Is psychology a Science

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According to Descartes what should science be based on?
'Certain' knowledge
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What does Descartes appeal to?
Good God
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What should this knowledge be derived on?
The basis of precise procedures so that we can justify scientific laws or explanations
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What do Scientific theories contain?
Generalisations that apply to all examples of a king
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For example?
Pasteur's germ theory
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However, what can seem to be true what?
At one point in time turns out not to be true later
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What is widely accepted about scientific generalisations?
Some things may be different in the future, some things cannot be seen by the 'naked' eye
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what can we do?
Deduce incorrect truths
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Sometimes we dont what?
deduct the correct truths
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What is the empiricalist view?
It depends on systematic observation and measurement
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Observation is not what?
Straightforward it is imbued with theory
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Measurement is not straightforward it is?
Imbued with theory
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What did Newton suggest?
Scientist justify their generalisations using the inductive method
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For example?
I have seen lots of black ravens, My friends report having seen lot's of black ravens, neither i nor my friends have ever seen a white raven, therefore all ravens are black
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What did Hume point out?
A basic problem with induction, Even if the initial statements are true there is no guarantee that the conclusion is true, even if the initial statements are true there is no probability that we can attach to the truth of conclusion
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What are some kinds of inductive enumerations to lead to?
False statements than others for example, all cats are black VS all mammals have brains
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There is no purely logical method for what?
Deciding which enumerations are more believable,
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However, what sort of issues are these>
Empirical
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What can we use?
Higher level inductive enumerations to justify lower level enumerations
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What should be applied to each individual?
Doubt
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What does the judgement of the quality of inductions depend on?
How they cohere with current and future inductions
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What is Popper famous for?
His theory of falsification
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What did Popper argue?
There is no problem of induction
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What does he suggest
We do not discover true regularities rather we make conditional statements which may be true,
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What can we identify?
True conjectures through falsification ie establishing the falseness of such conjectures
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What is falsification?
Purely deductive so induction is not a problem
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What does Popper argue?
That typical scientific theories make highly probable statements but good theories make improbable claims
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Though evidence may corroborate a theory, making it psychologically more plausible, what is a good theory?
Refuted in the future
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Why do we stick with corroborated theories?
Until we have reasons to disbelieve them
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What did Ritter and Bibby study?
A simple fault finding task with multiple trials
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What was the first prediction?
A correlation between problem solving time and number of trials
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What was prediction 2?
Time taken will be positively correlated with the number of problem solving operators applied
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What was prediction 3?
Time taken will be predicted by the number of problem solving operators applied and each operator will take 100ms
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As the precision of the hypothesis increases what else increases?
The falsifiability
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What are the three criticisms of Popper's account?
The normative nature of science should be tested to see if it's falsifiable, naive falsificationism- we should treat a theory as refuted whenever it seems to be contracted by experience, falsifications take as if one theory is tested
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What dont some scientists do?
Abandon theories until something better comes along
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What does it do?
Usually take some time to develop a theory sufficiently to decide how good it is
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What are the three research programmes?
A core claim, Auxillary assumptions, a number of methods/techniques
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What is one of the important features?
Research programs is that they generate novel facts
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What are the problems?
Novel facts may arise by coincidence, we dont compare problems against eachother but against the world, sometimes there is only one research program, no research program is accepted
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What did Thomas Kuhn do?
Challenged Popper's view of science arguing both that they were historically inaccurate and too simplistic
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What is a pre-paradigm?
Deep disagreement about fundamental theory and fairly random fact gathering
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What is a paradigm?
Some scientific puzzles have been set and solved using various conceptual and empirical techniques
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What is normal science?
Various puzzles are solved in the manner of the exemplary work, factural knowledge increases, technological developments arise, new unsolved puzzles arise
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What is the crisis?
Anomalies arise that cannot be explained within the paradigm leading to a new paradigm
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What are the revolutions?
Older scientists stick to the older paradigm, younger scientists adopt the new paradigm. Paradigm shifts on the fade away principle
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What did Feverabend argue?
Solving puzzles is not the main aim of science, science is about the development of overarching, general theories and not just solving minor puzzles
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Science sometimes involves the what?
Active, complicit development of rival theories, alternative theories can challenge and improve current theories
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A single paradigm is not necessary what can co-exist and what is it important to consider?
Paradigms, the wasting of time and effort on implausible alternatives
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What did Kuhn and Popper not do?
They didnt disagree that much, on almost all occassions, Popper and Kuhn opinions are very nearly identical
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What does Worrall argue?
Kuhn believed that experiments should be designed assuming core ideas so that falsification targets auxillary hypotheses, Popper believed that experiments should be targeted to at core rather than auxillary hypotheses.
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What did Kuhn argue?
Scientists tend to believe the core theory VS popper who argued that scientists know that their theories are conjectures
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What did Popper believe about scientists?
Essentially attempt to falsify their theories
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What did Kuhn blieve?
believed that scientists hold their core theories as sacred but the collapse under the weight of evidence built up during the puzzle solving period
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What was the 4 Merton's sociology of science?
Universalism, communalism, disinterestedness, scepticism
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What is universalism?
Ideas should be evaluated according to impersonal criteria that are universally agreed with the scientific community
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What is communalism?
Knowledge should be regarded as a common heritage and shared freely within the scientific community
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What is disinterestedness?
Scientists should not seek to gain for themselves through questionable means or support vested interested
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What is scepticism?
Scientists should not be credulous, jump to conclusion, but weigh evidence in a considered manner
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What did Mitzroff (1974) suggest?
Scientists find ways to restrict what information they consider as relecant by considering well known practitioners as more reliable not universalists
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WHat was the second thing for Mitzroff to suggest?
Scientists promote their own ideas to their own advantage - not disinterested
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What did Mulkay suggest?
Scientists adopt practices that defend their independence and relative freedom from external scrutiny
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What makes science distinctive?
Scientists apply a set a values with which to judge knowledge
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What is the first 3 Kuhnian value?
The consequences deducible from a theory should be demonstrated agreement with the results of existing experiments and observations, a theory should be internally consistent, a theory should be consistent with other currently accepted theories
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A theories consequences should what?
extend beyond the particular observations, laws or subtheories it was designed to explain
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A theory ought to?
Order pheomena that in its absence would be isolated and confused
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The theory should be?
Fruitful of new research findings
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Who did Mulkay and Gilbert interview (1984)?
Biochemists concering the choice between theories of mitochondrial function
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What would scientists always do?
Depict theory choice as individual to themselves and not by some accepted set of values, scientists do not always agree what a particular experiment actually means
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What did Gilber and Mulkay (1982) find?
Advocates of particular theories recurrently claimed that their beliefs were supported by the evidence whilst others conclusions were impaired by psychological or culteral distortions or other contingent or non contingent difficulties
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What is relativism?
The belief that different theories or beliefs can be equally true relative to different standards
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What is science concerned with?
Epistemic truth, things that we can know to be true no matter who believes them
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What is the quote to explain relativism?
Scientific knowledge is purely the product of social forces, power struggles and politics, the natural world has no role in the construction of scientific knowledge
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What is the first problem?
If evidence underdetermines knowledge theories then so does the social/political context, if you don't believe the natural world limits our scientific knoeldge why should you believe that the social/political world does
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Even if evidence underdetermines theories ?
Observation doesnt usually have practical consequences
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Matter is made up of atoms may be true but ?
Given the evidence so far what is the alternative?
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If you believe that your beliefs are socially constructed what?
Surely that belief is also social constructed so there is no good reason for believing it
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What is the second version of relativism?
There is no absolute truth; true or false is always relative to someones perspective it is just a preference to believe certain things
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What are the problems of this?
This is an absolute truth; it contradicts itself, this is a relative truth; sine this truth is not true for me its criticism is self defeating
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what is the third theory of relativism?
Physical reality is a social and linguistic construct
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What are the problems with this version?
It confuses representation with fact
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What is a fact?
A fact is something in the external world that exists whether we know it or not
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What is a belief?
A belief is a representation of a fact, which of course, could be wrong, e.g. the morning star and the evening star; the sun revolving around the earth vs the earth revolving around the sun
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What does the fact not change?
over time but The representation does
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What is the 4th version of relativism?
The science of one society is no more valid than that of another
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It is true that some beliefs of different cultures will be true so what?
We shouldn't be culturally arrogant
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For example?
Mushrooms are low in purines which helps people with rheumatism (as Chinese Medicine doctors have known for years)
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Some beliefs of some cultures are likely to be what?
simply wrong, e.g. the aphrodisiac, spanish fly (powdered ‘blister beetle’)
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What about this beetle?
When this beetle powder (spanish fly) is ingested cantharidin is excreted by the body in the urine. During urination it causes irritation to the urogenital tract which subsequently leads to itching and swelling of the genitals
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However, these statements are true/false because?
some culturally independent fact and not necessarily because of what a culture believes
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for example?
Mountains formations are the results of tectonic plates ‘crashing’ into each other and the effects of weather and not a ‘cow and calf’ falling asleep
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What does Descartes appeal to?

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Good God

Card 3

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What should this knowledge be derived on?

Back

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Card 4

Front

What do Scientific theories contain?

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Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

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For example?

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