Inquiry Domain Controls

Frameworks

Research Methods (PH'2)

This framework is posted in detail in the Inquiry & Knowing Satellite.

Establishing Conjectures (PH'2C)

The methods for research (PH'2) can be viewed as modes of investigating or knowing (PH’2μ) that are naturally used in any scholarly or scientific study (PsH2K) conducted within a community of colleagues.

Most scholarly inquirers are only fully comfortable in applying one or two methods for research. However, all inquirers regard certain assumptions and values intrinsic to each method as relevant and potentially necessary to ensure certainty in knowing(i.e. the primal need). These characteristic sets of interlinked assumptions and values constitute the modes.

So modes enable conjectures to be developed and strengthened in a way that is likely to provide more certainty, with each mode making its own distinctive contribution to knowing: details in table below.

Each mode is built around:

a) promoting certainty by:

• the essence for knowledge in that mode;
• the benefit provided by the effort to know;
• the means whereby knowledge is ensured.

b) handling colleagues by:

• active participation;
• respectful communication;
• appropriate individualization.

c) channelling personal functioning:

• to counter doubts.

Knowledge emerges from making discoveries (PsH2), which are regarded as valid by colleagues of independent mind. So all knowledge necessarily commences in the statement of a relation (μ1/L’3) that possible exists and seems to explain something. There is a pressure for certainty but nothing is sure at this point, not even the value of the conjectured relation.

To sustain and strengthen any such conjecture, modes must be activated in a series of Stages. In the TET diagram, the unavoidable and natural order for development shows these Stages as a typical Spiral trajectory.

Values of each mode cumulate progressively, so Stages reflect an increasingly sophisticated conjectural ethos. An inquirer can stop the strengthening process at any Stage if there is a satisfactory degree of certainty that the conjecture can be accepted as knowledge amongst relevant scholars, but the full trajectory appears to be generally desired.

The initial explanatory mode-1 comes into existence easily. Cycle-1 develops in accord with the need to control the scientific study (i.e. the field PsH2): initially by formal-μ2 clarification of assumptions, then by consideration of alternative views in a dialectical-μ3 process, and finally by rigorous empirical-μ4 observations.

Completion of Cycle-1 permits a move down the ellipse in mode-1 to provide verification of an expected regularity.

Cycle-2 addresses the aspiration to enhance collegial acceptance by responding to pressures: initially for a theoretical fit (analytic-μ5), then by allowing for new possibilities contemplative-μ6, and finally by integration with existing relevant studies in the field (holistic-μ7).

Completion of Cycle-2 permits another move even further down the ellipse in mode-1 to provide falsification of a targeted hypothesis.

Drivers for progression from one mode/Stage to the next include:

• doubts of peers
• collegial pressures for rigour and certainty
• researcher aspirations
• limitations or excesses of the current Stage.

Click to see the Two Diamonds diagram.

Determinants of Knowledge (PH'2CK)

This Tree is not yet posted
See initial formulations below.

A focus on the relevant psychosocial pressures is provided here in the Root Hierarchy Projection section.

Increasing Certainty (PH'2CsH)

This framework has been recently reviewed and almost everything in it required changes: which is a warning in relation to other frameworks posted in the Taxonomy Notes.

Evaluation of Conjectures (PH'2CsHK)

Additional details related to certain theoretical developments are provided within the Framework Naming section of the Architecture Room.

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Originally posted: 22-Mar-2024. Last amended:  7-May-2025,