BUS 3960-002: Spring 2019

Midterm Exam Study Guide

Epistemology and Business; Arguments; Epistemological keywords:

- Epistemology: is the theory or study of knowledge, especially with regard to its
methods, validity, and scope, it is also what distinguishes justified belief from opinion
o What is knowledge?
o How do I get knowledge?
o What are beliefs?
o When are beliefs justified or irrational?
o What are reliable sources of evidence?
o Who can I trust and why?
● Google’s Project Oxygen produced a list of “qualities of top employees.” Which ones have to
do directly with epistemology (i.e., which ones are epistemological?). Be able to briefly explain
your answer.
- 1. Being a good coach * (coaching)
- 2. Listening and communicating well * (listening)
- 3. Possessing insights into others
- 4. Having empathy/being supportive of colleagues (empathy)
- 5. Being a good critical thinker/problem solver * (problem solving)
- 6. Being able to make connections across complex ideas * (making connections)
● In the context of this class, how is an argument composed, and how do the parts of an
argument relate to one another?
- Argument: is a set of propositions
o Premise
o Premise
o Premise
o Conclusion
- Inductive reasoning: if the premises are true, the conclusion MIGHT be true
- Deductive reasoning: if the premises are true, the conclusion MUST be true
- If all premises are true then the conclusion must be true as well
- An example of an argument:
o All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore, Socrates is mortal
● Know how the notions of truth/falsity and valid/invalid apply to arguments and propositions.
- Things we believe can either be true or false
- Things we know must be right
 - Proposition (truth bearers): is anything that can be true or false
- Truth: individual propositions
- Arguments: valid or invalid
● Be able to define, in a sentence or two, these theories of epistemic justification: evidentialism,
coherentism, reliabilism, and foundationalism. Briefly explain which theory you think is the best
and why.
- Evidentialism: you’re justified in forming a belief if you have sufficient evidence to
support that belief, regardless of truth
- Coherentism: for a belief to be justified it must belong to a coherent system of beliefs
(justified if it agrees with all your other beliefs)
- Reliabilism: emphasizes knowledge is based off of truth based findings (what you
believe is happening probably is)
o Ex: when you believe you are awake you probably are
- Foundationalism: your beliefs can be justified based on basic or foundational beliefs
- I personally like reliabilism because I personally am a see it to believe it type of person
and I especially like when something can be backed up with facts so I know it’s actually
true rather than just what someone came up with all by themselves
● What are the three components of the “classic” view of knowledge, as discussed in class?
- JTB knowledge
o Justified: when it fits all the evidence you have even if you don’t have all the
evidence
o True: conclusion
o Believed: your attitude toward a proposition
Demarcation and Pseudoscience:
- Demarcation: is drawing a line between the statements… of the empirical science and all
other statements
- Pseudoscience: is a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based
on scientific method
- Empirical science: is information received by the senses, usually observation
● What is the demarcation problem? Why does Karl Popper think the demarcation problem is a
serious one?
- The Demarcation Problem: is Popper’s idea that statements in order to be scientific
must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable observations
- This problem was serious to popper because it concerned drawing a line between the
statements of empirical sciences and all other statements. Whether a statement is of a
religious or a metaphysical character or pseudoscientific
● What is the classic view (stereotype) of how science is distinguished from non-science (and
pseudoscience), and what is Popper’s proposed alternative for how to distinguish science from
non/pseudoscience?
- The classical view: science is distinguished from pseudoscience or from metaphysics by
its empirical method which is essentially inductive, proceeding from observation or
experiment
- Popper’s alternative was to show the scientific status of a theory it must have
falsifiability, refutability, or testability
● Be able to briefly explain and/or identify the Problem of Induction.
- Constant conjunction: “habit of the mind” = force of induction. Therefore, causality is a
subjective feature of the mind, not an objective feature of the world.
o Ex: thunder and lightning
- To understand better remember this:
o All observed F’s have also been G’s
o a is an F
o Therefore, a is a G
● What is “Irreducible Complexity?” How does Behe use that notion to generate an argument
for an intelligent designer?
- Irreducible complexity: is the idea that some creatures are so complex they could not
have been made by chance (a tenet of the intelligent design movement claiming that
many structures and processes in living things have so many interdependent parts and
steps in their actions that they could not operate unless all the components were
present simultaneously in their finished state)
- Behe uses this notion by explaining the existence of a living system cannot be accounted
for by a step by step evolution
● What is Dembski’s Complexity-Specification Criterion?
- Complexity-specification criterion: is the use of contingency, complexity and
specification
● Be able to explain why Monton rejects the judge’s three reasons for ruling against the
defendant in the Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. case?
- Monton disagrees with these reasons because he thinks it is dangerous to impose rigid
boundaries on science. He believes scientists should be free to pursue the hypotheses
that they see fit.
Realism/antirealism; Race & Gender:
● What is the central difference between realism and anti-realism, generally speaking.
 - Realism: is believing in the stuff that is really there
- Generic realism: that other things exist independently from whatever your mind thinks
o Such as, the desk I am using right now is physically there, it is not a
figment of my imagination

- Anti-realism: holds that such entities or processes do not necessarily exist in a literal
sense
o is thinking that the desk and everything around me is simply a figment of my
imagination
o Basically, it is the belief that I am simply a brain in a bottle and I have imagined
everything
● Be able to explain the difference between scientific realism and scientific anti-realism.
- Scientific realism: is the belief in observable/visible aspects of the world described by
science
- Scientific anti-realism: is the opposition of unobservable scientific entities
o Electrons
o An example of this would be if the newly found Higgs Boson is real or not. If you
think it is real you are a scientific realist whereas, if you think it is not real you
are a scientific anti-realist.
● Be able to explain the difference between moral realism and moral anti-realism.
- Moral realism: is the idea that there are right and wrong deeds in this world
- Moral anti-realism: is the idea that there are no right and wrongs in this world
● Referring to the history of science, what is an argument in favor of scientific anti-realism?
- An argument in favor of scientific anti-realism is was about atoms when Bain wrote a
century ago
● What is an Inference to the Best Explanation?
- The best explanation is the theory that explains the most
- Abductive reasoning
● Be able to identify a few instances of scientific racism, as discussed in class.

- Samuel Morton and “craniometry” measurements of skulls says there are 5 different
races of human beings
o Caucasians, Mongolians, South Asians, Native Americans, Ethiopians
- Clemence Royer’s French Translation of Darwin’s Origin 1862: superior Races take over
and dominate inferior ones
- 1994 The Bell Curve: class difference between whites and blacks is traced back to IQ
saying white people have higher IQs
● Be able to reconstruct Andreasen’s argument against a common assumption: that biological
realism and social constructivism are incompatible views about race.
- She claims that we need both for her cladistical theory to work, she claims we can view
race from a historical point of view by recognizing “the biologically objective categorical
subdivision of homo sapiens”
- BR: races are biologically real

- SC: races are social constructs

- Weak Racial Constructivism (RC): most CS beliefs about the biological reality of race are
empirically unjustified
- If the classic view of race is consistent with RC, then ‘I’ will be false
- I: biological realism and social constructivism are incompatible views about race

● Why is phylogenetic classification preferable to pheneticism in discussions about biological

realism about race?

- Pheneticism is based on similarities between two individuals. Unfortunately, similarities

are subjective. Two individuals could be similar in one way, but completely different in
another. They could have the same skin color, but be from totally different places across
the world. Phylogenetic classification is preferable because it deals with history,
ancestry, and heritage. It focuses more strictly on your lineage, and your bloodline,
which is passed down from ancestors.
Bullshit and Conspiracies:
- Conspiracy theory: a proposed explanation of some historical event in terms of the
significant causal agency of a relatively small group of persons acting in secret
● How does Frankfurt distinguish between lying and bullshit?
- Lying deliberately creates a falsehood whereas, bullshitting is not falsity, but it is fakery.
- The liar cares about the truth so he can deliberately tell a lie
- The bullshitter does not care what the truth is, he only cares about what is best for him.
● According to Frankfurt, why is bullshit potentially dangerous?
- The bullshitter is dangerous simply because he does not care about the truth. He only
cares about what will make him look good.
- For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true
nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest
man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting
away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality
correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
● What is Frankfurt’s suggestion for how best to spot (identify) bullshit? In other words, what do
we need to know in order to identify bullshit?
 1. Motive of bullshitter
2. Bullshitter doesn’t know they’re not telling the truth
3. Bullshitter doesn’t care about the truth

● Using what you know from the previous three bullet points, be able to identify the bullshit in
various advertisements that will be given on the midterm.
● Conspiracy theories, while occasionally true, are generally misapplications of the theoretical
tools we’ve discussed (epistemic justification, demarcation, identifying bullshit). When
presented with Keeley’s “Features of Unwarranted Conspiracy Theories (UCTs)”, give examples
of conspiracy theories for which those features apply. Be sure to use a different conspiracy
theory for each case.
1. Runs against standard public narrative or account: Flat earth conspiracy. The standard
public narrative is that of a round earth. The flat earth narrative directly opposes that
2. True intentions of conspirators are nefarious: Moon landing conspiracy. Many believe
the moon landing didn’t happen and that the United States faked it to bankrupt the
Soviet Union and win the space race.
3. Seek to tie together unrelated events: Oklahoma city bombing conspiracy. Theorists
tried to tie together the suicide of the cop to the events of the bombing, although they
were unrelated and the suicide happened years later
4. The truths behind the events are secret, hidden, or well-guarded: The “New Coke”
conspiracy. The idea that Coca Cola came out with a new recipe for coke with cheaper
ingredients, to either strengthen demand for the old product, or cut costs. The coke
recipe is known to be secret, hidden, AND well-guarded.
5. Use errant (contradictory, unaccounted for) data: MMR Vaccine causes Autism
conspiracy. Based on paper written by Andrew Wakefield that was later revealed to be
completely false, using contradictory and inaccurate data.
● Does Keeley think we can commandeer Popper’s notion of falsifiability to identify bogus
(unwarranted) conspiracy theories?
- Keeley does not think they are falsifiable because there have been conspiracy theories
that have been true
● What is the fatal flaw of conspiracy theories over time, according to Keeley?
- The further you get from a conspiracy theory skepticism gets bigger and bigger
- The larger a conspiracy gets the more people come into the conspiracy
- The more people who are involved, the less plausible the conspiracy becomes
- The more the conspiracy grows, the more people have to be “in on it”, and holding back
the truth from everyone else. The further the conspiracy goes, the more skeptical you
have to be of its validity.