What should be the AIM of a researcher?

Hi Mahamad.

You ask for what should be the AIM of a researcher.

Your question is an interesting question. Suffice it to say that all over the world there are thousands and thousands of researchers. This being so, it is more than natural to want to know what they aim while doing research.

The most obvious response is to say that, while doing research, researchers' main goal is to look for the unknown, or, in Newton's terms, to know more and better about the "book of the world and even the universe", be it psychical, neural, psychological, social, and so forth.

Are all scientists in the world doing research because they want to understand the unknown? I don't think so.

Let's imagine a thought experiment whose aim would be to know what leads researchers to conduct research and analyze their responses in terms of Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning and development.

If it were well performed, that experiment or research would make much sense. Note that your question is framed in "ought to" terms -- what should be the aim of a researcher -- not in "is" terms -- what is the aim of a researcher. As you certainly know, to ask for how things ought to be is different from asking for the way things are

As I see it, different reasons, goals and aims can lead a researcher to conduct research. As mentioned above, we can analyze such reasons, motivations, and goals in terms of an "ought to" perspective, for example, in terms of a Kohlbergian perspective.

In this case, we might think of pre-conventional (Stage 1 and 2), conventional (Stages 3 and 4) and post-conventional {stage 5 and 6) morally-oriented researchers.

Think, for example, of a researcher whose main goal to conduct research is mainly because s/he wants to become, say, a famous researcher in his field of expertise, publish his/her papers in prestigious Journals or have a well-paid patent. If this were the case, then we would be, as it were, before a Stage 1-oriented researcher. That is, a researcher whose motivations and aims to conduct research are personal and egocentric in their very nature, and not oriented, for example, to the description, explanation, and understanding of the unknown.

Consider the case of a researcher whose motivation to conduct research is, for example, to get ahead in his academic carrier, such as to get tenure and be promoted to the rank order of an Associate and even an Full Professor. This researcher could be considered a Stage 2-oriented researcher.

Because the motivations and aims to carry out research on the part of these two types of researcher are egocentrically oriented, it is likely that their research is not, so to speak, good and reliable research. Actually, egocentric reasons could lead to falsification of data, inappropriate statistical analyses, plagiarism, and the like.

Consider now the case of a researcher whose main goal to be a researcher is, for example, to receive approval from his/her peers, or to be a good, “nice” researcher in conventional terms, or, in other words, to be a decent researcher, and hence, incapable, for instance, of appealing to fraudulent procedures of doing science and research (see above). Such researcher would be a Stage 3-oriented researcher.

Think now of Stage 4-oriented researchers. Motivation to conduct research on the part of this type of researchers might be, for example, to foster social progress in his/her own or even other countries.

These two types of, say, conventional researchers are more likely than their pre-conventional counterparts to carry out good, reliable research. Among other things, good, reliable research aims at a better understanding of the physical, psychological and social world, and hence, does not appeal, for example, to unscientific ways of dealing with data, such as analyzing them according to inappropriate statistical analyses, that is, analyses used only with the simple purpose of rejecting the null hypothesis, just to give an example.

When performing research, a researcher can be motived by the noteworthy goal that, while conducting research, s/he can contribute to a better understanding of the great book of the world, be it physical, biological, psychological, social, and so forth, and hence, contribute, for example, to the greatest good of the greatest number of people. A researcher who aims at conducting research in order to bring about beneficial consequences to people, societies and countries all over the world in a short or even long period of time may be considered a post-conventional-oriented researcher.

As the late Kohlberg [see Colby & Kohlberg (1987). The measurement of moral judgment, Vols.1 and 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] gave up his initial Stage 6, the example mentioned above could substantiate a Stage 5 or Stage 6-oriented researcher. This researcher is certainly aware that, though knowledge and education are costly, they are far less costly than their alternative, ignorance. This is so, because, among other things, only true and well applied knowledge is capable of saving societies from possible collapse, be it violent or gradual [See, for instance, Piaget, J. (1970). The future of education: To understand is to invent. London: Kegan Paul Trench Trubner.

As far as I know, there is no study carried out to analyze researchers’ motivations and goals to conduct research from a Kohlbergian framework. As exemplified above, such study would be a telling example of a study on the underlying moral motivations and goals of researchers as they perform research in general, or a certain research in particular. I would hypothesized that the more a researcher has morally advanced reasons and motivations to conduct research, the more s/he is likely to be a scholarly and reliable researcher in his/her field of specialization and expertise.

Scholarly researchers in any field of knowledge are generally motivated to give an answer, however tentative it may be, to what C. S. Pierce called “irritating” doubts, questions or problems, not to questions that, for example, are true by definition, and hence, not subject to falsification in Popperian terms.

Unfortunately, psychology, which is my field of expertise, is full with examples of untestable and not falsifiable questions, problems, hypotheses, and theories. Look at the following example: a student once told me that he wanted to run an experiment/research to show that Piagetian formal operations appear only after Piagetian concrete operations. Given that formal operations are operations on concrete operations, then it is true by definition that formal operations can only appear after concrete operations. In other words, the student at hand was not raising an "irritating" doubt, pursuing the unknown, but rather jeopardizing his time. He wanted to be, as it were, a student of nature before being a student of logic.This example also documents Wittgenstein’s cogent remark in his famous Philosophical Investigations that in psychology there are experimental methods, but conceptual confusion.

In contradistinction, when Copernicus and Galileo cast doubt on the validity of geocentric theory, they were raising an irritating doubt, and, as such, they greatly contributed to scientific progress in the field of physics, that is, to the appearance of heliocentric theory. In a nutshell, among other things, scholarly research goes hand in hand with irritating questions, problems, doubts, hypotheses, and the like.

All that said, it is worth mentioning that (1) researchers have may different aims while doing research; (2) the more their goals are morally and cognitively advanced, the more they are likely to bring about good, reliable research devoted to the unknown and the quest for meaning; (3) scholarly and morally advanced researchers are generally motivated to answer to irritating doubts and questions, not to untestable and not falsifiable questions, that is, questions whose answer is true by definition. As Wittgenstein also remarked, when there is no place to doubt, certainty does not make much, if any, sense.

I hope that I have got your interesting question and that this helps.

Best regards.

6 Recommendations

9th Sep, 2016

Niranjan Biswal

Self-Employed

I must say..it should be a social oriented work. May be theoretical, practical, etc..