Re: [tips] Seeds of contemplation
No. --Mike On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 8:44 AM, michael sylvester wrote: > > In the final analysis,are we just our neurotransmitters? nothing > more,nothing less! > Michael Sylvester,PhD > Daytona Beach,Florida > > --- > To make changes to your subscription contact: > > Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) > > --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Seeds of contemplation
In the final analysis,are we just our neurotransmitters? nothing more,nothing less! Michael Sylvester,PhD Daytona Beach,Florida --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Seeds of contemplation
Because scientific findings do not represent flawless objectivity. The ideal observer is a myth --Mike On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 10:26 PM, michael sylvester wrote: > > If scientific findings represent flawless objectivity,why do need > replications? > > Send me something. > > Michael Sylvester,PhD > Daytona Beach,Florida > > --- > To make changes to your subscription contact: > > Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) > > --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Seeds of contemplation
Hi I would put it a little stronger than Christopher. Science strives for complete objectivity. Science provides mechanisms to identify and correct lack of objectivity (e.g., publication, replication, double blind studies, statistical tests, ...). Science thereby provides pathways to an accurate (i.e., objective) understanding of the natural world, including human behavior and experience. But the paths are often long and circuitous, which is perhaps why so many people prefer quick albeit fallible alternatives (e.g., revelation, tradition / culture, intuition, anecdotal evidence, political pundits, ...). I think we need to be cautious as scientists about giving an unduly pessimistic view of our enterprise. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca >>> "Christopher D. Green" 13-Aug-09 8:21:11 AM >>> michael sylvester wrote: > > > If scientific findings represent flawless objectivity,why do need > replications? No one of significance ever said that "scientific findings represent flawless objectivity." What they (should have) said is that the scientific approach is our best bet of finding out what is really going on in the world. Observation is still subject to all of the criticisms that were heaped upon it by Idealists from Plato on down to the present day (we make errors, we can be deceived, our predispositions sometimes overwhelm our senses, etc.). Replication helps us to catch some of those flaws. Science is not particularly efficient, and it is certainly not perfect. It is merely better than everything else we have tried. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Seeds of contemplation
On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:08:12 -0700, Allen Esterson wrote: >Michael Sylvester wrote: >>If scientific findings represent flawless objectivity, A curious statement if there ever was one. Is Dr. Sylvester actually posing a counterfactual in contrast to referring to actual beliefs or conditions? His statement seems to have more in common with something like: "If pigs had wings" >>why do need replications? One would, of course, have to be clearer by what one means by "flawless objectivity", but it appears to embody a highly deterministic viewpoint about the nature of reality, that is, if everything that needs to be known about a phenomenon is known AND THERE IS NO SOURCE OF RANDOM OR SYSTEMATIC ERROR, then a single demonstration of an outcome in the context of an experimental design would be sufficient and the need for replication would be negligible because under these conditions it is expected that the same result would always be expected (recall the recent thread on whether coin-tossing representts a real random process; when all relevant variables are controlled and environmental conditions are kept constant, only one outcome will be produced). >If you presuppose an erroneous premise as here, the question is redundant. Well, it is not clear what the premise is and given Dr. Sylvester's non-eurocentric mode of thinking about things it is not clear that the concepts of "error", "truth", or "meaningfulness" (outside of a limited community) are relevant. He could, however, be stating a counterfactual in which case the truth of the premise is not the issue: start by assuming that the premise is true and then extrapolate/deduce what follows. If, however, Dr. Sylvester's conditional statement is actually meant to refer to actual scientific practice, then it would be worthwhile for him to provide cases where replications are not necessary. Working scientists, on the other hand, might view Dr. Sylvester's statement as either (a) bizzare because few scientific findings are based on "flawless" objectivity (flawed objectivity, that is, observations are made with error and this is common practice [psychometrics is concerned with estimating and controlling different types of error] because there are few situations where errors can be forced to be zero or close to zero) or (b) the purpose of experimental design is to identifiy all of the variables that may affect a causal relationship that is the focus of the experimental design and attempt to control for them or minimize the effect of these nuisance variable on variables involved in the causal relationship under study. A researcher with good experimental design background will be familiar with the threats to internal validity which would undermine one's claim that a causal relationship exists, threats to external validity which would limit the extent to which the causal relationship applies, threats to statistical conclusion validity which would undermine whether one's analaysis of the causal relationship is in fact statistically valid, and so on with other types of validities such as construct validity, etc. Scientific findings are unlike mere anecdotes where the focus is on how good a story is and whether our cognitive heuristics readily process the story points (e.g., does the story match up with concepts activated by the representative heuristics, does the availability heuristic work to activate relevant recent event to serve as partial support for the story, does the simulation heuristic allow one to construct the causal thread that connects one elements/episodes in the anecdote into a coherent thread that holds all of the statements made in the anecdote together?). People may believe that what they say is true, honest, accurate, and sincere. Of course, as research on eyewitness testimony has shown, belief in what one thinks and the factual foundation for what one thinks are two different things. As an exercise, I found suggest watching Akira Kurosawa's film "Rashomon". In one sense it is a police procedure like a CSI or an "Land & Order" episode: a crime was committed and the authorities must decide who is responsible. The trick that Kurosawa uses is that of the "unreliable narrator", that is, the narrator in a story, play, film cannot be trusted to provide an accurate, factual, and honest narration (a reliable narrator obeys Grices conversational maxims while an unreliable narrator violates them and more); see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator Kurosawa embeds narrations within narrations and the naive film view will easily lose track of who is relating what (it is the woodcutter who provides the master narration and relates what he remembers of the narration of other actors -- but it becomes clear that he is an unreliable narrator because he does not want to admit to the crime *HE* committed, namely, stealing a pearl handle knife that may have been used in killing one of the main characters). The film "Rash
Re: [tips] Seeds of contemplation
michael sylvester wrote: > > > If scientific findings represent flawless objectivity,why do need > replications? No one of significance ever said that "scientific findings represent flawless objectivity." What they (should have) said is that the scientific approach is our best bet of finding out what is really going on in the world. Observation is still subject to all of the criticisms that were heaped upon it by Idealists from Plato on down to the present day (we make errors, we can be deceived, our predispositions sometimes overwhelm our senses, etc.). Replication helps us to catch some of those flaws. Science is not particularly efficient, and it is certainly not perfect. It is merely better than everything else we have tried. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Seeds of contemplation
Michael Sylvester wrote: If scientific findings represent flawless objectivity, why do need replications? If you presuppose an erroneous premise as here, the question is redundant. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Fw: [tips] Seeds of contemplation
If scientific findings represent flawless objectivity,why do we need replications? Send me something. Michael Sylvester,PhD Daytona Beach,Florida --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Seeds of contemplation
If scientific findings represent flawless objectivity,why do need replications? Send me something. Michael Sylvester,PhD Daytona Beach,Florida --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)