PHIL 1800: MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS 2
 

EXPERIMENTER EFFECT:

What is meant by experimenter effect? What are the two principal kinds of experimenter effect? Give examples of each. How do scientists try to protect against experimenter effect? How successful are they? Discuss the significance of one or more experiments that have been done on experimenter effect, e.g., the experiment involving the 'maze bright' and the 'maze dull' rats. What is the relevance of experimenter effect to the episode of the Hollerith Tabulating Machines in the 1890 U.S. census? To the interviews of applicants for charity in 1929? To the case of Clever Hans? To observations and experiments bearing on animal minds?
 

HUME'S TOUCHSTONE:

"Next to the ridicule of denying an evident truth is that of taking much pains to defend it; and no truth appears to me more evident than that beasts are endow'd with thought and reason as well as men. The arguments are in this case so obvious that they never escape the most stupid and ignorant.

We are conscious that we ourselves, in adapting means to ends, are guided by reason and design, and that 'tis not ignorantly nor casually we perform those actions which tend to self-preservation, to the obtaining pleasure and avoiding pain. When therefore we see other creatures in millions of instances perform like actions and direct them to like ends, all our principles of reason and probability carry us with an invincible force to believe the existence of a like cause. 'Tis needless in my opinion to illustrate this argument by the enumeration of particulars. The smallest attention will supply us with more than are requisite. The resemblance betwixt the actions of animals and those of men is so entire in this respect that the very first action of the first animal we shall please to pitch on will afford us an incontestable argument for the present doctrine.

This doctrine is as useful as it is obvious and furnishes us with a kind of TOUCHSTONE by which we may try every system in this species of philosophy. 'Tis from the resemblance of the external actions of animals to those we ourselves perform that we judge their internal likewise to resemble ours; and the same principle of reasoning carry'd one step farther will make us conclude that since our internal actions resemble each other, the causes from which they are deriv'd must also be resembling. WHEN ANY HYPOTHESES, THEREFORE, IS ADVANC'D TO EXPLAIN A MENTAL OPERATION WHICH IS COMMON TO MEN AND BEASTS, WE MUST APPLY THE SAME HYPOTHESIS TO BOTH; AND AS EVERY TRUE HYPOTHESIS WILL ABIDE THIS TRIAL, SO I MAY VENTURE TO AFFIRM THAT NO FALSE ONE WILL EVER BE ABLE TO ENDURE IT." A Treatise on Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, Section XVI. (Capitals and boldface added, and some commas deleted.)