Lecture
For an experiment with scientific aims, generalizing the type of causal dependency proceeds in 3 stages (if a laboratory experiment took place):
We draw a conclusion about the type of dependency;
A conclusion about the validity of the theoretical model used;
Moving from theory to reality, a conclusion about the degree of correspondence.
For experiments with practical aims, the logic of inference is sometimes simplified.
Errors in generalization occur because the researcher violates the rules of logic (in relating general and particular premises) and substitutes the norms of hypothetico-deductive reasoning with the acceptance of unfounded arguments. As a result, the conclusions turn out to be artefactual.
Stages of generalization (from the lecture):
- Generalization within the experimental situation.
Has the main result of the action been established? Or is the result artefactual? Generalization of the type of dependency.
- Control of the generalization from the standpoint of who the subjects were.
Can the results be transferred to other samples?
- Evaluation of the hypothesis from the standpoint of the established data.
Internal, operational validity.
- Hypothetico-deductive generalization.
modus tollens; falsification of incorrect hypotheses.
- Interpretation from the standpoint of competing knowledge.
The logic of drawing a conclusion should include the following components:
1) the hypothetico-deductive path of reasoning with asymmetry of inference;
2) the construction of experimental schemes, within the framework of inductive inference about the result of the action of the experimental factor and the possibility of a causal explanation of the change in the DV;
3) a conclusion about the experimental hypothesis based on analysis of the obtained effect by relating the result to an assessment of validity;
4) justification of the substantive grounds for generalizing the dependency beyond the experiment.
- Hempel, Oppenheim: the explanandum (what is being explained), the explanans (that by which it is explained).
- Dilthey. Descriptive psychology. He objected to Hempel and Oppenheim: a human being is active, uses past experience, sets goals. BUT: is past experience really a problem? Repetition without repetition…
In psychology, reductionism is regarded as the substitution of psychological explanations by non-psychological ones, or as the search for an explanation of a certain number of different phenomena by reducing them to a single explanatory principle. It may manifest itself as the subsumption of empirical conclusions under interpretive schemes that often lie in the sphere of other sciences or fields of knowledge.
Piaget. The concept of causality is applicable for describing behavior and activity, but not consciousness. Only deductive inference based on the use of abstract scientific models can be applied to explain mental structures. There are 7 types of explanation.
1) Explanations based on identification, the reduction of the diversity of reactions to a single principle. Example: psychoanalysis.
- Reductionist ones (reducing the complex to the simpler, the psychological to the non-psychological);
2) Psychosocial reductionism (sociological explanations)
3) physicalist explanations
4) psychophysiological reductionism
- Constructivist ones (remaining within the framework of models of behavior and activity)
5) theories of behavior (behaviorist)
6) psychogenetic reductionism (genetic models)
7) abstract models (revealing, in the most general form, the mechanisms of psychological constructs).
They are realized in 2 ways: 1) A precise language is applied, formally specified by classical probability theory and logic. Or some other technical borrowing occurs.
2) In the model no definite real substrate is assumed; the reference is to something general in which real models are similar. Explanations of the 7th type achieve greater precision and productivity, reveal connections between facts and laws that were hitherto incomparable, and make it possible to identify new cause-and-effect relationships.
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