PSYCH 1100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Palmistry, Seven Mortal Sins, Pseudoscience
9 Dec 2013
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Opportunity to gain bonus marks - 6 full marks (ex: 64% plus 6 bonus marks = 70%) The scientific study of human behaviour and mental processes. A method, approach to evidence, observation and testing, systematic way of gathering knowledge about the natural world. Set of attitudes and skills designed to prevent us from fooling ourselves. It is a brutal competition of evidence, not a brutal competition of opinion. Matter of finding out which explanations best fit the data about how our minds work. The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it. Good theory - organizes facts, predicts events - requires testable hypotheses that can be falsified. Hypotheses guide scientific research by allowing tests, rejections and revisions of the theory. Ad hoc immunizing hypothesis - an excuse defenders of a theory use to protect it from falsification. Critical thinking involves examining assumptions, evaluating evidence, assesses conclusions.
