Chapter 3 Three Paradigms of Knowing

Paradigm-three different ways to know and can be separated into two types epistemological and ontological.

KNOWING BY DISCOVERY

This is to accept several fundamental assumptions: first, is the belief that things or objects exist in reality separate from our perceptions of them. Second, it is assumed that this reality is discoverable whether we are talking about the physical world of objects or the world of social interaction. Third, is that knowledge is testable through logical and empirical methods. Fourth, is that rigourous standards for testing our observations will result in a shared system of evaluating our observations and our conclusions.

Logical methods help us determine through rational means what is theoretically connected and free from contradiction where empirical methods help us identify what is probable based on our observations. The standard we use for evaluating our observations form the basis we use for evaluating our observation form the basis of discovering what we know.

Rigorous tests of knowlesge can be accomplished by making precise, systematic, and repetitive observations of some event or thing.

Precise-we mean being careful for the topic of purpose of ensuring accuracy.

Systematic-means that we follow clear, known precedures. Most discovery based research begins with a claim constructed from the evidence collected in many previous studies. We test our evidence through a series of observations.

Repetitive-it means that we make careful systematic observations over and over to ensure that our finding are verifiable.

Part of the discoverty process is also classifying objects into categories based on observed similarities and differences.

Generalize- groupding objects together based on their common properties.

Discrimination-sorting objects by their differences.

As a discoverty paradigm researcher you would also wish to use knowledge in discriminating ways; that is you would often try to fiscover what kinds of differences you were seeing in the observations that you have made. It is clear that the researchers emphasize discoverty as their way of knowing their primary purpose was to draw conclusions about their observations using the kind of precise systematic and and repetitive procedures. These conclusions allow them to apply the processes of generalization and discrimination to explore what can be known or discovered. The perspective has at its core the assumption that knowlesge is discoverable through logical and empirical methods that is researchers who share the same standards of precision and systematic observations will observe the same patterns

of results in repeated tests of the researchers claim knowlesge is expanded or discovered through observationation or rational means that minimize the subjective view point of the researcher.

KNOWING BY INTERPRETATION

This is a very different process than knowing by discover. There are more than one reality that can be known. The knower is inseperable from the known and so the knowers perceptions and values affect what is seen. The researcher often becomes an active participant in the research context. There is more than one reality there can be multiple wqually lefitimate innterpretations. Therefore the purpose of research is to understand how meaning is comstructed in various social contexts. The process of knowing is one of rich description and not cateforization. Rich description refers to the use of a broad range of data sources to show how communication occureed and what it meant to the participants in the context. This is an attempt to understand the whole context out of which meanings are constructed.

It is important to reflect the full range of sensible interpretations and to show how these iinterpretations were constructed. The interpretive paradigm orientation is also reflected in many forms of rhetorical criticism. The rhetorical critic often selections one or more interpretive framework as the basis for analyzing communication.

To know by interpretation means that you wish to understand the points of view expressed by the people you are observing or the texts you are reading the inpretive researcher uses observations to help guide his or her understaind of perspectives expressed by participants or within texts. Interpretive researchers often fully acknowlesge their roles in becoming active participants in the research process. They describe their observations in rich detail permitting interpretation of the patterns that emerge out of those descriptions.

KNOWING BY CRITICISM

Everything we know is shaped by our social policial economic ethnic gender sexual orientation and ability values. This for critics is to use knowledge to first make people aware of the reality that society constructs for each of us. This is to bring about social shcange. The process depends on identifying what situation factors contributed to the status quo, critical researchers work to reveal existing social structures so that adequate attention and action will ensue.

Knowing by criticism then means that the researcher not only reveals his or her subjective view but equally important is the researchers obligation to reveal exisiting social hierarchies and in some cases to become an advocate for social change. To reveal that social structure so that it can be changes critical analysis must docus on the historical political and economical context that continually reinforce it.

PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES OF THE THREE PARADIGMS

Knowing by discovery came first and gave rise to the development of the other two. Each paradigm is a way fo knowing that stands on its own merit and the caregorization of perspectives here leads us to mention a general problem of classification. When you understand the discoverty and interpretive paradigm preferences for example you may better appreciate studies with research laboratory settings

that are constructed to make them more natural or studies in natural settings that are designed to provide greater accuracy in their observations. The differences amont the three paradigms is essential to careful integration across them.

DISCOVERY PARADIGM PERSPECTIVE

This has been the dominanat paradigm in science and philosphyt for man years.

Rationalism –stressed reliance on the mind for a discoverable logic of objective reality.

Empiricism-central assumption emphasized the way to objective reality was through observing and explaining sensory information.

Combining these two perspectives the process of science became associated with three emphases we identified earlier: clarity of precisions, systematic inquiry, and repetition for the purposes of verification.

Logical positivism and behaviorism-later developments of empiricism. Both embraced an objective reality knowable through observational or empirical processes rather than through rational thought along.

There are five principles of postpostivism:

Falsification as knowledge about what is probable through testable means

Naturalism as the natural world comprised of both the physical world of objects and the social world of interaction.

Realism-as reality existing independently from perceptions reality.

Transformational models in terms of how diect objservations can lead to acceptance of theoretic supposibtions that can only be indirectly observed

Emergent objectivity as shared standards of evaluating observations that can minimize and transcend researchers subjective interpretations.

The philosophical perspectives of modernism and structuralism are also focused on a disccoerable reality separate in some sense from the knower or perceiver. Modernism-has been essentially described as poritivistic technocentric and rationalistic.

Structuralism-the third perspective. The discoverable reality in the patterns or relationships between objects events or people rather than in the truthfulness of the objects themselves.

INTERPRETIVE PARADIGM PERSPECTIVE

Hermeneutics-has been defined as the study of interpretive understanding or meaning.

Verstehen a term that referred to interpretation as a process that grew out of a historical and cultural perspective.

Phenomenologists-believed that interpretation of experience was only possible by understanding the perspective of the participants engaged in interacting.

Symbolic interactionism was an approach to sociology developed primialry to the process in each individual has with other people and became increasingly interpretive.

Contructivism and naturalism had at its core the belief that there are multiple realities that are socially constructed where as naturalism was a professed adherence to studying people in their everyday lives as these are played out in their natural settings.

The knowledge by interpretation paradigm is defined by the assumptions we explained ealier that include the belief that there are multiple realities and these are socially constructed from the interaction experiences of the individual and to some extenet the experiences of the group. The process of interpretation happens when the researcher understands how participants construct meaning. It is critical that the researcher understand the participants persepectives because all meaning and interaction is contextually situated. Typiical research studies in this paradigm include ethnographies; historical case studies, biographies, and oral histories dramatism and narrative alanlysis.

CRITICAL PARADIGM PERSPECTIVE

The last of them knowledge by criticism is associated with the most recent changes in communication. Critical theory was primarily developed as a response to rationalism and began as a tool of reason which when properly located can transform the world. Sometimes identified as the origin of structuralism semiotics is the study of signs and their social significance.

Each of these studies of semiotics concentrated primarily on discovering the hiddn structure of signs through a systematic analysis of language narrative myth and cultural rules and unconscious.

Late structuralism and semiotics have moved away from the search for foundational sturcutre toward a focus on the thesis that historical development was determined by economic conditions, the significance of signs especially as they are expressed by social instuitutons suchas as media corporations cannot be anything byt ideological.

A further extension of the ideas introduced in structuralism philosphers of postructuralism has argues that the search for a fuoundational structure of language and society should be abondones. Two component s of this are contended that though discourse and social interaction create what is known.

Deconstruction the move away from the metaphor of structure is also defines by rationality as the basis of the structural metaphor.

From the critical paradigm perspective the purpose of research often takes the form of identifying the implicit and dominant social structures of power so that real change in the sociocultural political and economic bases can be instigated. Social text in many forms continues to represent the dominant paradigm of thought and communication in ways that do not permit experiences of marginalized groups to be even minimally represented.

DEFINING ASSUMPTIONS OF THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL PARADIGMS

KNOWING BY DISCOVERY:

Nature of reality: there is one knowable reality that can be discovered.

Role of knower: Reality can be known by any knowner

Role of context: the method of knowing is detached and decontextualized.

Process of Characteristics: the process of knowing precise, systematic, and repetitive.

Purpose: The purpose of research is to accurately represent reality.

Goal Accomplishment: Accurate representation is accomplished by classifying objects and identifying universal rules or laws.

KNOWING BY INTERPRETATION:

Nature of reality: there are multiple realities that are socially constructed.

Role of knower: reality is interpreted from the standpoint of a knower.

Role of context: The method of knowing is subjective and contextual from the participants perspective.

Process characteristics: The process of interpretation is creative and value laden.

Purpose: The purpose of research is to understand how meaning is created.

Goal Accomplishment: Understanding meaning is accomplished by secribing participant perspectives as contextually situated.

KNOWLEDGE BY CRITICISM:

Nature of reality: There are multiple realities that are socially constructed.

Role of knower: Reality is shaped by the knowers social political, economic, ethnic, gender, and ability values.

Role of context: The method of knowing is subjective and broadly contextual.

Process Characteristics: The process of interpretation is revelatory.

Purpose: The purpose of research is to reveal hidden structures and instigate social change.

Goal accomplishment: Instigating social change is accomplished by identyfing historically and culturally situated hidden structrues especially as they relate to oppression.

PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONS ASSOCIATED WITH PARADIGMS

DISCOVERY: rationalism, empiricism, logical positivism, behaviorism, early structuralism, realism,

modernism, postpositivism.

INTERPRETATION: hermeneutics, phenomenology, symbolic interaction, constructivism, structuralism,

naturalism, late modernism.

CRITICISM: critical theory, semiotics, deconstruction, late structuralism, poststructuralism,

postmodernism, postcolonialism.