Week 1
Knowledge
- All about agreement
- Authority, tradition, common sense, media, personal experience
Science
- Rationality (logical consistency), reasonableness (open to new ideas), objectivity
- Description (ex: why is the sky blue?), explanation, exploration
Ordinary Inquiry
- Risks of errors associated w non-scholarly methods
-Premature closure: jumping to conclusions
-Halo effect: idea of being influenced by prestige or appearance
Inaccurate Observation
- Casual, semi conscious observation -> mistake (may lose accuracy due to missed
information)
-Solution: scientific observation -> a conscious and deliberate effort to accurately and
precisely observe and measure
Overgeneralization
- Assuming that a few similar events are evidence of a general pattern
- Solution: scientists utilize sufficiently large and representative sample of observation
- Replication of studies
- Can only get a better understanding cuz its normal to be different every time
Selective observation
- Focus on the observations that fit the theory we are using but ignore other sources data
- Solution: social scientists find “deviant cases” (unusual cases)
Illogical reasoning
- Reaching a conclusion through means that are not logical -> Gambler’s Fallacy
- Solution: social scientists make the effort to use systems of logic consciously and
explicitly
Looking for reality
- Scientific assertions must hv both logical and empirical support: logical (the criterion of
assessing the validity of argument)
-Empirical (the criterion requiring sensory experience as evidence)
