The Logic of Inquiry: General Description

What is a “fact”? What is “truth”? Is there even a difference? For that matter, are empirical “facts” the only reasonable way to answer a question?

The World of “Facts”

What you see is not necessarily what you get.

· Sometimes ambiguity is built into the design itself. For example, consider the simple line drawing of a cube that you practiced in grade school. Sometimes it faces one way, sometimes 90 degrees the other way. Or, for people who are color blind, the Luscher color charts (the ones your eye doctor uses) can appear to be random dots while people with normal color vision clearly see numbers. You might also notice that the perception of ambiguous figures can alternate between one and then the other; sometimes, with effort, you might even be able to hold both figures simultaneously in perception.

· Sometimes ambiguity can be introduced through indirection (this is what the magician’s art is all about). Psychology has made an art (science?) of using ambiguous stimuli—drawings, like the TAT (Thematic Apperception Test), or free-form shapes like inkblots (the Rorschach charts)—to allow the individual to project meaning into the ambiguity. Advertising, too, uses ambiguity in the setting and posing of models to suggest possibilities which are (perhaps) better left unstated. What one person sees “so clearly,” another may see entirely differently. Is one “right” and the other “wrong”?

· Viewpoint can also “complete” information that is not really given. Two line drawings of squares, overlapping at one corner with the overlapped parts left out, will actually lead the eye to fill in the missing ink. Looking at one façade of a house, we “fill in” what the other side would look like—which can lead to jarring surprises. For example, many buildings in New Orleans’ French Quarter present a crowded, modest, weatherbeaten appearance to the street which leaves most Midwesterners unprepared for the lush and open courtyards hiding behind the clapboard walls.

What you get is not necessarily what you see, either.

· There are any number of “parlor games” the solution to which comes from “breaking the rules.” For example, given 9 dots in a square, connect them with only 4 straight lines. Or, given a chain with a ring on each end, create a closed loop (without opening one of the rings). Or, given 6 common nails, balance them on the head of a seventh nail which is standing up from a piece of wood.

· How do you learn to think “outside the lines”? Or, maybe more to the point, how did you come to learn not to?

· There is a famous short story by the Japanese author, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, called “In a Grove” (from Rashomon and Other Stories). It is the story of a rape and murder, told through the testimony of 7 witnesses (including a confession from the accused and the testimony of the murdered man presented through a medium). None of the 7 agree in every detail with any other, and every major detail is contradicted by at least one witness. Yet, between all these conflicting statements, it is possible to develop a coherent story of what actually happened.

In trying to tease out conflicting and ambiguous information, it is often useful to ask yourself

· What is known true?

· What is known false?

· What is unclear?

· What needs to be known?

The English author, C.P. Snow, wrote a famous essay called “The Two Cultures.” He argues that there are two traditions of scholarly inquiry, the Empirical and the Humanistic. The Empirical Tradition is based on the creation of abstract models, the attempt to capture the essence of observed objects or events, the effort to create a “map” of some segment of the world such that the elements of the map represent elements of the “real world” (which is assumed to exist outside private experience). The Humanistic Tradition is based on description of the phenomenal road and the effort to capture the meaning of a phenomenon, usually by explaining the appearance of the phenomenon. For the humanistic tradition, description and explanation both are based on the interaction of the perceiver and the perceived.

Quantitative analysis is an expression of the Empirical Tradition (sometimes called “science” for short). But even at that, there still remain a number of questions which to be answered.

· How does science develop? Some say it is a linear process, each step building on the ones that went before it; others argue that it is cyclical (or, perhaps, spiral)—not necessarily making “progress,” but coming back on itself and finding new ways to ask old questions.

· How does science approach the phenomenal world? Some argue that it is a search for “truth,” while others say “data” (predictive usefulness) are enough (“For purposes of theory, it doesn’t matter whether or not people are rational, only that, in the aggregate, they behave as if they were.”)

· How are scientific decisions made? Popper argues that it is only through “falsifiability,” while others argue for direct proof (we will return to this in discussing the difference between induction and deduction).

· What is the relation between units and the whole? Some argue that there are “levels” of analysis, and that what is true at the individual level may not be true at the group level (thus, the difference between psychology and sociology, between microeconomics and macroeconomics). Others argue that it makes more sense to look at the difference between aggregate effects (the sum of individual effects) and general effects (the action of the group as a whole, separate from the actions of individuals within the group).

· How are questions posed? Some pose their questions as dichotomies—“Anything is either A or not-A.” Others see a range of possibilities between “Being and Nothingness.” Some pose them as “trichotomies”—“Being…Becoming…Nothing.” A few are exploring more precise ways to measure the distance between Being (1) and Nothingness (0) using “multi-valent” sets—“0…25%…50%….75%….1” And a few are working on ways to deal with overlapping states between Being and Nothingness using “fuzzy sets”—“Absent…Probably absent…Could be present…Probably present…Clearly present.”

The World of Problem Solving

When the scientific (empirical) method is applied to solving everyday problems, it is often called the “rational decision making model.” This is the method used in much of public affairs, including planning and management. Of course, if there are so many questions which are still open, maybe we should use something else. The problem with that position is, What are the alternatives? There are many ways to choose between competing positions (appeal to force or appeal to emotions come readily to mind), but some form of “rational” argument would seem to be the only way to arrive at a choice that will lend itself to public scrutiny and the only way to build consent among people who might not have been initially persuaded. The rational decision-making model has several steps:

· Goals statement (ordering of needs)

o What needs are to be served

o Whose needs are to be served

o Importance of needs (as felt by the community as well as by the experts)

o Consequences of solution (intended & unintended).

o Note: It may not be possible to rationally (objectively & analytically) order needs. Some decisions are inherently irrational. Standards (professional judgment) may be used in those cases.

· Analysis of system structure

o Need variable (output, dependent variable)

o Control variable (input, independent variable, manipulated variable)

o Uncontrolled variables (external variables)

o Note: Direct impact on one system may have indirect impact on others.

· Selection of possible solutions

· Implementation of selected solution

· Evaluation of achievement of solution

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