ARAŞTIRMA YÖNTEMLERİ

While ontology is interested in the questions related to the apple’s existence, epistemology is interested in how we gain our knowledge of an apple. For example, how is it that we know that there is a thing called apple, and it is edible, and it has a taste, the taste can be sweet or sour, it has a particular material structure, it is juicy, it is smelly, and our knowledge that apple has health benefits, and what those benefits are and so on. The correct answer is A.

Rationalism defends the idea that knowledge that is obtained through the senses lack certainty, because senses often deceive us; for example, a stick put in water seems to us as if it is bend, even though in reality it is not bend. Further, the knowledge gained from sense experience is based on inductive inference, which is a generalization that is based on our past experiences. That is, our knowledge is induced form particular experiences we have had in the past, and because the future does not have to resemble the past these generalizations are not trust worthy.are Thus, our knowledge based on sense experiences can only give us probabilistic knowledge, which could or could not be true in future experiences. In other words, knowledge based on sense experience lacks certainty. The correct answer is E.

For the empiricists, all knowledge is a posteriori, that is, it comes from experience or is dependent on experience. Thus, empiricism does not have any claim about existence of any underlying reality beyond experience. In short, all our knowledge is induced from our sense experiences and sense experience is the only source of our knowledge. The correct answer is D.

Dualism: is a position between materialism and immaterialism, argues for two substances of existence, matter and ideas/mind (a dualistic position). The correct answer is E.

Validity of any inductive conclusion assumes that nature acts in a regular way, however there is no guarantee that the things will happen in the same way in future, this issue is known as the problem of induction. It is called ‘problem’ because it is always possible that one or more future cases will have a disconfirming case. Thus, inductivist theories provide probabilistic knowledge at best, or provide knowledge that is based on what is observed so far. The correct answer is C.

Hypothesis: Predictions or educated guesses about a certain phenomenon that are derived from a theory. The correct answer is D.

When over time, an individual or a group comes up with superior ideas and their ideas begin dominating, paradigm shift (PS) takes place as the previously accepted theory is replaced by a new theory. The correct answer is C.

Basic beliefs of positivist philosophy include: 1. Scientific knowledge must be based on empirically testable data. Thus, any scientific claim must be empirically verifiable. If any claim is not empirically verifiable, then it must be non-scientific, or even meaningless. 2. Empirical observations must be generalized and expressed as universal laws. Thus, observations must be reformulated as mathematical expressions, most often in statistical formulations. 3. There must be a unity of method across all sciences. Thus, there is no significant difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences. The correct answer is E.

Interpretive position is also known as constructivism or social constructivism, because of its focus on reflecting the constructed nature of social reality and human knowledge of the constructed reality. The correct answer is A.