5. Three Ideas for the Week
1. The “Human Sciences” is a framework of
knowing, categorizing, and analyzing human
behavior towards prediction and possible
prevention/correction
2. The “Human Sciences” is a collection of
loosely related branches of evolving thought
throughout history. Today, the paradigms
correspond to Behaviorialism vs. Gestalt,
Naturalism vs Interpretivism. And Qualitative
vs. quantative research.
3. The “Human Sciences” have several AoK
crossovers, including ethics, nature vs.
nurture, and the ongoing pursuit of “truth”
and/or “fact”.
6. Branches of Human Science
1. Anthropology
2. Human biology
3. Business studies
4. Communication studies
5. Criminology
6. Demography
7. Development studies
8. Economics
9. Education
10. Human geography
11. Industrial relations
12. Law
13. Media studies
14. Medicine
15. Methodology
16. Philosophy
17. Political science
18. Political theory
19. Psychiatry
20. Psychology
21. Public administration
22. Social policy
23. Sociology
1. Which of these are
more “science” and
which are less
“science”?
2. What are some of the
obstacles and pitfalls
with calling this AoK
“Human Sciences”?
3. Read your handout
scenario. What is the
language describing?
What elements of the
language are missing?
7. Activity: Deal or No Deal
http://www.xpmath.com/forums/arcade.php?do=play&gameid=70#.UZCTr7Xvt8E
9. Competing Definitions
• What might be the most
optimistic definition?
• The most cynical
definition?
• What are some basic
problems of knowledge
involved with studying
human behavior? (word
map for 2 minutes) Nothing made me happen. I happened
I expect most psychiatrists have a patient
or two they'd like to refer to me.
16. Analyze the following:
1. Myopia is correlated to those
who have slept with the light on
as children
2. The amount of ice cream
consumed is correlated to the
number of shark attacks
3. Cigarette smoking amongst
young people correlates to poor
grades at school
4. Sleeping with your shoes on
correlates to suffering from
headaches in the morning
5. The decline in pirate numbers
correlates to the increase in
global warming
17. Causation or Correlation?
• How do we discern
between factors that are
caused, vs. simply a
coincidental correlation?
– Remember your fallacies
(post hoc)
• Extra difficulties may
arise in our discovery of
why things happen when
the cause and the effect
is hard to distinguish from
one another.
18. McGurk Effect
• Get in teams of 3
• One begins mouthing a
“buh” sound
• Another begins
speaking the sound
“buh” with the last
member “perceiving”
• After 5 lip syncs,
change the sound to
“vuh”
• What happens?
21. Quantitative or Qualitative?
• Quantitative data is
gathered by such activities
as surveys, questionnaires,
statistics, etc.
– Strength: provides ‘hard’ knowledge
about a thing
• Qualitative data seeks to
gather more personal
information
– Strength: often descriptive rather
than numerically-based and
instantly measurable
22. Naturalism vs. Interpretivism
• Question: Should
studying humans
develop “objective”
results?
• Naturalist: yes, one
must observe humans
as any other animal or
object.
• Interpretivist: No, one
must understand the
complexity of
personality, belief, and
feeling.
23.
24. Pavlov’s Experiment
"In any animal, regardless of its prior
history, painful stimulation of the foot
causes the leg to be withdrawn by bending
at all its joints. This flexor reflex is an
example of an unconditioned reflex, an
innate response based on fixed
connections in the chain of neurons from
the receptor (sensor) to the effector. Of still
more interest in everyday life are
the acquired or conditioned reflexes, in
which the functional connections between
the excited sensors and the patterns of
activity in effector organs become
established by learning process”
Schmidt, R. F. (1989). "Behavior Memory (Learning by Conditioning)".
In Schmidt, Robert F.; Thews, Gerhard.Human Physiology. Translated
by Marguerite A. Biederman-Thorson (Second, completely revised
ed.). Berlin etc.: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-19432-0.
25. Analysis: Approach to Murder
• How would a
naturalist study
murder?
• How would an
interpretivist?
• What areas of
Knowing interact with
such a topic?
26.
27.
28. Article Analysis: Raising a
“Genderless” child?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/news-and-views/judith-timson/the-genderless-baby-well-intentioned-but-
wrong/article2036155/
29. What gives a child its sense of self?
According to Ken Zucker, psychologist-in-
chief at the Centre for Addiction and Mental
Health and a world expert in childhood
gender identity issues, the story here may
not be about gender or sex or stereotypes at
all: "It is way more than that. It is about
identity, the development of the self. ... To
really grasp the core, one has to go below
the surface. How is the self constituted?
How do parents transmit, via thousands of
micro-interactions in day-to-day life to their
children, who they are? How attuned are
children to these thousands of micro-
interactions? I think that this is at the heat of
this intense discourse."
30. Reading Discussion 5/21/15
1.Apply this PoK to
your reading:
1. What biases exist in the
peoples, concepts, or
presentation of the concepts
within the novel?
1. 190-197
2. 198-204
3. 205-210
• Philosopher Portrait
• Debate: Nature or
Nurture?
31.
32.
33. Determinism at Work?
Give me a dozen healthy infants,
well-formed, and my own
specified world to bring them up
in and I'll guarantee to take any
one at random and train him to
become any type of specialist I
might select - doctor, lawyer,
artist, merchant-chief and, yes,
even beggar-man and thief,
regardless of his talents,
penchants, tendencies, abilities,
vocations and the race of his
ancestors”. (Watson, 1924, p.
104)
34. What ethical issues are at work?
Milgrim Experiment
Ordinary people, simply doing their
jobs, and without any particular
hostility on their part, can become
agents in a terrible destructive
process. Moreover, even when the
destructive effects of their work
become patently clear, and they are
asked to carry out actions
incompatible with fundamental
standards of morality, relatively few
people have the resources needed
to resist authority.
35. Famous Experiment Prezi Review
1. Research a controversial
experiment from
tiny.cc/tcpsych
2. Prezi web review
summarizing the
experiment
3. Choose two AoK’s where
the Human Science
Experiment overlaps with
others
4. Create a PoK, attempt to
answer it in a paragraph
(point, counterpoint).
Due: 5/29
36.
37. Nurture? LRA and Ethical Issues
• What societal factors exist
in the development and
perseverance of child
armies?
• Are the techniques of
control, as well as the
teachings of violence,
compatible with the human
sciences?
– How is this similar/different
than the natural sciences?
• Using the lens of human
sciences, develop another
PoK question regarding this
topic.
38.
39.
40. Conduct your own research!
• Find a video, article, pop-
culture reference describing
a social experiment.
• Try and replicate the
experiment (or the idea/part
of the experiment)
• Decide on what type of
research method you will
use.
• Decide on what school of
thought you will use to
define your conclusions.
June 4th, 2014
41. MESH Post 7: Multicultural Psychology
Read “Shakespeare in the
bush”:
1. Summarize in 2 sentences the
greatest divergence between
Shakespeare and the African
tribal understanding.
2. Summarize in 2 sentences the
greatest divergence between
Shakespeare and modern
culture.
3. Summarize in 2 sentences
another class this year and how
another culture might not
understand the concept (and
why).
Due 6/1
42. 3 rows of 4
1. 4 flavors your partner
will love the most. Put
them in order of
preference.
2. Choose a number of
jelly beans to deicieve
with a different color.
3. Have the student guess
without any labels.
43. Activity: Taste identification
• How is our taste related to
our environment, those
around us, and our other
senses?
• How is our taste related to
language, engineered
flavors, and prior
experience?
• How might this test have
significance in understand
the Human Sciences?
44. Know thyself—and then thou wilt
despise thyself
Tiny.cc/johariwindow
Philosophyexperiments.com
1. How well do you know
yourself?
2. Do others know you better
than you know yourself?
3. Are we intentionally blind
to our own person in order
to function?
4. Are you, when observing
yourself, in a special
category of observer?
45. Change Blindness
• In the same way as the
Taste Test, how might
we be “blind” to certain
changes around us?
Why might this lack of
observation be useful?
How might it be a
disadvantage?
• What is the crossover
with the Human
Sciences?
