A 5 page research paper that examines 5 school of philosophical thought, which serve to inform the methodology and thinking nurse researchers. This discussion offers a brief overview of five philosophical perspectives, which culminates in a comparison of these viewpoints. The philosophical views addressed are: logical positivism, poststructuralism, hermeneutics, paradigmatics, and phenomenology. The information presented focuses on how each philosophy affects the role of the nurse educator who is addressing a client knowledge deficit. Bibliography lists 10 sources.
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philosophical views addressed are: logical positivism, poststructuralism, hermeneutics, paradigmatics, and phenomenology. The information presented focuses on how each philosophy affects the role of the nurse educator who is addressing a
client knowledge deficit. Logical Positivism: This school of philosophical thought is largely concerned with the "logical analysis of scientific knowledge" and therefore, these philosophy holds that "there are only
two sources of knowledge: logical reasoning and empirical experience" (Logical Positivism, 2008). From this perspective a statement is true and knowledgeable only "if it can be proved true or false"
(Logical Positivism, 2008). Logical positivism asserts that "meaningful sentences containing any empirical content should be ultimately reducible to simple observational statements" (Allmark, 2003, p. 4). As this suggests, this
perspective offers a highly pragmatic view of knowledge that sees the world in terms of factual statements. This view is advantageous in terms of a nurse educator aiding a client
with a knowledge deficit in that, often, clients benefit from having clear, concise directions on a topic, such as how to clean a wound or when to take their medication.
However, in regards to more complex social topics, nurses tend to avoid logical positivism due to the perception that it is a philosophical view that is "hostile to qualitative research"
(Allmark, 2003, p. 4). Poststructuralism: This perspective takes a deconstructive view of structuralism and "sees inquiry as inevitably shaped by discursive and interpretive practices" (post-structuralism, 2008). Poststructuralists, in general,
reject the "structuralist claims that there are underlying structures or patterns linking the phenomena of human life...which obey predictable and determinable laws" (Rolfe, 2006, p. 8). This point of
view does not deny that there is an "independent and objective reality," but rather that there is a "single objective truth which describes that world," due to the fact that