Is Psychology a science Flashcards
Who was Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1292)?
- Medieval Franciscan friar, philosopher and scientist
- “Doctor Mirabilis”
- Broadly Aristotelean in outlook
- Pioneer of scientific method in Medieval Christianity:
- used empirical observation; experiemental approach (controlled experiemnets to test hypothesise rather than just accepting what was said)
- systematic in his record making to record what he had done and how
- used peer review
- naturalistic philosophy = empirical knowledge reveals what the true nature of creation
- religiously mediated - focused on analysis of scholarly texts
what were the 3 different forms of acquiring knowledge according to Roger Bacon?
- Authority - yields belief, but not understanding
- Reasoning - produces understanding, but cannot distinguish between genuine truth, and things that have the appearance of truth
- Experience - a combination of philosophical (sensory) and divine (internal)
what were the threefold aims of science that Roger Bacon argued?
- discovery of truth (Inventio Veritatis) = to investigate the secrets of nature
- Moral and ethical guidance (Rectificatio Morum) = support or refute theoretical claims, in process of attaining doubt free knowledge
- Useful knowledge (Usus) = provide observations or instruments to aid development of other sciences
what did William of Occam (1285-1347) believe?
- Occom’s Razor (The law of Parisony): developed proof for existence of God
- given two theories to explain the same phenomena, the simpler one is more likely to be true
- Fruitless to try and do more what can be done with less: analogy to representativeness heuristic and conjunction fallacy (Kahneman & Tversky, 1972)
who was Iassc Newton?
- Polymath = founded as separate discipline from philosophy
- moved experimentation towards empirical data collection, need a large sample size from a wide range of circmstances
- used induction as a means of scientific validation, generalizing from the particular to general
who was David Humes (1711-1776)?
inspired by Newton, made a number of critiques of induction….
1. Demonstrative arguments produce the wrong kind of conclusion (deductive reasoning, analytic, a priori, relations of ideas)
2. Probable arguments are circular (inductive reasoning, synthetic, a posteriori, matters of fact)
who was Auguste Comte (1798-1857)?
- one of the founders of Positivism, an epistimological perspective which advocates:
1. Realism: The world exists independently of us
2. Empiricism: we have access to this independent reality through observation
3. Deduction: we can build and test hypotheses from these theories, and therefore predict the behaviour of the natural world
4. Induction: We can make generalisations and build theories from our observations
what is the positivism?
- puts science in the place of deriving universal, objective truths.
knowledge is accumulative: standing on the shoulders of other adults
who was Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914)?
- American Philosopher - pragmatist
- he reasoned that science advances through induction, deduction and abduction
- abduction = explanatory reasoning where the conclusions do not follow logically from the premises, helps formulate plausible and testable hypotheses that guides subsequent clinical assessments and interventions
what did Popper (1902-1994) do?
proposed a solution to the problem of induction:
- Disconfirmation: If no amount of observation can establish a universal, then one contrary one is sufficient to disconfirm
- Conditionality: we dont discover ‘true’ regularities, but we make statements that are conditionally true-we stick with them until we have reason to believe they’re wrong
- falsification: a deductive process, so we van identify ‘true’ conjectures without falling into the problem of induction
what did Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) do?
- The scientific method assumes facts from experiments can be known independent of the theories, so the data can test the theories
- therefore this is an issue of theoretical construction
- disconfirming data may be a problem of the observations, not the theoretical claim
- good theory could be rejected on bad/loaded evidence
Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) do?
- physicist
- explored the practice and development of scientific theories
- Emphasised that science consists of ‘paradigms’: i.e. a network of statements rather than single statements
- contrasts Popper
what are Kuhn’s paradigms?
- are underlying scientific theories - an entire world view
- ‘Normal science’ is the development and accumulation of knowledge within a paradigm
- If anomalies accumulate in a theory and cannot be explained, the paradigm enters a crisis stage
- when that reaches a critical point, then the paradigm shifts to another - a ‘scientific revolution’
how are Kuhn and Popper similar?
- both thought a positivist view of science was Naive and unrealistic
- both challened the notion that science progresses through the accumulation of facts
- both recognised that science changes over time
how are Kuhn and Popper dissimilar?
what knowledge claims experiments target
- Popper: they tested core hypotheses
- Kuhn: Experiments were puzzles within scientific world view
What do scientists believe?
- Popper: scientists know their core theories are conjectures and conditional
- Kuhn: Scientists actually believe their core theories
What do scientists do?
- Popper: then try to disprove their theories
-Kuhn: They cling desperately to their theories for as long as possible.
what did Imre Lakatos (1922-1974) do?
- expanded upon Popper and Kuhn proposing a falsification account within research programmes
- explicitly divided knowledge claims into hard core (basic assumptions) and auxiliary (secondary) hypothesis
- Hard core: a world view, the set of basic integral assumptions that are in of themselves irrefutable
- Auxiliary hypotheses: generated by the assumptions of the hard core, can be falsified
