Ways of Knowing Non-data Driven Methods · Experience: relying on personal experience to make decisions o Pro: may be representative of collection of all possible experiences Pro: vivid examples that are easy to remember o Con: may not be representative of collection of all possible experience o Con: cannot account for alternative explanations . Folk wisdom/common sense: appealing to what one expects everyone else to know Pro: there is an explanation for every situation o Pro: a short, mutually understood way of communicating more complicated idea o Con: often contradictory, rendering them meaningless ? Con: cannot be refuted or falsified · Authority: knowledge based on information from "credible other" ? Pro: minimises need to acquire knowledge on our own o Pro: many people of authority have legitimate credentials to be considered "authority" o Con: may be wrong, or use intuition, experience, or folk wisdom o Con: may be due to perceived cues of credibility (e.g. popularity) . Intuition: unquestioning acceptance of own judgement o Pro: more quickly and easily access knowledge o Pro: allows us to understand values that are important to us o Con: difficult to analyse and critique o Con: subject to prejudices and misconceptions Logic: knowledge derived from rules of logical thinking · Pro: leads to internally consistent reasoning and decisions · Pro: easy to analyse and critique · Con: logical reasoning may be based on incorrect premises or information, or other logical fallacies . Con: what may be logically consistent may actually differ from what occurs in the world Scientific Method · Deduction: general to specific (if P->Q, P therefore Q) o Theory: overarching framework that organises and explains phenomena and data; generates hypotheses that test boundaries of the theory o Hypothesis: tentative statement about a relationship that may or may not be true o Prediction: specific statement regarding the expected outcome of a study · Induction: specific to general ? Observation: noticing a series of events; often x, y o Hypothesis: the next time x, y o Theory/general expectation: everytime x, y · Abduction: general to specific (if P->Q, Q therefore P); a logical fallacy o Not establishing patterns or creating theories o Explaining one set of observations on its own out of all pre existing causes, finding best explanation o What happened (e.g. anemia ? Observation (e.g. patient presents with fatigue Principles of Science
4 Canons of Science · Determinism o The assumption that the universe is orderly ? Events occur due to some meaningful and systematic cause ? Foundation of research · Empiricism o We understand the world by making structure, systematic observations ? Making such observations is best way to figure out orderly principles · Parsimony ? When two theories can explain the same set of empirical observations, preference: simpler ? Forces scientists to make as few assumptions as possible ? (aka. Occam's razor: least speculation is better · Testability ? Researchers should be able to put scientific theories to empirical tests ? It is particularly important that theories are falsifiable 4