Chapter 1 Flashcards
4 major ways of knowing about behavior
- Non-empirical includes authority and logic
- Empirical includes intuition and science
empirical simply means based on
experience
Empirical includes
intuition and science
authority
based on someone else’s knowledge
Authority =
- parents, teachers, gov’t, but often they disagree with one another so we reject and mistrust authority
- Authorities often are wrong, even when they assert their beliefs most forcefully
- But if you did not have any faith in authority, you would not be reading this book or taking a research methods course from a college professor
Logic =
is extremely important to science, but it cannot substitute for making the observation that it is raining, or proving that the behavior of all animals is subject to the laws of natural science
logic:
based on deductive or inductive reasoning
intuition =
spontaneous, instinctive processes rather than on logic or reasoning.
intuition:
spontaneous perception or judgment not based on reasoned mental steps
Common sense =
- a kind of intuition because of its dependence on informal methods
- additional characteristic of emphasizing the agreement of a person’s judgment with the shared attitudes and experiences of a larger group of people
Non-empirical includes
authority and logic
common sense:
practical intelligence shared by a large group of people
two basic limitations of common sense
- First, standards of common sense differ from time to time and from place to place according to the attitudes and experiences of the culture.
- second limitation of common sense as a way of knowing lies in the fact that the only criterion common sense recognizes for judging the truth of a belief or practice is whether it works.
- following a practice simply because it works does not permit any basis for predicting when the practice will work and when it will not.
- it cannot predict new knowledge
counterintuitive:
something that goes against common sense
In fact, we consider a scientific theory to be fruitful if it predicts something that we did not expect.
science and 5 steps:
a way of obtaining knowledge by means of objective observations
(1) defining the problem,
(2) forming a hypothesis,
(3) collecting data,
(4) drawing conclusions, and
(5) communicating the findings
parsimony:
using the simplest possible explanation
characteristics if science
- Science Is Empirical - count the horses teeth
- Science Is progressive - moves towards truth
- Science Is Objective -
- Science Is Self-Correcting
- Science Is tentative - never claims to have the full truth
- Science is parsimonious - Occam’s razor
- Science is concerned with theory - the reason why aspirin works on a headache
working assumptions of science.
realism
Rationality
Regularity
Discoverability
realism:
- realism: the notion that the objects of scientific study in the world exist apart from their being perceived by us.
- Most scientists agree that one of science’s fundamental assumptions is the reality of the world
- In general, scientists have little interest in philosophical debates about the reality of the world. They assume that the world is there, and they go about studying it as best they can.
rationality:
a view that reasoning is the basis for solving problems
that the world is understandable by way of logical thinking
regularity:
- means that we assume that the world follows the same laws at all times and in all places.
- We pick up a book and are confident that it will not have become explosive since we last used it
discoverability:
the belief that it is possible to learn solutions to questions posed
Causality
- the idea that every event has a cause is a basic tenet of science
- A belief that all events are caused is called determinism
determinism:
the doctrine that all events happen because of preceding causes
temporal precedence:
something that occurs prior to another thing
ate ice cream then sick
co-variation of cause and effect:
when the cause is introduced, the effect occurs
probabilistic co-variation:
- Need not be perfect but be strongly probable like smoking causes lung cancer even if not everyone gets it:
- probabilistic co-variation = statistical association of a cause with an effect
elimination of alternative explanations:
no explanation for an effect other than the purported cause is possible
law
- a statement that certain events are regularly associated with each other in an orderly way
- frustration-aggression law states that frustration causes aggression
- In other words, the occurrence of frustration is regularly associated with aggression
- It is not necessary to have a perfect relation between the two variables to have a law. As we noted earlier in the discussion of causality, some laws are probabilistic;
- often stated in statistical form
- Laws do not have to state cause-effect relationships between events; any regular relationship is a law.
- The arched back doesn’t cause the cat to fight; it is simply correlated with fighting
Define a theory, both in broad terms and in strict terms
- Broadly speaking a theory is a statement or set of statements about the relationships among variables
-
Stricter sense According to this view, a theory is a statement or a set of statements about relationships among variables that includes at least one concept that is not directly observed but that is necessary to explain these relationships
- For example: Working memory is a theoretical concept because it is not seen or measured directly, but must be inferred from behavior
- must be falsifiable
— are not observed directly; they can be defined only indirectly by reference to events that are directly observed. A — is an invention of the scientist to account for laws of behavior.
Theoretical concepts
To take an example from physics, no one has ever seen an electron.
can a theory be proven true? Why, or why not?
- theory can never be proven true because there are many false theories that can predict any given outcome.
- no matter how many times the predicted result occurs, there might still be another theory that actually is the true one.
What roles do theories play in science?
- (1) organizing knowledge and explaining laws,
- (2) predicting new laws
- (3) guiding research
What is a hypothesis?
- hypothesis: a statement assumed to be true for the purpose of testing its validity
- If A is true, then B should follow
- If the prediction is not confirmed when it is tested empirically, either the law or the theory—or both—may be false
What is operational definition?
- a theoretical concept must be tied to observable operations that any person can observe or perform
- If a concept cannot be tied to particular operations, then it is not a scientific concept
- eg: no operations exist that increase or decrease the probability of an event that would be defined as reflecting psychic ability.
Using different ways of honing in on a concept via different operational definitions is called —
- converging operations.
- Each new way of producing the concept of learning will rule out one possible objection to the explanation, until a high degree of confidence can be reached
What is a paradigm?
- a pervasive way of thinking about a branch of science that includes all the assumptions and theories that are accepted as true by a group of scientists
- New paradigm will be accepted when it accounts more successfully for empirical data than did the old paradigm.
- a theory is not rejected because it is disproved, but because a better theory displaces it
