Theme 3: Research and theory (After)

For this theme I have read the articles assigned by the course, the article of my choice and general "stuff" on the webpage of the journal which I chose to write about. I based my understanding of the article I chose on my previous knowledge of the acoustical field, so no further reading was necessary.

What I have learned after this weeks theme is that theory seems to be everywhere and that theory in a scientific context is not just the theory which is proposed but also all the underlying theories on which it is built. When I was reading my article I was frantically looking for theories and with some struggle concluded what was their main theory. It was much harder than I thought to distinguish hypothesis from theory. Also, in my struggle I failed to recognize all the underlying theories at work in the article. Things that are taken for granted in the argumentation and the formation of their hypotheses. Acoustical theory, signal theory, theories regarding perception and regarding human evolution were some of the theories that I disregarded since it was not what they were emphasizing.

A thought occurred during the seminar that I think will help me to further understand theory and that will "keep it in the loop" in my mind. That theories are a natural part of language. Concepts are in a way theories of that which it conceptualize and so in that way we speak in theories.

In the process of trying to understand the essence of theory I made an attempt to define theory. I think it was quite helpful too in my learning process. I am by no means completely satisfied with this definition but I believe it at least provided me with a framework for thinking about theory.

My def: of theory;

Logically sound argumentation proving causality between events based on premises that are fairly assumed to be relevant and sufficient for the argument.

Theme 4: Quantitative research (Before)

Article of my choice:

Perceptual evaluation of violins: A quantitative analysis of preference judgments by experienced players

Saitis, Charalampos and Giordano, Bruno L. and Fritz, Claudia and Scavone, Gary P., The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 132, 4002-4012 (2012), DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4765081

In this study they conducted a set of two experiments. Both where based on observing violin players in the process of evaluating different violins. In the first experiment the violin players were asked to freely play a set of violins and order them by preference. They repeated the ordering process multiple times and on multiple occasions. This way a lot of data could be gathered and then both individual consistency and agreement among participants could be analyzed. In addition a qualitative content analysis was performed. Participants where asked to describe what features they thought where important for their evaluation.

For the second experiment the features which were mentioned by most participants, plus some features common in the scientific literature on violins, were the only ones allowed for evaluation. Participants were asked to grade violins for each of the specified features. Again multiple trials were made.

The result of these experiments showed that violin players are very consistent in their own evaluation and that they agree on what features, or characteristics, are important in a violin, but that the perceptual evaluation differed among them so that no consistency could be achieved. 

I think that they nested the relatively qualitative procedure with their quantitative methods in a clever way. However the method in both experiments might be lacking by having no consistent way of playing the violins among all participants. A study before this one on what ways of playing gives greater agreement among participants, without losing overall individual consistency, might have been a better start. Letting the players play in whatever fashion they liked might have produced the inconclusive result of this study, since perceptual evaluation might differ with playing style. However, forcing a playing style or repertoire on the participants seems unnatural in the sense that preference of a violin likely is linked to the participants preferred way of playing.

A further investigation on the importance of each of the characteristics specified might also be interesting. It is possible that one or more characteristics can be broken down into a set of features and that agreement among participants could be acquired for one or more of these features.

Physical Activity, Stress, and Self-Reported Upper Respiratory Tract Infection

The result that I found most interesting was that it seems like if you exercise (extensively) it is more beneficial to be stressed than to not be stressed for reducing the risk of getting URTI. My initial thought was that stress would be positively correlated with URTI and negatively correlated with physical activity, thereby reducing URTI with an increasing amount of exercise.

Perceived stress was said to have a small confounding effect on the risk of URTI. I guess however that this was analyzed in general, so with the people who reported high stress having higher incidence rate than low stress for low exercise and lower incidence rate than low stress for high exercise the effect overall is the same as for low stress. Then couldn't the main result be compromised by a psychological factor? People who are highly stressed and high intensity exercisers might be people who are less likely to report URTI, due to the fact that they are high performers who don't have time to listen to their bodies. This also correlates well with the fact that they ".. saw little effect of physical activity for URTI with systemic symptoms", since a fever would be hard to ignore for anyone.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

They give more precise and reproducible results. Designing the study is based on identifying factors which you can measure and then measure them many times. This can make the study easier to design but might also make it harder to conduct since gathering extensive data might take a lot of work and/or be costly. Quantitative methods also gives statistically more significant results, because of a greater number of observations, and the possibility of discarding a hypothesis if no correlation is found. If a correlation is found, however, explaining that correlation might prove harder than with a qualitative method since less information generally is available.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

Qualitative methods have the major benefit of giving more depth in the answers to the questions asked. They may produce results that could not be predicted or give a greater nuance in the answer than expected. Since interpretation and reasoning are inherent in a qualitative study it will be colored by the observer in a way that may steer the results further from the truth than what would happen in a quantitative study. A qualitative study may be harder to reproduce and will generally give a statistical significance with less power, mainly due to less data and the complications of adjusting for confounding factors.

Theme 2: Critical media studies (After)

I read the texts by Benjamin and by Adorno & Horkheimer. I also read a little bit on marxist theory on wikipedia. The previous theme and the reading I did then had given me an idea of what dialectic means. To get me started on some of the concepts I read about them in the Oxford dictionary.

I thought the texts for this theme were harder to grasp than the ones from the first theme. I realize that at some level these texts had more familiar concepts but the way that they constructed their arguments and turned their approach without explicitly saying so made it more confusing. This resulted in me making some false assumptions on which I based part of my "before" blog post. So at the seminar I did not have as much to contribute with as on the previous seminar. However I found that really satisfying. I had to think a lot harder to put my thoughts together and definitely learned a lot more. I feel like I have a good understanding of the texts now. One thing that I had anticipated to be one of my conclusions after the seminar was that these kinds of text must be read in their context. Understanding what kind of world they are written in gives a lot more understanding to their argumentation. I think that is something important to remember when reading contemporary critique.

For me the biggest lesson of this theme was how power can show itself in media and how different perspectives may be opposing each other in what way they see this power and to whom the power belongs. The fact that there is power in media is something that would be hard to contest. So ways to analyze that power is really interesting. 

I believe that the critique that Adorno & Horkheimer set out on was a little bit premature but of course relevant at that time. I wonder what they would have thought of todays media landscape with the entrance of the internet. Maybe they would see the popular culture that they were criticizing as only peripheral. Or would they see it as the central power around which the internet community revolves? From their perspective maybe the internet would not be seen as it is seen by most of us, as a powerful tool of enlightenment, but rather a tool which replicates and enhances the ideals of the popular culture thereby giving it another level of depth to its mass deception. Or maybe they would also see it as a tool for enlightenment, but one that lacks, just as film in their view, the possibility to contribute to moral and ethical thinking.

Benjamin might have been happy to see that culture is not merely widely accessible but also produced by an ever growing number of people. More power has been put in the hands of the mass. But how would he explain that despite this change fascist ideals are growing in popularity and are gaining momentum on the political scene?

Maybe his answer would be, given his marxist perspective, that we are not producing culture for contemplation but that we are producing cultural products for consumption.

Theme 3: Research and theory (Before)

What theory is and what theory is not

Theory is the argumentation or the logical part of something which you are trying to prove. A causality or a link between two events may be shown to be likely, or very likely, by data or other observation. Then theory is the logical explanation to that event. Theory is not reference to the works of others, data in any form nor the hypothesis of a scientific work. Theory is the attempt to explain why something is happening and gives the possibility to at least to some extent predict what will happen under certain circumstances. The latter is especially true for strong theories. The results of a study constitute, in a broad sense, data and should therefore not be seen as theory. Instead, theory arguments about the connection between artifacts of that data and explains how and why they are connected.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA)

I have chosen both to write a short description of the above journal. I have also chosen to write about an article published in that journal.

The JASA publishes a range of articles within the area of acoustics. Acoustics is a broad research area and therefore the articles published in JASA come from many different disciplines with acoustics in common. Acoustics are relevant for construction, different kinds of sonar (audio radar) and their applications, and transduction (the field of research concerned with detection and production of sound waves eg. microphones and speakers). Acoustics are also relevant for areas more closely connected to humans and human perception such as the acoustics of speech, psychology and physiology of hearing and music. The latter fields are of course of great relevance for media technology.

The article of my choice:

Suied et al. (2010): JASA 2010 Mar;127(3):EL105-10. doi: 10.1121/1.3310196. "Why are natural sounds detected faster than pips?"

Suied et al. investigate which of artificial and natural warning sounds give the shortest reaction time. The study is divided into two parts with the second part being a follow up investigation to further investigate the result of the first part. In the first experiment study subjects (12 people) responded to eight different warning sounds, four artificial sounds in the form of bursts of 1kHz beeps and four natural sounds of predator cats.

In the second experiment study subjects (12 other people) responded to the same natural sounds as in experiment 1 and to artificial versions of these sounds. The artificial versions were modified white noise (random amplitude noise ranging the full spectrum of human perception) with the temporal envelope (amplitude variation over time) of the four different kinds of animal sounds.

The result in the first experiment was that animal sounds had faster reaction times. The second experiment was conducted due to the result of the first experiment. The researchers wanted to test if the effect was due to acoustic properties of the animal sounds. The result of the second experiment was that there was almost no difference in reaction time between the artificial/modified sounds and the natural animal sounds, leaning towards slightly faster reaction time for the artificial/modified sounds.

The researchers' main theory is that the higher spectral content of the natural sounds will induce more neural reactions in our hearing apparatus and brain and therefore gives a shorter reaction time. Since the second experiment shows no difference in responses a "reflex" to predator sounds is more or less excluded, given that the artificial sounds of the second experiment do not sound like predator sounds. Very little is said to prove the neural theory further, and they do conclude that further investigation is necessary. My observation is that a control should have been done to test modified white noise against just white noise. 

The main theory would fall under "Theory for Explaining and Predicting", I would say. Although the researchers only make an attempt at explaining how the effect of neural reaction would work the theory is logically sound. As stated in the text by Sutton & Staw, a theory is not compromised by not proving every underlying process to it. The theory, though incomplete, also gives the possibility of prediction, not only for the exact same conditions but also for similar conditions. And the theory has testable propositions. However since further research can and should be done, and the underlying causality is not precisely explained, the theory is balancing between Type 3 (Predicting) and Type 4 (EP).

The benefits of using this theory is that further research can be done upon it without fully explaining the premises. The acoustical characteristics that gave a certain response can be subjected to variation to further specify what the important characteristics are. But since the underlying causes are not proven coming up with new experiments is harder. The theory is limited by assumptions of the acoustical characteristics. If the reason for the observed effect is not due to the "neural" explanation then further research might steer in the wrong direction.

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science (After)

Apart from reading the assigned literature I spent some time reading up on Kurt Gödels work on the subject of incommensurables, mainly wikipedia, and took some time to read about Bertrand Russels ideas on solipsism. My main question for the seminar was what Gödels incompleteness theorems implied for the acquirement of knowledge. My initial thought was that the theorems works best with a solipsist world view but my understanding of Kants transcendentalism has since improved and I am not really leaning towards anything at the moment. Reading the Plato dialogue and the Preface to Kants critique of pure reason was really interesting. I've spent time before thinking of these issues but have not read these texts. Kants transcendentalism is a great perspective of knowledge, yet quite hard to grasp. Before the seminar I had kind of grasped the idea, but it wasn't until the middle of the seminar that I felt more confident about the concepts. Both expressing my own thoughts and listening to what others had contemplated contributed a great deal to my understanding of Kants theory. 

I really enjoy thinking of these greater philosophical questions and I know that my new understanding of theory of knowledge will influence both my everyday and my scientific thinking. Above all I have learned that the way we interpret knowledge will influence the way we look at science and its discoveries. I am interested in human perception and I think that the way one looks upon knowledge can be quite important for setting the grounds, so to speak, for research in that area. I believe I will have that in mind when reading articles on perception and possibly when "designing" my master thesis.

In the seminar I tried to participate as much as possible since I find this topic really interesting and have a lot of thoughts to express. I believe that I contributed with some ideas that others had not thought of and could fill in where some of the ideas posted lacked or needed clarification by example. I hope that most people in the seminar understood my question regarding Gödel. I tried to explain his theorems and my thought of the connection between solipsism, Kant and Gödel. I also made some efforts to concretize and look upon these questions from a more technical or mathematical point of view which was really interesting for me since I hadn't gathered my thoughts on this before the seminar but rather found them during the seminar. I think and hope that others found that to contribute to their understanding of this topic.

Throughout this week I have learned to conceptualize and distinguish; knowledge, perception, truth, empiricism, transcendentalism; and some implications for different interpretation of these concepts. What is astounding to me is how important these concepts are for the understanding of science.

Theme 2: Critical media studies (Before)

1a.
Enlightenment in this context is the acquirement of knowledge which will bring the beholder towards the truth or to a deeper understanding of an objects relation to the world which surrounds it. Enlightenment means in other words to break free from disillusions of the world.

1b.
Dialectic is the art, or science, of investigating truth. The term is used differently by different philosophers and the field ranges from investigating whether objects hold absolute truth to the methods through which one might acquire truth.

1c&d.
Nominalism has its origin in the question whether an object can hold truth. Its answer is that no object will hold truth independently but that the features which we ascribe to objects are features of their own and not absolutely inherent within an object. These features are not reality themselves but abstractions of reality.

This approach is important in Adorno & Horkheimers text since it is the base of their argument. Nominalism means detaching oneself from illusions of the world and is, in their argument, the way towards enlightenment. The illusions which we've created to explain our world is what they call myth. That objects hold a quality similar to the "aura" which Benjamin describes and that this is a "myth". The myth is a division which estranges us from the world as it is. The myth upholds the concepts of religion and fate, incommensurables that stand in the way of enlightenment.

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2a.
What I think Benjamin means is that the Superstructure of communism implies that the power of production is more equally distributed among its societies citizens. The capitalist approach means emphasizing superstructure (the power comes from above) so that the substructures are controlled, or rather dominated. The emphasis from a marxist point of view is to let the substructures define the superstructure. That is the relations between people on a lower level will define the culture and political life of the marxist state. He suggests that theses of art of the proletariat, situated in the substructures, will inhibit the fascination of concepts related to that of the strong individual, inherent in fascism.

2b.
I believe it is Benjamins opinion that culture may enlighten the individual together with the mass, and therefore empower them to take action. The art of film especially may give the individual insight both to the reality of what is depicted as well as it's aesthetic and philosophical values, Benjamin seems to argue. The clarity with which film both separates and intertwines reality and myth is what is so powerful of this art. In contrast Adorno & Horkheimer argues that the blatant mass production of films that are created for the mere purpose of entertainment gives the individual no intellectual nor cultural insight but rather deceives him, withholding him from contemplation and, as a consequence, from knowledge and truth.

2c.
Benjamin defines naturally determined objects as those that are of a permanent nature. Historically determined is anything which is more open to interpretation and which will change over time since interpretation is a process which is dependent on the culture which the beholder is a part of. Knowledge, for example, may change the meaning of an object. What something symbolizes in one culture might symbolize or mean something different in another. An example of my own is that of the perception of tone quality in a musical context. What is now perceived as "joyful" notes (major scale) was once perceived as "sad" in many church hymns and probably in other contexts as well. Benjamin might have considered musical notes to be naturally determined but the distinction is hard to make.

2d.
In the knowledge of an object it might be presupposed that not everything can be known (only what we can perceive can be known) and to that effect when something holds the same appearance it might seem as it holds all the same qualities yet some qualities which may be hard to grasp, or perceive, may be part of that objects more important characteristics. So with the absence of ”aura”, deprived of the object in the mechanical process of reproduction, knowledge of that object will be lost. For objects of art the context in which they are in and by whom and in what way they are observed effects both the appearance and the possible diminishing or absence of aura. It is in the interpreters perception that the aura comes forth. Natural objects differ from those of art, Benjamin argues, since they hold "permanence and uniqueness" and may be observed in an untampered way ("seen by the unarmed eye"). Again, I believe this distinction will be hard to hold upon further investigation since the beholder will always perceive on the basis of previous experiences.

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science (Before)

1. Kant
I'd like to start by making a really simplified versioned of what I would argue that Kant means when saying that we should try, the thought experiment, to let objects conform to our cognition. I would say that the nature of any object is that which we can apprehend. Meaning that the boundaries of our cognition is a defining structure for the object. The characteristics that an object may hold is therefore restricted to our cognition. This may in a way seem absurd, yet what is an object without the observer?

Kant says; ".. with this faculty we can never get beyond the boundaries of possible experience.."
So he recognizes this absurdity but goes on to say ".. our representation of things as they are given to us does not conform to these things as they are in themselves but rather that these objects as appearances conform to our way of representing.."

So to elaborate, the true nature of an object may not be attained. However we gain nothing from trying to understand that which we could never apprehend. The object is to be understood in the context that it is being observed by us, and any characteristic of it that is of any meaning to us is a characteristic that we may experience, some times of course with great difficulty.

2. Plato/Socrates
Again I'd like to start with a simple statement. The distinction of experiencing with or experiencing through our body is plainly that if we assume that we can experience "with" then that with which we are experiencing must be something absolute which is separated from our "soul", while as if we are experiencing "through" we may accept that what we observe will be effected by our previous experience.

They discuss the "wax" which gets imprinted with our experiences in addition to the more obvious senses as hearing and seeing. The way that these fall into the same category explains quite well what Socrates is arguing I think.
Our whole body acts like a filter through which all our sensations must go. But that filter is also part of the actual experience so that the filter will change in itself by every sensation and thus is ever changing. Thus knowledge could be seen as something that we do not reach but something that we move towards. And in that sense the connection to "Empiricism" is close, for with every sensation one will have an experience different from the last and so with repetitive stimuli coming from the same object we will change our "filter" to incrementally move towards knowledge of that object.

This is also the connection that I see between Socrates and Kant, namely that the understanding of an object is limited by our cognition, but as an important part of that our cognition will be altered by experience. Kant talks of mathematics as a science on a secure coarse on the basis that every object can have it's nature predicted before it has been observed. While Socrates will give critique even to the notion that what we can logically prove some things, since we can not be sure that our minds are not basing this logic on false presumptions. A premise for all science must be that the observations that we make have some element of truth in them, a derivative of the object which we are observing. However a point which neither is discussing is those objects that might not only be limited by the boundaries of our cognition but further limited by themselves. Objects that by their own nature does not contain truth nor absolute knowledge. I think of things that fall under Gödel’s incompleteness theory. Something that cannot be proven might not hold truth. Then knowledge, if to be generally defined and suitable for all objects, must be a collection of that which we can observe and never the absolute nature of that which we are observing.