely discussed among students at that time. I myself
happened to come into personal contact with Alfred Adler, and even to co-operate with him in his social work among
the children and young people in the working-class districts of Vienna where he had established social guidance
clinics.
It was during the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more dissatisfied with these three theories–the
Marxist theory of history, psychoanalysis, and individual psychology; and I began to feel dubious about their claims to
scientific status. My problem perhaps first took the simple form, ‘What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and
individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton’s theory, and especially from
the theory of relativity?’
To make this contrast clear I should explain that few of us at the time would have said that we believed in the truth of
Einstein’s theory of gravitation. This shows that it was not my doubting the truth of those other three theories which
bothered me, but something else. Yet neither was it that I merely felt mathematical physics to be more exact than
the sociological or psychological type of theory. Thus what worried me was neither the problem of truth, at that stage
at least, nor the problem of exactness or measurability. It was rather that I felt that these other three theories, though
posing as sciences, had in fact more in common with primitive myths than with science; that