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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Scientism: Why all hot and bothered about it?
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Are you seriously saying you believe that humans can just as easily be disinterested about humans as they are about ducks? No difference at all?
Some might suggest that such an idea is quakers.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Are you seriously saying you believe that humans can just as easily be disinterested about humans as they are about ducks? No difference at all?
Some might suggest that such an idea is quakers.
I doubt the Society of Friends would agree. But it is definitely quackers.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
My sense of humour might not be for the birds, but my typing is.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Are you seriously saying you believe that humans can just as easily be disinterested about humans as they are about ducks? No difference at all?
Is that not the scientific ideal ? Objective, disinterested knowledge, uncontaminated by the prejudices, values and opinions of the observer ?
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Are you seriously saying you believe that humans can just as easily be disinterested about humans as they are about ducks? No difference at all?
Is that not the scientific ideal ? Objective, disinterested knowledge, uncontaminated by the prejudices, values and opinions of the observer ?
Best wishes,
Russ
wow - that's gone an interesting direction
Actually, imo the answer to both the birds and the humans is more or less the same.
There is a proper order, that - when we experience it - feels to be correct. That goes for birds and it goes for humans. As has been pointed out by Dafyd, birds don't make choices the way that humans do (by mental process, imagination, calculation, and all that) but rather - they feel what is right - they Grok their proper relationship and that's what they do because it is Grokked/Felt - it is (in human terms) an embodied sense of rightness that is just how every living creature apart from humans makes decisions when they are in a healthy relationship with their environment. So - yes - this ideal relationship can be distorted in various ways, but even the adaptations have a certain logic to them when viewed through a physiological lens.
The fact that we can look at geese (or whatever) dispassionately and observe is itself a distortion - because we have separated ourselves from the natural world in order to make that observation. There is a version of scientific analysis - Goethean science - that deliberately requires that the observer NOT be dispassionate, but rather that s/he uses ALL of the sensory capacities (including the "internal"/felt/empathic ones to explore something.
From a Goethean pov, the idea of a dispassionate observer is equivalent to saying that there is a choice to restrict the use of senses in a quite irrational way. Literally irrational - in the original Greek meaning of the word "rational", which included feelings as well as thoughts.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Are you seriously saying you believe that humans can just as easily be disinterested about humans as they are about ducks? No difference at all?
Is that not the scientific ideal ? Objective, disinterested knowledge, uncontaminated by the prejudices, values and opinions of the observer ?
I didn't ask if it's the ideal. I asked if you seriously think it's possible.
It may be the ideal, but the point being pressed on this thread, repeatedly, is that it's an impossible (and perhaps undesirable) ideal. I'd say this claim and challenge pretty much seal the argument. It's absurd to think humans can be as dispassionate about the behaviors of humans as they are about those of ducks.
[ 19. October 2014, 15:30: Message edited by: mousethief ]
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Are you seriously saying you believe that humans can just as easily be disinterested about humans as they are about ducks? No difference at all?
Is that not the scientific ideal ? Objective, disinterested knowledge, uncontaminated by the prejudices, values and opinions of the observer ?
That is certainly a scientific ideal. (Not sure about 'the' scientific ideal.)
But that's not the question at issue. The questions at issue are:
a) if we apply that ideal to knowledge about human society would we get knowledge out of it? ;
b) even if we did get knowledge out of it that way, would it be ethical for someone aim for knowledge about other human beings uncontaminated by the values of the observer?
c) even if it would give knowledge, and it would be ethical, could we do so, anyway, or would prejudices and opinions get back in the back door unrecognised?
(My answers are a) no, b) at best maybe, and c) we couldn't.)
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The questions at issue are:
a) if we apply that ideal to knowledge about human society would we get knowledge out of it? ;
b) even if we did get knowledge out of it that way, would it be ethical for someone aim for knowledge about other human beings uncontaminated by the values of the observer?
c) even if it would give knowledge, and it would be ethical, could we do so, anyway, or would prejudices and opinions get back in the back door unrecognised?
(My answers are a) no, b) at best maybe, and c) we couldn't.)
Let's take an example. Suppose someone does some research into the factors affecting how well children do at school. They give children standardised tests of their academic performance at the end of each school year, and get their parents to fill out a questionnaire. And then they look in the data for explanations as to why some children are improving their performance faster than others.
Can this be done objectively and dispassionately, without value judgments (e.g, without committing to the idea that "academic performance" is the only function of a school, or the idea that if there's something wrong it's a problem with the child rather than a problem with the school) ? Can we get knowledge out of it ? I'd say yes. Some of that knowledge may be negative in the sense of demonstrating that some things which might have been thought significant turn out not to be. But that's also useful. Knowledge isn't always new ideas - it can be a weeding-out of the multiple ideas you already have.
Deciding what goes in the questionnaire is a judgment. But it's not a value judgment, not a judgment of good and bad. The decision will be informed by research findings from elsewhere (cf. repeatability) as well as the intuition and understanding of the researchers,
Would it be ethical to seek knowledge in this way ? Don't see why not... Looking for statistical correlations and hypothesising mechanisms to account for them is still at the level of "natural experiment". Seems to me that the main ethical issue arises when you move to active experiment (such as giving children breakfast at school) and have to decide who to place in the control group.
If anything it's the reverse of what you're saying. There may be an ethical problem if the research isn't done open-mindedly, if it is contaminated by prejudice. If it's sponsored by a cereal manufacturer, for example. Or carried out by someone with fixed ideas about the race of the teachers being an issue.
Would prejudices and opinions creep in anyway ? I wouldn't impugn the professionalism of the researchers by assuming so without some evidence...
The original question was more like whether such research will lead to a scientific answer as to the best form of school. Where it seems to me obvious that what "best" means isn't an empirical question. You can't research the aim and purpose of education - that's philosophy.
But such a study might lead to changes that improve the school's academic results without compromising other aims, by increasing human knowledge about the conditions under which children learn best. With positive side-effects on the quality of the relationships between pupils, parents and teachers.
I'm really not seeing where you're coming from on this.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
Heck - the thought that you can assess a childs "performance" (and that there is a performance to assess and this is a Useful Thing To Do) via a questionnaire - itself is a value judgement of gargantuan proportions; that begs more questions than a bus full of itinerant pub quizmasters
The rest is just polyfill.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The questions at issue are:
a) if we apply that ideal to knowledge about human society would we get knowledge out of it? ;
b) even if we did get knowledge out of it that way, would it be ethical for someone aim for knowledge about other human beings uncontaminated by the values of the observer?
c) even if it would give knowledge, and it would be ethical, could we do so, anyway, or would prejudices and opinions get back in the back door unrecognised?
Let's take an example. Suppose someone does some research into the factors affecting how well children do at school. They give children standardised tests of their academic performance at the end of each school year, and get their parents to fill out a questionnaire. And then they look in the data for explanations as to why some children are improving their performance faster than others.
If you're happy with the idea that performance can be equated with getting higher marks on standardised tests, yes.
Even in mathematics, marks are given for showing one's working. (The better the exam, the more working.) Establishing which bits of working should get the marks is always going to be a value judgement.
And as for standardised tests when it comes to history or English, that looks like a non-starter.
Also, if the researchers are going to give the parents a questionnaire to fill out they need to write it in such a way that the parents understand it in the same sense that the researchers do (and the researchers understand the parents' answers), and in such a way that the parents find it polite and unintrusive. Which means that the writing and the interpretation of the results both have to be done with some empathy for the parents.
quote:
Can this be done objectively and dispassionately, without value judgments (e.g, without committing to the idea that "academic performance" is the only function of a school, or the idea that if there's something wrong it's a problem with the child rather than a problem with the school) ? Can we get knowledge out of it ?
At a minimal level, you can certainly get some knowledge out of it, in the same sense that IQ tests measure the ability to do IQ tests.
But even before you've decided whether or not to commit to the idea that 'academic performance' is the only function of a school, you've already committed to the idea that performance on standardised tests is an adequate measure of academic performance. That way lies the current obsession with standardised testing in education, which is in the eyes of many teachers damaging.
The above is only if you're wedded to the assumption that knowledge is only knowledge if the observers' interpretative skills are called upon as little as possible. If you acknowledge that the researchers have to interpret the results, according to their own frames of reference, then you can arguably get more useful knowledge out of the exercise.
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Deciding what goes in the questionnaire is a judgment. But it's not a value judgment, not a judgment of good and bad. The decision will be informed by research findings from elsewhere (cf. repeatability) as well as the intuition and understanding of the researchers,
How is 'this might (not) be a factor in a child's academic performance' not be a value judgement. Unless you think one can be entirely neutral about whether academic performance is or is not a good thing?
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Would it be ethical to seek knowledge in this way ? Don't see why not... Looking for statistical correlations and hypothesising mechanisms to account for them is still at the level of "natural experiment". Seems to me that the main ethical issue arises when you move to active experiment (such as giving children breakfast at school) and have to decide who to place in the control group.
You really think handing out standardised tests and questionnaires isn't an active experiment?
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If anything it's the reverse of what you're saying. There may be an ethical problem if the research isn't done open-mindedly, if it is contaminated by prejudice. If it's sponsored by a cereal manufacturer, for example.
Would you really want such research carried out by someone who doesn't care whether academic performance is or isn't a good thing?
The problem with cereal manufacturers is as much that they don't care about the important thing, as that they care about the wrong thing.
quote:
Would prejudices and opinions creep in anyway ? I wouldn't impugn the professionalism of the researchers by assuming so without some evidence...
I've already questioned whether the equation of 'ability to give the right answers to standardised tests' is correctly equated to 'academic performance'.
I'm not saying that the exercise wouldn't be useful. But it will be more useful the more self-aware the researchers are about the value assumptions underlying the research. It will be more useful the less complacent the researchers are that their work is objective, value neutral and 'scientific'.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
Interesting that educational tests are brought up on a thread about scientism - but not inappropriate. The recent paperisation of education has more or less expanded in parallel to the growth of popular culture scientism, and both are centred on a fuzzy grey zone that occupies the space between real science, popularised science, the politics of public policy, administration of public policy, ISO 90000, and probably a shipload of other factors.
It's somewhat odd that whilst successive Governments from NuLabour on have delegated responsibility for setting non-H&S standards in the private sector to trades bodies and manufacturers, newspapers and banks etc (i.e. they have completely given up their responsibility of governance) for the public sector (including education) they have imposed quasi (pseudo-) scientific regines of measurement. On the basis that if somnething is measured then one can set a "target" based on that measurement, and then determine if performance criteria have been reached. Almost nobody seems to have twigged that this is a political sleight of hand which relies on the measurement methods and criteria not being critically scrutinised. It plays to the scientism mythology because it tells evberyone that everything is measurable and can be said to pass or fail according to those stringent (even "tough") measurement criteria. In particular, these measurements are used to justify the allocation or withdrawal of public funding/resources/approval and are administratively convenient.
Surely - although a rose may be measured using a ruler, does this tell us anything of real worth about the rose?
The fact that it is possible to gull most of the UK population that this administrative convenience is a real measure of value is a testimony to the prevalance of scientism in the public coinsciousness - and an indication of the dangers of a dogma and an arbitrary system of thinking masquerading as a universal truth.
<gets off soap box, has a cup of tea>
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The above is only if you're wedded to the assumption that knowledge is only knowledge if the observers' interpretative skills are called upon as little as possible. If you acknowledge that the researchers have to interpret the results, according to their own frames of reference, then you can arguably get more useful knowledge out of the exercise.
There's clearly a place in the research process for the skill of interpreting data. And that place is prior to the design of an experiment which demonstrates conclusively. If at the end of the project the results are so inconclusive that they can be interpreted to mean one thing or quite the opposite, then yes I would question whether real knowledge has been obtained.
Intuition is good. It should be used. As part of a process of establishing facts, evidence of cause-effect relationships, which will then convince those with less-well-developed intuition (and less time to consider the problem).
quote:
Unless you think one can be entirely neutral about whether academic performance is or is not a good thing?
It's optional.
Someone who thought that the academic performance of children in an enemy nation was threatening to the survival of their own nation, and sought subtle ways to reduce that performance, would find the knowledge from this sort of research just as useful, and would probably carry out the research in the same way. Factual knowledge really is value-free stuff that can be used equally for good or evil.
quote:
You really think handing out standardised tests and questionnaires isn't an active experiment?
Heisenbergian uncertainty notwithstanding, I find the distinction between
- changing inputs to the system to see what happens, and
- just measuring what's already happening
to be a useful one.
Of course, people can and do behave differently when they know they're being observed. But I think the experience of people being filmed for TV is that after the first few days the adapted behaviour reduces and they revert to being pretty much their normal selves. So that's not an argument against observations of people, just a footnote that it has to be done with awareness of how to avoid bias.
When I was at school we had end-of-year tests in all academic subjects as a matter of course, so I don't see testing as an intrusion on education.
Trying to keep it short...
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
It's not viewed as an intrusion on the system because it's normal. In a system in which testing is not the norm, it would be intrusive because it would be a change. So given a system in which testing is normal and universal, there is no data to indicate the intrusiveness or not of that testing regime.
The value of the data is perceived to be greater than any negative influence that might occur, but there is no attempt to evaluate that. In fact, the assumption is that the testing will generate greater effort - a Good Thing. This implicitly assumes a) that greater effort equates with a higher quality of education, and b) the test itself will indicate the quality of each student - therefore the value of both the students and the educational system is measured by virtue of a quantitative "measurement" system. But calling it a measurement - as in using a ruler to measure a piece of wood - is itself deceptive, because the units of measurement are as arbitrary as is the decision as to what is a valuable thing to measure.
If we start to talk about profesional education, there is a slightly different situation. Yes - checking that somebody has a grasp of the necessary knowledge base and is capable of thinking around their subject well enough to perform it - great. However, the ISO 9000 approach to education is a pretty blunt instrument. In fact, the testing and measuring instrument has become the basis for education iteslf. To say this does not interfere with education is pie in the sky, since the delivery structure shoehorns teachers and pupils into a single measurement-oriented structured method of learning. Anyone who does not have a mind that fits with this degree of structure is immediately at a disadvantage regardless of their wider abilities and potential. Just because it is now "nromal" does not necessarily make it inevitable or better or good in any way whatsoever.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The above is only if you're wedded to the assumption that knowledge is only knowledge if the observers' interpretative skills are called upon as little as possible. If you acknowledge that the researchers have to interpret the results, according to their own frames of reference, then you can arguably get more useful knowledge out of the exercise.
There's clearly a place in the research process for the skill of interpreting data. And that place is prior to the design of an experiment which demonstrates conclusively. If at the end of the project the results are so inconclusive that they can be interpreted to mean one thing or quite the opposite, then yes I would question whether real knowledge has been obtained.
Intuition is good. It should be used. As part of a process of establishing facts, evidence of cause-effect relationships, which will then convince those with less-well-developed intuition (and less time to consider the problem).
That is a funny position to take while writing in natural language. Natural language requires interpretation to understand. It doesn't just read itself. Now, you can say that because it requires interpretation understanding natural language isn't a process that when done well results in knowledge. But it would be odd.
And I wouldn't have used the word 'intuition' in this context myself. I don't understand why you think it's relevant. If you are trying to equate successful interpretation with intuition that seems quite wrong.
If I interpret your argument correctly, I think you're saying the follow:
1) Your proposed standardised tests and questionnaires would give something like knowledge;
2) If the results are open to more than one interpretation, they don't give knowledge;
Therefore, you think your proposed standardised tests and questionnaires would be only open to one interpretation. Which strikes me as highly implausible.
quote:
quote:
Unless you think one can be entirely neutral about whether academic performance is or is not a good thing?
It's optional.
Someone who thought that the academic performance of children in an enemy nation was threatening to the survival of their own nation, and sought subtle ways to reduce that performance, would find the knowledge from this sort of research just as useful, and would probably carry out the research in the same way. Factual knowledge really is value-free stuff that can be used equally for good or evil.
Your researcher is still assuming that academic performance is a good for the enemy nation.
quote:
quote:
You really think handing out standardised tests and questionnaires isn't an active experiment?
Heisenbergian uncertainty notwithstanding, I find the distinction between
- changing inputs to the system to see what happens, and
- just measuring what's already happening
to be a useful one.
Oh come - organising standardised testing is incredibly time and labour intensive.
It might very well be a useful distinction in some cases, but in this case it doesn't really apply.
quote:
When I was at school we had end-of-year tests in all academic subjects as a matter of course, so I don't see testing as an intrusion on education.
Certainly if you already have standardised testing in place it's not going to intrude, because it's already there. On the other hand, it is the case that if you assess children and teachers on the basis of standardised tests then they do alter their behaviour: the teachers start to teach to the tests, and the children start to learn only what will be tested.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
If I interpret your argument correctly, I think you're saying the follow:
1) Your proposed standardised tests and questionnaires would give something like knowledge;
2) If the results are open to more than one interpretation, they don't give knowledge;
No, that's not quite it.
If the data have two possible interpretations, they may still be sufficient to disprove half a dozen other ideas, so that knowledge has been gained by the reduction of the set of possibilities.
Data does not necessarily constitute useful knowledge on its own. The research method I'm suggesting involves analysing the data to identify statistical correlations. Then hypothesising cause-effect relationships that might explain those findings, and devising further experiments (either the natural or the active variety) to provide the evidence to confirm or deny each hypothesis/interpretation, and thus choose between them.
This, as I understand it, is an example of the scientific method in action in the social science field.
Yes, I'm asserting that it leads to knowledge - in this case the fact that children learn better if they've eaten breakfast - but I'm not sure it makes sense to attribute that knowledge to any particular element or step of the process.
Now you're right that if nobody imagines that a particular factor (such as left-handedness) could possibly be relevant, then that data is unlikely to be collected, and so the process won't reveal anything about it. Normally someone needs to have had a suspicion of a possibility that there may be some relationship between handedness and academic performance in order for the data to be collected in order for the research to find an effect. (There is the faint possibility that the data on which of the children were left-handed and which right-handed was collected for some other purpose and was included more or less by chance).
Itsarumdo was talking about "empathic knowledge" which I took to mean something like intuition - a sense of what might be - which I'm agreeing has a role to play.
Best wishes,
Russ
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
quote:
Data does not necessarily constitute useful knowledge on its own. The research method I'm suggesting involves analysing the data to identify statistical correlations. Then hypothesising cause-effect relationships that might explain those findings, and devising further experiments (either the natural or the active variety) to provide the evidence to confirm or deny each hypothesis/interpretation, and thus choose between them.
This, as I understand it, is an example of the scientific method in action in the social science field.
Well, again a bus load of quizmasters could beg less questions. Research is iterative - and rather like spiritual wisdom, you have to know which questions to ask in order to get a sensible answer.
For instance, if you were convinced from the start that the crosses placed on football pools entries affected football match outcomes, you would not be gathering any data that related the opposite direction of causality. Or if you were, there likelihood is that it would be incomplete for what is necessary or the way that the data-gathering question was posed would make the data worthless, because there would be insufficient control over the required variables.
So research is not just guesswork in the way you paint it - it is not possible in most circumstances to gather just any old data and then apply every correlation you can think of and then get a result. Apart from which, false correlations also occur for all kinds of reasons. For instance, the price of mars bars in £ sterling vs global CO2 probably has a strong correlation. Does that mean that one is directly causal to the other?
First one has to know roughly the correct question. Only then can data be gathered which answers that question. Then there is a process of refinement as the question is expanded, narrowed, refined, honed, dead ends discarded... - if a computer were doing the same job it would be called synthetic multivariate annealing. But with an intelligence rather than just a nonlinear optimisation matrix.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Data does not necessarily constitute useful knowledge on its own. The research method I'm suggesting involves analysing the data to identify statistical correlations. Then hypothesising cause-effect relationships that might explain those findings, and devising further experiments (either the natural or the active variety) to provide the evidence to confirm or deny each hypothesis/interpretation, and thus choose between them.
This, as I understand it, is an example of the scientific method in action in the social science field.
That's certainly a general example of the scientific method as you would apply it to the natural sciences. The questions at issue are whether the social sciences add any wrinkles due to their subject matter that make it not quite so straightforward.
And evidently they do.
Let's take the matter of academic success. You suggest measuring academic success by standardised tests. But some components of academic success are the abilities to think critically and originally. Now you can't standardise the ability to think critically, still less the ability to think originally. That means that assessing whether a score on a test exhibits academic success is a matter of interpretation. So interpretation goes into even deciding what your data is, let alone into interpreting the causal relations between them.
Even then, suppose you've got a paper and it opens with the question:
What is 2x3?
The correct answer is quite different depending on whether it's a paper in arithmetic or a paper in typesetting. In order to interpret the answer as a sign of academic success, you have to know that it's an arithmetic paper. (It almost always is, but that's a feature of our society: an interpretation so deeply ingrained that we don't realise it's an interpretation at all.)
Incidentally, it looks from your description that you're assuming that interpretations and hypothesises are the same sorts of things. And I don't think they are.
quote:
Yes, I'm asserting that it leads to knowledge - in this case the fact that children learn better if they've eaten breakfast - but I'm not sure it makes sense to attribute that knowledge to any particular element or step of the process.
The question I was raising with you just then was that you were saying, as I understood you, that if interpretation is required in a project, then the results are inconclusive and you would question whether real knowledge has been obtained.
Whereas I think that in any social scientific situation, interpretation is required pretty much all the way down. And yet knowledge is still possible.
I have to say that as social scientific questions go, whether eating breakfast improves learning is pretty close to the natural scientific area. (Why children do or don't eat breakfast would be a more social scientific question.) Whether someone has or hasn't consumed a certain quantity of calories by a particular time in the morning is not a social scientific question.
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Itsarumdo was talking about "empathic knowledge" which I took to mean something like intuition - a sense of what might be - which I'm agreeing has a role to play.
I'm not coming from the same place as Itsarumdo.
That said, I don't think the ability to correctly recognise emotional states in other people is usefully called intuition. Nor does it correlate well with the aptitude for acquiring objective disinterested knowledge uncontaminated by the values and opinions of the observer.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
some components of academic success are the abilities to think critically and originally. Now you can't standardise the ability to think critically, still less the ability to think originally. That means that assessing whether a score on a test exhibits academic success is a matter of interpretation.
You seem to be assuming that any scientific research has to start from a definition - in this case a definition of what academic success is - and then devise a way to measure the thing you defined in order to gather any data about it. I don't think it always works quite like that. Sometimes science finds out that X causes Y (which bears some unspecified relationship to Z) and puts that fact out there for the Z-policy makers to interpret.
quote:
What is 2x3?
The correct answer is quite different depending on whether it's a paper in arithmetic or a paper in typesetting.
The fact that a symbol can have two different meanings in dfferent contexts somehow invalidates science ? ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
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Incidentally, it looks from your description that you're assuming that interpretations and hypothesises are the same sorts of things. And I don't think they are.
You don't think hypothesising from data is an act of interpretation ? What is it then ? What do you mean by "interpretation" that I'm not getting ?
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I have to say that as social scientific questions go, whether eating breakfast improves learning is pretty close to the natural scientific area. (Why children do or don't eat breakfast would be a more social scientific question.) Whether someone has or hasn't consumed a certain quantity of calories by a particular time in the morning is not a social scientific question.
The important factors which influence learning might also include things like the social class differential between the teacher and the pupil. Could that sort of social factor not be researched in the same way ? Subject to much the same difficulties and limitations ?
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I'm not coming from the same place as Itsarumdo.
That said, I don't think the ability to correctly recognise emotional states in other people is usefully called intuition. Nor does it correlate well with the aptitude for acquiring objective disinterested knowledge uncontaminated by the values and opinions of the observer.
Not sure where you are coming from, exactly. You seem to think that research on human behaviour is a totally different ball game from scientific research, but much of what you're saying seems to about the philosophical impossibility of objective knowledge, across all fields.
"Intuition" seems to me a catch-all term for when we know or suspect that something is true without that knowledge or suspicion arising from conscious reasoning about sensory input. When we can't say how we know something or why we suspect it to be so, we say it's intuition. This would include therefore subconscious processing of body language cues to infer the emotional state of others. And also include subconscious pattern-recognition when looking at scientific data.
The skill-set of a good scientist probably includes pattern-recognition skills alongside logical reasoning skills. And the ability to compartmentalise, to be professional, to be able to present findings in a way that is uncontaminated by their personal opinions.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
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You seem to be assuming that any scientific research has to start from a definition - in this case a definition of what academic success is - and then devise a way to measure the thing you defined in order to gather any data about it. I don't think it always works quite like that.
Yes to the first - you first have to define a question - Unless the "What" is properly defined, the way to measure it properly is also not defined. With academic results, we start with a hypothesis that good academic results as measured by an examination system is a useful social (and perhaps economic) measure. I'm sure that someone familiar with the educational literature would be able to point to a range of keynote published papers that dissected that hypothesis and produced evidence for or against it. Ideally then there is a feedback system - you take the evidence, interpret it relative to the hypothesis (there is the difference) and then decide whether you need to reqrite the hypothesis ir rejig the measurement system so that it does what you want more effectively. In fact, for social questions, the act of measurement cannot help but affect the thing being measured, so it is not that simple at all. You only have to look at the national ccensus - quite a few people put "Jedi" as their religion, the auditors rejected that data as being flippant, and before you know it there is an official Jedi religion with lots of followers and the next census has far more Jedis.
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Sometimes science finds out that X causes Y (which bears some unspecified relationship to Z) and puts that fact out there for the Z-policy makers to interpret.
That's a pretty fuzzy tale straight out of the Daily Mirror. Interpreting science into public policy is one of the most dodgy areas of both science and politics. Because 2 years down the line the science could easily move on and show the opposite result. The UK is particularly keen on a proactive public health policy fo rtesting for breast cancer. The evidence is that this creates a lot of false positive results, thus many women who do not have breast cancer end up being treated and the average mortality compared to a public health policy (that e.g. says this should be picked up only through GPs surgeries) is equal or slightly worse. But politically it is preferable to cherry pick the science so that the Govt is seen to be proactive and "doing the right thing". How any politician decides whether the science is reliable or not (when even the scientists sometimes don't know) - actually science and public policy is a huge barrel of worms.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
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Originally posted by Russ:
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Originally posted by Dafyd:
some components of academic success are the abilities to think critically and originally. Now you can't standardise the ability to think critically, still less the ability to think originally. That means that assessing whether a score on a test exhibits academic success is a matter of interpretation.
You seem to be assuming that any scientific research has to start from a definition - in this case a definition of what academic success is - and then devise a way to measure the thing you defined in order to gather any data about it. I don't think it always works quite like that. Sometimes science finds out that X causes Y (which bears some unspecified relationship to Z) and puts that fact out there for the Z-policy makers to interpret.
I think that is a considerably weaker claim than you were making to begin with.
(Also, I'm unsure that it's appropriate to use 'cause' when all you have is a correlation with no explanation.)
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What is 2x3?
The correct answer is quite different depending on whether it's a paper in arithmetic or a paper in typesetting.
The fact that a symbol can have two different meanings in dfferent contexts somehow invalidates science ?
It does if you think science requires interpretations to be checked against experimental data. Since the fact that a signal has one meaning or another just is an interpretation: there is no experimental data to check it against that isn't also an interpretation.
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Incidentally, it looks from your description that you're assuming that interpretations and hypothesises are the same sorts of things. And I don't think they are.
You don't think hypothesising from data is an act of interpretation ? What is it then ? What do you mean by "interpretation" that I'm not getting ?
You can certainly claim that hypothesising from data is one kind of interpretation if you like.
The types of interpretation that I think are relevant here are either the recognition of the meaning of symbols, or else the recognition of the intentional content of intentional attitudes (such as beliefs, knowledge, intentions, wants, desires, hopes, fears, etc).
The second is important in that intentional content of intentional attitude cannot be redescribed in value-neutral terms, since the fact that an intentional attitude is not value-neutral is usually intrinsic to its identity; and it cannot be recognised except by empathic identification by the researcher working from the researcher's own intentional attitudes.
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I have to say that as social scientific questions go, whether eating breakfast improves learning is pretty close to the natural scientific area. (Why children do or don't eat breakfast would be a more social scientific question.) Whether someone has or hasn't consumed a certain quantity of calories by a particular time in the morning is not a social scientific question.
The important factors which influence learning might also include things like the social class differential between the teacher and the pupil. Could that sort of social factor not be researched in the same way ? Subject to much the same difficulties and limitations ?
Good luck finding a way to objectively assign social class independent of the beliefs of either the subjects or of the researchers is all I can say.
It's just not possible to say what social class is in an objective disinterested fashion, since an objective disinterested phenomenon is exactly what social class is not.
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That said, I don't think the ability to correctly recognise emotional states in other people is usefully called intuition. Nor does it correlate well with the aptitude for acquiring objective disinterested knowledge uncontaminated by the values and opinions of the observer.
Not sure where you are coming from, exactly. You seem to think that research on human behaviour is a totally different ball game from scientific research, but much of what you're saying seems to about the philosophical impossibility of objective knowledge, across all fields.
I'm talking about difficulty of objective knowledge, not impossibility. And I think that the difficulty does take a step up when it becomes impossible to eliminate observer opinion.
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And the ability to compartmentalise, to be professional, to be able to present findings in a way that is uncontaminated by their personal opinions.
I don't believe personal opinions are a contaminant in the social sciences. Personal opinions that are not open to revision are a bad thing, certainly. But not personal opinions as such.
Also, what is professional conduct is relative to profession.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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