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HF7 (Brysbaert: What is Science ? (8.2 Problems with the view that…

- - - - What is Platos viewpoint ?
        
        To understand the Universe it is more important to rely on reason than on the senses because human perception is fallible and the observable world is only a shadow of the real world. In contrast, the human soul had innate knowledge
      - What is Aristotoles viewpoint?
        
        Saw more scope for observation and made a distinction between inductive and deductive reasoning and favored the latter. True theoretical knowledge started from axioms from which new knowledge was deducted.
      - What is scepticism ?
        
        Philosophical view that does not deny the existence of physical reality but denies that humans can have reliable knowledge of it
      - What is the difference between
        inductive and deductive reasoning ?
        Which Information Acquisition Theory
        favored which one?
        
        Empiricism:Induction
        Rationalism: Deduction
        
        Empiricism took off in the 17th century.
        Bacon can be considered a forerunner
        
        its starting point (observations
        rather than personal opinions) can be controlled and replicated by others.
        
        PRIMACY OF OBSERVATION
      - What is the
        o correspondence
        theory of truth?
        a statement is true when it corresponds with reality – assumes that there is a physical reality which has priority and which the human mind tries to understand
      - experimental history
    - - logical positivsm
        philosophical
        movement in the
        first half of the
        twentieth century,
        claiming that
        philosophy should
        stop thinking about
        metaphysics, and
        instead try to
        understand the
        essence of the
        scientific approach;
        central tenet was
        the verification
        principl
        
        Vienna, 1922
        The ‘posi-
        tivism’ part referred to the high esteem of the scientific approach shared with Comte’s nineteenth-century movement, in particular the idea that scientific knowledge always was true knowledge. ‘Logical’ referred to the preoccupation with language and meaning (i.e. trying to answer the question ‘which statements are meaningful?’).
        
        demarcation
        criteria (for science)
        set of criteria that
        fully defines a con-
        cept (i.e. includes
        all instances be-
        longing to the con-
        cept and excludes
        all instances not
        belonging to the
        concept)
      - verificationism.
        adherence to the
        principle that a
        proposition is
        meaningful only if it
        can be verified as
        true or false; with
        respect to science
        states that a
        proposition is
        scientific only if it
        can be verified
        through objective,
        value-free
        observation
  - - - • Inverse probability problem:
  - - - Science is different from non-science
        
        not because it is based on facts
        but because
        
        it tries to falsifiy itself
        as opposed to pseudotheories
        for which there are only supporting
        pieces of evidence sought.
    - - Do not give in too easily
        What are problems with Popper ?
        There needs to be a
        balance between rejection
        and adapting theories
        Uranus-Neptune Example
        Which adaptations are acceptable, and which are not ?
        a
        modification must under no condition make the theory less falsifiable
        
        ad hoc
        modifications
        modifications to a
        theory that according
        to Popper make
        the theory less
        falsifiable; decrease
        the scientific value
        of the theory
      - Measuring skulls
        How does this example prove Poppers
        point ?
      - Why researchers do not like to give up theories
    - - confirmation bias
        tendency people
        have to search for
        evidence that
        confirms their
        opinion; goes
        against
        falsificationism
        
        Degrees of falsifiability
        the more falsifiable a statement is,
        the higher it's scientific value
        
        Wine sours because of organisms.
        
        Wine sours because of
        bacteria coming from the air.
        
        What is the moral of Wasons
        number/rule guessing experiment?
        Verification Method is not efficient in finding the truth and can keep an illusion of being right alive
  - - - pre-science →
        normal science →
        crisis →
        revolution →
        new normal science →
        new crisis →
      - Pre-Science
        
        Creation of a paradigm
        what is to be observed and scrutinised,
        
        which questions should be asked,
        
        how the questions are to be structured,
        
        how the results of scientific investigations should be interpreted
        
        paradigm
        notion introduced
        by Kuhn to refer to
        the fact that scientists
        share a set of
        common views of
        what the discipline
        is about and how
        problems must be
        investigated
        
        Normal Science
        puzzle-solving,
        because researchers
        work on familiar topics
        using well-known techniques and practices.
        adaptation and modification.
        Revolutionary thoughts are disliked
        
        degenerative
        research
        programme
        notion introduced
        by Lakatos to
        indicate a paradigm
        that does not allow
        researchers to
        make new
        predictions and that
        requires an
        increasing number
        of ad hoc modifications
        to account for
        the empirical
        findings
        
        progressive
        research
        programme
        notion introduced
        by Lakatos to
        indicate a paradigm
        that allows
        researchers to
        make new, hitherto
        unexpected
        predictions that
        can be tested
        empirically
        
        Revolution
        paradigm shift
        
        Examples of scientific revolutions
        Epicycles --> Ellipses
        
        Return to normal science
      - Interim summary
        
        Kuhn’s theory A discipline needs a general theory to become scientific (otherwise it is a pre-science). This theory forms a paradigm against which observations are made, questions posed and answers interpreted.
        
        During periods of normal science, scientists solve puzzles within the existing paradigm. They defend the paradigm and ostracise colleagues who question it. Modifications of the theory in the light of contradictory findings must stay within the paradigm. Otherwise the finding is an unexplained anomaly.
        
        During a period of normal science, anomalies accumulate and modifications become increasingly ad hoc. This triggers a crisis. During a crisis, scientists are more open for an alternative, incommensurable theory, if the latter provides the same level of explanation and in addition allows the formulation of new predictions that stand the falsification test. If such an alternative is found, a paradigm shift takes place, which Kuhn calls a scientific revolution.
        
        Because of the scientific revolutions, scientific progress is not steady and cumulative. During the revolution progress is very fast; at the end of a period of normal science, progress is very slow or non-existent.
        
        The cycle of periods of normal science followed by scientific revolutions is never-ending.
    - - Facts have an objective
        basis even if there is a subjective
        component in their perception
      - Scientific claims must be
        treated with caution, certainly
        when they are new
    - - science wars
        notion used by the
        postmodernists to
        refer to their
        attacks against the
        special status of
        science and their
        unmasking of
        scientific knowledge
        as a social
        construction
      - postmodernist
        in the philosophy of
        science someone
        who questions the
        special status of
        science and sees
        scientific explanations
        as stories told
        by a particular
        group of scientists
      - social
        construction
        notion used by
        postmodernists to
        indicate that
        scientific knowledge
        is not
        objective knowledge
        discovering
        the workings of an
        external reality, but
        a story told by a
        particular scientific
        community on the
        basis of their language
        and culture
  - - - idealism
        view within philosophy
        that human
        knowledge is a
        construction of the
        mind and does not
        necessarily correspond
        to an outside
        world; the truth of
        knowledge depends
        on the coherence
        with rest of the
        knowledge in the
        social group
      - realism
        view within philosophy
        that human
        knowledge tries to
        reveal real things in
        the world; the truth
        of knowledge is determined
        by the
        correspondence of
        the knowledge with
        the real world
    - - pragmatism
        view within philosophy
        that human
        knowledge is information
        about how
        to cope with the
        world; the truth of
        knowledge depends
        on the success one
        has in engaging
        with the world, on
        what works
- - - - Psychology has a long, respectful past and uses the scientific method
      - Consequences for the psychology curriculum
    - - Every topic studied with the scientific method is a science
        e.g. chemistry was largely useless when it was alchemy, and the
        scientific method saved it.
      - Methodolatry
        
        psychologists were more concerned with good research methods than with theory formation
        
        methodolatry or
        methodologism
        tendency to see
        methodological
        rigour as the only
        requirement for
        scientific research
        at the expense of
        theory formation
      - The shadow of logical positivism
    - - Systematicity and cumulativeness of knowledge
      - Comparison with pseudoscience
      - Acceptable progress thus far
        Another reason why psychological research remains largely scientific is that psychologists themselves are not unhappy with the progress they have made in the past 150 years.
        They have evidence that standardised tests are better predictors of future performance than unstructured interviews (Chapter 7); they know that people in many situations
        do not behave in the way that they think they do
  - - - hermeneutics
        approach in psy-
        chology according
        to which the task of
        the psychologist is
        to interpret and
        understand persons
        on the basis of their
        personal and socio-
        cultural history
        (understanding
        rather than
        controlling)
      - Hermeneutics forms as
        counter-idea to experimental psychology
        as more practically
        oriented field. that focused
        on needs of practitioniers.
      - What the experimental psychol-
        ogists overlooked, according to the hermeneutists, was that understanding a person
        involves not so much knowing how the person functions, but what the person thinks,
        believes, feels, wants.
  - - - content vs function
        holistics
        context
        hermeneutic understanding
    - - Freud
        Jung
      - Adler
      - Erikson
        Bowlby
    - - humanistic
        psychology
        psychological move-
        ment promoted by
        Rogers and Maslow
        as a reaction
        against psycho-
        analysis and behav-
        iourism; stressed
        that people are
        human, inherently
        positive, endowed
        with free will and
        living within a socio-
        cultural context
        
        Maslow
    - - critical
        psychology
        movement in psy-
        chology that criti-
        cises mainstream
        psychology for fail-
        ing to understand
        that knowledge
        does not refer to an
        outside reality
        (idealism), that sci-
        entific knowledge is
        not cumulative but
        consists of social
        constructions, and
        that psychological
        theories and claims
        have an impact on
        the world in which
        people live
      - Idealism instead of realism
        
        Science is a social construction
        
        Psychologists have a moral responsibility
    - - unconscious
        plagiarism
        term used by
        Bornstein to
        indicate how the
        scientific and the
        hermeneutic
        approach in
        psychology have
        influenced each
        other without the
        proponents being
        aware of it
- - - - What is Epistemic trust ?
        
        rests not only on the assumption that one is dependent on the knowledge of others who are more knowledgeable;
        
        it also entails a vigilance toward the risk to be
        misinformed.
      - What determines epistemic trust ?
        
        Drawing on empirical findings, we argue that the critical characteristics
        that determine the epistemic trustworthiness of a source of science-based
        information (for example, a scientist or a scientific institution) are the source’s
        expertise, integrity and benevolence.
      - Why is epistemic trust relevant ?
        
        Doing science
        
        understanding science
      - Seminal Model ?