Why Good Argument is Critical to Useful Research: A Research Strategy

Front Cover
Edwin Mellen Press, 2007 - Reference - 269 pages
Writers like Rorty, Popper, Dewey and Feyerabend suggest that rather than searching for more and more exacting and rigorous rules for how to undertake well justified research, we need to be concerned with communities of doubters. These, if adequately applying dialectic argument, will act to challenge unjustified knowledge claims, and so save us all from being deceived. This book encourages doubt by providing over a dozen ways to critique research, especially where that research results in knowledge claims about human activities. Each chapter provides another pragmatic conception of knowledge, used to question the assumptions behind whatever research work you have just read. Therefore, the book offers a way of learning about your own discipline specific research literature, while also learning how to design a well-justified research report.

Contents

ample
1
CHAPTER
4
Quarrel or Research?
61
CHAPTER
77
ample 2
135
APTER
153
APTER
173
A Reference as Evidence
180
Reflexive Thoughts
188
CHAPTER
195
CHAPTER
209
CHAPTER
235
Bibliography
249
89
266

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