Human Sciences

1. Human Sciences … or why Economics is hard and Physics is easy

2. Human Sciences Deal With... PEOPLE

3. Human Sciences

4. Write down 10 ways in which people differ from a gram of tungsten

5. HUMAN SCIENCESMethods of gaining knowledge • How can we gather data on human behaviour?

6. Human ScienceSo how do we study it? • Scientific method? • Asking questions?

7. Problems with experiments • In order to find out about people, we have to ask them or observe them. • Neither of these tasks is easy.

8. Scientific methodAsking the right questions! • In devising experiments we are interrogating nature, and we should expect the view we form also depends on the questions we ask!

9. Scientific method • Assumptions - in order to make generalizations we must assume that all humans act the same. Is it fair to assume that humans are rational?

10. The rational human? • An elderly woman spent a leisurely shopping at the mall. Upon return to her vehicle, she found four strange males sitting in her car. Frightened, the woman dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun. She told the men that if they did not get out of the car, she would shoot. The four men ran off quickly, whereupon the lady got into the car. • What do you think happened?

11. The rational human? • Her key, however, would not fit. The woman realized that her car was the identical one parked a few spaces down. She drove to the police department and reported the story. The officer on duty laughed hysterically and pointed to the other end of the counter where four pale men had reported a hijacking by a mean old lady; no charges were filed. • Is this what you imagined?

12. Or can this be considered rational? • Two young larcenists in Florida--14 and 15 to be exact--appeared before Judge Larry Seidlin after stealing their twenty-fifth car in just two short years. After the boys were released, they walked out of the courthouse and realized they did not have bus fare for a ride home. Promptly, the duo stole number twenty-six; they crashed the vehicle into a fence less than an hour later.

13. Hey Man, Stop Asking Me Questions • Try to think of 5 questions which most people would refuse to answer. • Try to think of 5 questions which people might answer with a lie. • Try to think of 5 questions to which your answer to your friends would differ from your answer to your parents.

14. I never wanted you to see me like this! The PANOPTICON was proposed as a model prison by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), a Utilitarian philosopher and theorist of British legal reform. The Panopticon ("all-seeing") functioned as a round-the-clock surveillance machine. Its design ensured that no prisoner could ever see the 'inspector' who conducted surveillance from the privileged central location within the radial configuration. The prisoner could never know when he was being surveilled -- mental uncertainty that in itself would prove to be a crucial instrument of discipline.

15. Panopticon

16. Experimentation In groups of around 4, try to put an experiment together for one of the following. List all the problems and possible errors that may arise: 1) Compare how kind DCS students are vs. Concordia 2) Compare how intelligent DCS students are vs. SAS 3) Find out how uniform influences the behaviour of DCS students 4) Find out the % change in quantity demanded if Sodexco was to increase lunch prices by 10%

17. Problems of Causation

18. Hume and Causation • On page 156 of Hume's "Treatise of Human Nature", we find the paragraph that shook up causation so thoroughly that it has not recovered to this day. "Thus we remember to have seen that species of object we call *FLAME*, and to have felt that species of sensation we call *HEAT*. We likewise call to mind their constant conjunction in all past instances. Without any farther ceremony, we call the one *CAUSE* and the other *EFFECT*, and infer the existence of the one from that of the other." • Thus, causal connections according to Hume are product of observations. Causation is a learnable habit of the mind, almost as fictional as optical illusions

19. Long-lived living alone Single Gay Good-looking Tall Rich Musical In prison Happy Educated Canadian Exercise Cause & Direction Put as many of the following list of words as possible into cause & effect pairs. Use an arrow to show direction. You may use words more than once.

20. No. of frogs in my garden TIME Yr1 Yr2 Yr3 Yr4 Yr5 Yr6 Yr 7 Yr8 Yr9 Yr 10 Use cause and effect to explain the graph

21. Human v Natural Sciences • The Human Sciences cannot experiment in the way that the Natural Sciences can. • The Human Sciences cannot repeat experiments. • The human scientist cannot isolate what his experiment refers to. • The human scientist cannot predict with a great deal of assurance.

22. Human v Natural Sciences • The hypotheses of the human scientist are not universal or precise. • The human scientist does not see ‘reality’ in the way that a natural scientist can. • The language of the human sciences is inherently vague. • The human scientists statements can have an effect on what she observes.

23. Human v Natural Sciences • “The human scientist cannot be indifferent to his subject matter.” Steven Pinker