What are science & Social science Flashcards
Specific Vs. Genera cases?
- specific: cases are often of direct interest.
-explaining specific cases can inspire hunches about general phenomena.
- ex: why is Vancouver housing so expensive? (rules limiting 65% of the city to single-family dwellings have caused Vancouver housing prices to rise rapidly). - general: hunches (feeling) can be tested against specific cases. building and testing theories.
-ex: why is housing so expensive in some cities? (zoning rules that limit density cause housing prices in cities to rise rapidly).
Specific vs. General knowledge difference?
- whether or not the stipulated claim is in fact true.
- whether or not the constituent claims are causal, and what the specific nature of the causal relationship (necessary, sufficient, probabilistic) might be.
- whether or not other causal factors are also at play.
How to transfer a specific claim into a general one?
from a specific people, places, events = categories and concepts that encompass those specifics.
- Vancouver = cities
- rules limiting 65% of city to single-family dwellings = zoning policies that limit density
what is the “right” general category?
- there is no “right” answer when it comes to generalizing claims from specific cases.
-instead, such generalizations are often contested, in flux and politicized.
what are the bases of claims?
- Authority
- Common sense.
- Personal experience.
Bases of claims: Authority?
- arguing that a claim is true because a person in position of authority says that it is true.
-ex: “I’m a very high-IQ individual” or “the chief of police says…”
Problems with Authority?
- it can make a claim compelling:
1. expertise tends to be domain-specific, not fungible.
2. expertise is no guarantee being right.
3. even authorities may have an agenda.
4. too easy to cherry-pick the authorities who agree with us.
Bases of claim: Common sense?
-arguing that a claim is true because it’s what “everyone knows” or “just makes sense”.
Problems with Common sense?
- fundamental cognitive biases mean that common sense =/= reality.
- different people’s “common sense” is different.
- often the basis of “common sense” is little more than the fact that many people think similarity.
Bases for claims: Personal experience?
- a claim based on one’s own personal observation or on one’s own reaction to an observation.
Problems of Personal experience?
- we generalize too quickly from a small number of instances.
- our exposure to the world may be skewed or we may have a biased understanding of it.
- we observe our environment selectively.
what is the elements of scientific inquiry?
- scientific inquiry functions different logic than non-science (common sense, personal, authority).
- a scientifically-based claim:
- uses transparent procedures at all stages of the process.
- uses evidence systematically
- tests our hunches against alternatives.
-Acknowledges uncertainty. - science is a collective activity.
Why does it take a collective?
- growth of knowledge is prefaced on skepticism (suspicion)
1. sometimes empirical claims are wrong or contested.
2. sometimes predictive models are falsified by new events.
3. sometimes there is disagreement over causal claims, even when the descriptive facts are more or less agreed-upon.
4. sometimes claims are made on a fraudulent basis.
what is science as a collective activity?
- don’t mean any one study gets the “right answer”.
- don’t mean any one study should be believed.
- allow a community of researchers to:
-replicate each other’s work.
-extend and build on each other’s work.
-gradually root out errors, get closer to the right answer. - gives science as a collective, social activity a distinctive way of producing valid knowledge.
