The Philosophy of Science and Its Application to Psychology

Faglig ansvarlig: Professor David Trafimow

Tid: 9.- 11. februar 2005, mellom 09.15 og 16.00 hver dag.

Rom: Rom 1329 i Teorifagbygget, Hus 1, plan 3

Omfang: 6 studiepoeng

Innleveringsfrist: 11. mars 2005. Paperet må skrives på engelsk.
To eksemplarer av paperet sendes til:
Gunnlaug Hermansen, Institutt for psykologi, 9037 TROMSØ.
Forventet sensur i slutten av april.

Påmeldingsfrist: Utgått


The general topic:
The course will cover issues in the philosophy of science, with special attention to those issues that impact upon psychology.

An overview:
The course will include a large number of mini-lectures and discussions, and a paper will be assigned. A variety of topics will be introduced, and the course will be based largely on discussion, but with a large number of mini-lectures interspersed .

The discussions should provide a vehicle for students to thoroughly understand each issue before the subsequent one is introduced and should also provide an opportunity for creative and abstract thinking.

There will be three main topics:
The course will commence with general issues in the philosophy of science. Some issues will be the roles of theories and data, inductive and deductive reasoning (including truth table logic and the black raven paradox), paradigmatic shifts, auxiliary assumptions, and whether there is such an entity as the "scientific method."

The second main topic will be on the role of inferential statistics in the social sciences. Much of this part of the course will be based on my own work in the area (especially the Trafimow, 2003 Psychological Review article and an upcoming article for that journal). We will cover the standard null hypothesis significance testing procedure, Bayesian reasoning, and whether Bayesian reasoning necessitates some version of the Laplacian "indifference principle."

The third main topic will be to apply these ideas to psychology. In the process, we will discuss issues such as what psychology is about, conventions in the area and whether they are justified, whether psychology is a science (which means we will also discuss what "science" means), and what should be done to improve research in psychology.

Paper:
Finally, a 20 page paper will be assigned. The idea of the paper will be for students to critically evaluate some topic, or combination of topics, in the philosophy of science or to evaluate an area in psychology (or any of the social sciences) based on what the students learned in the course.