The primary focus of Chapter five is to explain the discovery and development process of propositions. We usually have a “feeling of doubt” towards a particular situation or we just sometimes realized there is “some kind of problem.” In this certain situation, what we need to do is to select our proposition. There are six stages of selecting a proposition, but we don’t need to go through all six of them. “Those stages are: identify the question; survey implicated objectives, values, and biases; search for new information; canvas alternate decisions; weigh the costs and risks to alternatives; and then, select a proposition (P.73).”
I feel like there’s no need to explain each concept from the textbook so I will make examples to show my comprehension to the six stages of selecting a proposition.
Identify a question: Are cats trying to dominate the world?
Search for new information: The cat dominating problem is a difficult one to study because cats and human can rarely communicate with each other, only a few people will be able to communicate with cats, which brings a severe obstacle of the study. We cannot assume cats are dominating the world because of their behavior, but some of their behavior does lead to the purpose of dominating the world.
Survey implicated objectives, values, and biases: In the long run, I want to figure out whether cats are trying to dominance the world and figure out how to survive. My ideal system will be training some human spies and worm their way into the cat community, and also (hopefully) make some cats turn traitor and work for human. In this study, people who can communicate with cats are playing the key role. Therefore communicator will be paid in a generous amount. I should figure out a way to test their ability of cat language comprehension to prevent them from faking a communicator.
Canvas alternate decisions:
1. Maintain the status quo: do nothing because cats are not trying to dominating the world.
2. People should stop spoiling their cats to reduce the chance of cats dominating the world.
3. The U. S. government should encourage people to have another breed of animals as pets. Dogs, rabbits, goldfishes, parrots, and hamsters are cute too!
Weigh the costs and risks to alternatives:
1. If the problem of cats is dominating the world exists then the status quo will bring the predicted negative effects to the world.
2. People who spoil their cats will not buy the idea of cats are dominating the world because they love their cats more than any other individuals.
3. Alternate sources of pets will probably become the next potential risk.
Select a proposition:
It is significant to study whether cats have a tendency of dominating the world because even if cats are cute, people spoil their cats, cats heal hearts, people will not be willing to be cat’s pets eventually.
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