I wish I took a psych course

[summercomfort]

Arg, trying to write this case study, have some pretty interesting data, and I don't have the words to describe it. The readings don't help at all. For example, my case study wrote this paper. The topic is "What was more powerful in WWI, technology or people?" She was supposed to reference these images that we gave them (DBQs, anyone?) But instead of referending the images, or even referencing anything we learned about the war, she ... um... used outside proof. Her general line of reasoning goes like this: "Technology is very powerful. Technology gives us cars and phones and makes our life easier. Therefore, technology is powerful in war." She's proving the power of technology and then just directly applying it to war. As far as she's concerned, proving the power of technology = proving the power of technology in war. So is that Concrete Operational thought?

Comments

[idothattopeople.livejournal.com]

I don't know much psychological terminology---the only psych I know relates to language acquisition.

But, in terms of what your case study is doing, it has to do with contextualization, or the lack thereof. The question of technology in WWI requires putting the actions and motivation of technology and people in the context of WWI. By looking at these two forces in the proposed context, you can argue about the effect each had on the war. However, the context is the important part of the question---the general question of "what is more powerful, people or technology?" is almost felicitous to me!

This kinda relates to current stuff we're doing in semantics class---possible world semantics and interpretation of modality. In order to answer hypothetical questions, you have to construct minimally-deviant worlds.

As a concrete example, let's say you're looking at the related question "What would WWI be like if it was fought with Civil War-era technology?" So, you come up with a WWI-world that is exactly like the WWI we know, except the technology was more limited. But this is a serious exercise---why did WWI-prime have limited technology? How could technology have stagnated? Did some other force come into play that replaced technology? Did the war last longer? shorter? Did fewer people die because of the lack of tanks and gas, or did more people die because there was less of a reason to stop it?

These questions have answers that can be argued both ways. With such a hypothetical, I don't think yes-no answers are all that interesting---the interesting thing to look at is people's arguments. In order to argue for how you think this WWI-prime is minimally deviant from our own (given that they had Civil War-era technology), you have to come up with facts from the time period. Most importantly, you have to synthesize the data, showing you understand how all the factors interrelate.

This kind of stuff is sorta obvious, but I didn't really understand how people did this until I was forced to be explicit about it. Yay semantics!