Hey everyone! Professor Lamar here and
welcome to our first
mini lecture. here in this mini
lecture we're going to talk about the
methods of knowing, which is found in
chapter one of your textbook, so let's go
ahead and get started. You see, as discussed in chapter one,
there are
five different ways that we come to
learn and acquire information,
and those five ways of knowing are
called intuition,
authority, rationalism, empiricism,
and the scientific method. Now hopefully
we've heard of some of these like for
instance
have you heard of the word intuition?
Probably, and what does it mean?
Also, "authority" might be a bit familiar.
Think about what authority means to you.
And then also maybe you've also heard
of rationalism
empiricism and the scientific method. Now
what we're going to do is take each one
of these five ways of knowing,
explain what it means, and go through an
example. So let's start with intuition.
Intuition is basically like a gut
feeling that we have about something
and it's using those gut feelings or
emotions
to make our decisions and derive it and
some sort of like
piece of information. Now the issue with
intuition is that it's not rooted in
scientific
inquiry or evidenc,e and so it's not
really based
in science. It's instead just based in
feeling.
Take for example this picture that you
see on the slide.
This is a picture of my great
grandmother who i called Giagia Effie.
My family's greek which is why I call my
grandparents Giagia/Yiayia and Papou,
and this is a picture of my
great-grandmother Giagia Effie who had
incredible intuition. She would give my
mom
a call whenever my younger brother or I
were feeling sick when we were growing
up,
and I don't know how she always knew
when we were sick, but
sure enough if I wasn't feeling well one
day, Giagia Effie would be on the phone
talking to my mom
saying kind of cryptic things like, "How's
Kay feeling?"
And so, Giagia Effie just seemed to know,
right? Now
that meant that when I grew up I thought,
as i was growing up i thought that Giagia
Effie had incredible intuition. She just
seemed to magically know when I wasn't
feeling well
and she listened to her gut and it was
always right. However in retrospect,
as as I became an adult, I realized that
I was probably relying on what's called
"confirmation bias" to form that opinion.
You see, I tended to remember all of the
times that Giagia Effie knew I was sick
and called asking if i was okay, and I
forgot all of the times that Giagia Effie
called and I was feeling just fine.
Right? And so basically, confirmation bias
is when you tend to remember
and believe information that confirms
what you think
while ignoring information that
disproves what you might believe.
And so in retrospect, Giagia Effie might
have had some intuition
but it certainly wasn't rooted in
science, and there were definitely many
conversations that we had where
I was feeling just fine. Okay, so now that
we know what intuition is,
and we know that the main flaw with
intuition is that it's not rooted in
science in
any way, let's talk about another way
that we tend to
learn information: from authority figures!
Authority figures are people who tend to
be kind of in charge of something,
and we've been conditioned from a very
young age to
accept new ideas if an authority figure
says that they're true.
Classic example of this in the field of
psychology, is shown in this picture
right here.
This is a picture of Sigmund Freud,
and Sigmund Freud is someone that you've
probably heard about in your
introduction to psych classes.
Sigmund Freud was renowned as an
authority figure
in the field of psychology, and when he
created a lot of his theories
and ideas, people assumed that they were
true
because he was considered an authority
on the topic.
However, fast forward a few decades or so,
and as people started to try to test the
ideas that he created that were just
testable in the first place,
um they realized that a lot of what
sigmund freud believed was
not actually accurate, and a lot of his
theories
are either not testable in the first
place
or they've been falsified. They've been
shown to to be false.
So just because an authority figure says
something, whether it's Sigmund Freud,
your professor, or any other authority
figure,
it does not mean that you should just
accept those ideas and believe that
they're true.
Question things, think critically about
things,
and this class will equip you with the
tools that you need to research what
authority figures say
so that you can make an informed
conclusion about if what's being said is
actually true.
All right, so let's go to the third way
that we learn information:
rationalism! Rationalism is exactly like
what it sounds like.
It's using logic and reasoning to
acquire information.
Now this sounds pretty good at face
value, right?
If we're using logic and reasoning we're
probably going to create some pretty
sound,
good, valid conclusions. But the issue
with rationalism is that if the logic is
flawed, the conclusion is going to be
flawed
sometimes we don't always have sounds
logic.
Take for instance this picture that you
see on the slide. This is a picture of
a swan, and you might have learned
growing up
that swans are white, right? So
if you come across a bird and you see
that it's white, you might assume
it's a swan because swans are birds that
are white.
However, we likely know that there are
many different types of birds that are
white and not swans,
so not all birds that are white
are swans. We also know
that not all swans are
white. In fact there are some black swans,
not to be confused with the movie, Black
Swan.
But long story short, if if your logic is
flawed, the conclusions that you draw
will be flawed as well.
Like for instance if you assume all
swans are white, when you come across a
black swan you might assume it's not a
swan
when in reality it is. So the issue with
rationalism
is that for things to be for the
information
to be considered valid and accepted, the
logic that goes into it first has to be
valid as well.
This brings us to our fourth way of
knowing which is empiricism!
Empiricism is very important in our
class,
so I want you to really make sure that
you understand what this means.
Empiricism involves acquiring knowledge
through observations and experience, and
it is the
fundamental characteristic of the
scientific method.
Again, empiricism is the fundamental
characteristic
of the scientific method. It's the idea
that knowledge, what we know,
is based on observation, what we see. And
this is something we'll utilized,
it, this is something that we'll use and
utilize in our course.
In our class, we'll conduct a research
project from start to finish, and part of
that will be
data collection. When we collect data,
that's our observation. And then what
we're going to do is analyze that data
and derive conclusions based on that.
This is systematic empiricism,
and again, it's the fundamental
characteristic of the scientific method.
If you want another example of
empiricism, think about Piaget.
Piaget was a developmental psychologist
who observed children playing on
playgrounds, and from watching children
play on playgrounds,
Piaget was able to come up with a whole
theory
of cognitive development for children,
and propose that children
progress through different stages of
development as they get older.
Okay now, if empiricism is the
fundamental characteristic of the
scientific method,
this means that our last way of learning
or knowing information is
the scientific method! The scientific
method
involves systematically collecting and
evaluating evidence
to test ideas and answer questions. Now
the key thing about this
is that the scientific method only
works with theories ideas and questions
that are testable. Let's go back to Freud.
A lot of Freud's theories are not
actually testable,
and so a lot of what freud proposed was
not
actually scientific.
Now what we'll work with in this class
is the scientific method, and we'll use
this to collect data
to evaluate the evidence that we get and
then draw conclusions based on that.
The issue with the scientific method
though is that it tends to involve a lot
of time and resources,
so sometimes it's not always the easiest
way to get information.
But of the five different ways to gather
information,
or get like reach knowledge in
some capacity,
the scientific method is most likely to
produce valid and reliable
data. So it's a really good approach. Now
this brings us to our Summary. Here in
this mini lecture we learned about the
five ways of knowing.
Can you define and give an example of
intuition, authority, rationalism,
empiricism, and the scientific method? All
right.
This brings us to the end of this video,
and I will see you all in the next one.
Alright, bye!
