ECON 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 32: Prefrontal Cortex, Group Polarization, Internal Validity
Document Summary
History of human knowledge: metaphysical or supernatural explanations, violate physical laws, abandoned by scientists. Mythology and religion: spiritual rather than physical, especially focused on human behavior. Astrology: determined by activity of celestial bodies philosophy competed with metaphysical systems, use of logic, empiricism, intuition back then consistency with bible. Determinism: universe is orderly, causal thinking (mind illusory correlation, superstitious conditioning) theory is statement about causal relationship. Empiricism: real proof can only be provided by observations. Parsimony: comprehensibility, steering away from unnecessary assumptions, occam"s razor. Testability: replicability (or even falsifiability by karl popper, seeking out tests that could prove theories wrong, at least being open to criticism and revision) operational definitions, making immeasurable measurable four ways of knowing about the world: Method of induction = from specific (after a lot of continuous revisions) to general hume identified the problem of induction, you can never make enough observations to be absolutely sure.
