Psychology 2800E Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Operational Definition, Canadian Dental Association, Statistical Significance

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2800E
• Professor: Patrick Brown

Document Summary

Not all questions are answerable: basic issue, answerable questions are a small subset of all questions, some questions are meaningless, some are impossible in principle to answer, but whats the difference between in principle and in practice. If something is impossible in principle, that means nothing could ever cause it to happen. It is impossible for humans to fly without some technological aid: when something is impossible in practice, that means there is some obstruction presenting it from happening. In principle, the bird could fly, but in practice it cannot do so because it is in a small cage. Is i(cid:373)possi(cid:271)le i(cid:374) p(cid:396)a(cid:272)ti(cid:272)e, (cid:271)e(cid:272)ause (cid:449)e do(cid:374)"t ha(cid:448)e the te(cid:272)h(cid:374)ology (cid:396)ight (cid:374)o(cid:449), (cid:271)ut (cid:374)ot in principle. Impossible questions to answer in practice and principle: meaningless questions, poorly expressed, and those questions that can be answered, this is where science works, we are not interested in questions that we cannot answer.