PSY1022 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Scientific Method, Pseudoscience, Empiricism

• School: Monash University
• Department: Health Sciences - Psychology
• Course: PSY1022

Document Summary

1. 1 explain how the purpose of a methods course differs from other courses in the psychology curriculum. 1. 2 identify and evaluate non scientific ways of knowing about things in the world through authority, reasoning and experience. 1. 3 describe the attributes of science as a way of knowing. 1. 4 distinguish science from pseudoscience and recognise the attributes of pseudoscientific thinking. 1. 5 describe the main goals of research in psychology and relate them to research strategies to be encountered later in the text. Whenever we accept the validity of information from a source we judge to be expert, then we are relying on authority as a source of our knowledge. Peirce labelled the use of reason, and a developing consensus among those debating the merits of one belief over another, the a priori method for acquiring knowledge. Empiricism is the process of learning things through direct observation or experience and reflection on those experiences.