Chapter 1: Psychology and Science

Question 1

What are the 6 things that characterize science according to the text?

Answer 1

-Science is parsimonious
-Science is tentative
-Science is objective
-Science is empirical
-Science is self correcting
-Science is progressive

Question 2

What does the text mean when it says that science is parsimonious?

Answer 2

Science prefers to leans on the simplest explanation possible

Question 3

What does the text mean when it says that science is tentative?

Answer 3

Science does not claim that it has the full answer to any phenomenon categorically. An idea will hold tentatively until a more reliable one replaces it

Question 4

What does the text mean when it says that science is empirical?

Answer 4

Science relise on observation

Question 5

What does the text mean when it says that science is objective?

Answer 5

Objective observations are those made in such a way that any person having normal perception and being in the same place at the same time would arrive at the same observation.

Question 6

What does the text mean when it says that science is self correcting?

Answer 6

The conclusions that science draws are modified as it fails against challenges. A scientific principle will shift as new ideas, information and perspective cause it to fail.

Question 7

What does the text mean when it says that science is progressive?

Answer 7

Science is meant to take steps towards truth. It is intended to make progress towards the ultimate goal of understanding reality.

Question 8

What does it mean that science is concerned with theory?

Answer 8

Science needs a theory to explain why something works, it is insufficient for science to just say something works.

Question 9

Define: empirical methods

Answer 9

Methods of knowing that require experience like science and intuition

Question 10

Define: non-emperical methods

Answer 10

Methods of knowing that do not require experience such as authority and logic.

Question 11

Define: authority. Give an example of an authority figure for yourself? Who do you believe about what topics?

Answer 11

knowledge from someone else’s experience (p5)

Question 12

Define: logic

Answer 12

based on deductive or inductive reasoning.

Question 13

Explain this statement from the textbook: “As any reader of science fiction can attest, there are many logically possible worlds. Logic alone cannot tell you which world actually exists” (4)

Question 14

Define: intuition

Answer 14

spontaneous perception or judgment not based on reasoned mental steps (p4)

Question 15

Define: common sense. Explain its relevance to the course

Answer 15

practical intelligence shared by a large group of people (p4)

It is a type of intuition which is a type of empirical knowing

Question 16

Define: science

Answer 16

a way of obtain- ing knowledge by means of objective observations

Question 17

Define: Realism. What is the difference between this and common sense realism?

Answer 17

the philosophy that objects perceived have an existence outside the mind

Common-sense realism says that things are just the way they seem:

Question 18

Define: rationality

Answer 18

a view that reasoning is the basis for solving problems

Question 19

Define: regularity

Answer 19

a belief that phenomena exist in recur- ring patterns that conform with universal laws

Question 20

Define: discoverability

Answer 20

the belief that it is possible to learn solutions to questions posed

Question 21

Define: determinism

Answer 21

the doc- trine that all events hap- pen because of preceding causes

Question 22

Define: emperical

Answer 22

Based on experience (p. 2)

Question 23

Define: parsimony

Answer 23

using the simplest possible explanation