Theme 3: Reflection

In the beginning of this weeks second seminar we talked shortly about our articles that we chose and the main theories used in them. I talked about social presence and telepresence whereupon Stefan suggested that I took a close look on the theory of social capital and how it relates to social presence. I guess that what they have in common is the different benefits you get from your social interactions, be it when playing virtual golf (as in my article) or benefits from social networks (for example for finding a new job via your friends and colleagues on Facebook). We also brainstormed a bit about how you could incorporate the Oculus Rift (http://www.oculusvr.com) into virtual golf to enhance the telepresence (the feeling of presence in the virtual world) which I found very interesting. Although it might be hard to incorporate the use of physical elements (golf clubs, golf balls etc.) in the Oculus Rift technology and thus you might lose some sense of social presence. This of course doesn’t have to be a disadvantage.

Moving on we talked about the theory of cooperative principle and the separation into gricean maxims which is basically a theory of how an effective conversation or communication is built. Together we wrote a short description and concluded that this is what Gregor call an explanation theory. I believe that this is so because it does not contain any predictions of the future and no scientifically testable propositions. Although it goes deeper than to just explain what the theory is about (analysis theory) and partly tells the story of why these maxims are valid. 

After this we talked a bit about theories in general and what they are in reality. Someone asked if we could consider a hypothesis as a kind of theory and we all concluded that this was not the case. I believe that a prediction or hypothesis can be considered as a building stone for a theory but in order for it to be complete it will have to contain some kind of logical argument explaining why it is relevant and how it should be used in the study. These arguments can also be found in the text by Gregor. 

In order for a theory to become generalized (which we concluded is a necessity for strong theory) the common belief in a society has to be that it is in fact valid. This is in my opinion very comparable to the theory of knowledge from last week. Although even if a theory is generalized and considered common belief is has an expiration date, in my opinion. New theories arises constantly and they often render the old ones moot. This of course makes the applied theories (theories that are focused on one specific subject and can be a part of a theory becoming common belief) invalid too.