PSYC 1F90 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Confirmation Bias, Falsifiability, Conceptual System

• School: Brock University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1F90
• Professor: Kathryn Belicki John Mitterer

Document Summary

Psyc lecture 1: the most basic universal human impulse may be the struggle for understanding. How should i be in this world: existential anxiety. Clinging to certainty: belief dependent realism. You (cid:373)ust (cid:271)elieve i(cid:374) so(cid:373)ethi(cid:374)g. (cid:862)havi(cid:374)g (cid:271)eliefs vs. (cid:271)ei(cid:374)g a (cid:271)eliever. It is e(cid:454)traordi(cid:374)aril(cid:455) diffi(cid:272)ult for hu(cid:373)a(cid:374)s to get (cid:862)(cid:271)ehi(cid:374)d(cid:863) or (cid:862)u(cid:374)der(cid:374)eath the foundational assumptions of both their own individual and their culturally shared conceptual systems. Try to encounter psychology as a challenge to be explicit about your own implicit epistemology/ ontology/ ethics: epistemology. Philosophy, using logic or reason to build theories that must be true. Religion, ideas formed by a different realm/ belief systems: ontology, ethics. Science is the study of the empirically accessible. Theories cannot be proven true but they can be proven false. Seek to falsify a theory in order to prove it: scientism vs. science. Scientific method: one mode of reacher get knowledge.