Inquiry Domain Controls

Control structures in the Inquiry Domain RL2

Overview

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 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:

exercising autonomy;
enabling participation;
obtaining self-affirmation.

c) channelling personal functioning:

to counter doubts.

Table showing mode essence, benefit and means for promoting certainty by each research method, and how personal functioning is channeled 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 a plausible explanation (μ1/L’3) which posits, under a pressure for certainty, a relation that seems to exist in reality, and purports to explain it.

Spiral trajectory of sequential stages based on research modes that allow a conjecture to become established and a focus for falsification.

To sustain and strengthen any such conjecture, modes must be activated in a series of Stages. 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.

In the TET diagram, the unavoidable and natural order for development shows up as a typical Spiral trajectory.

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

Cycle-2 addresses the aspiration to enhance subjective certainty and ensure collegial acceptability: initially by placing the conjecture in a conceptual framework (analytic-μ5), then by allowing for new possibilities in a contemplative-μ6 process, and finally by integration with existing knowledge (holistic-μ7).

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