So I really enjoyed the debates in class. I think they really show how hard it is to defend any paradigm completely – they all have weaknesses to deal with. I found it really hard to come up with an air tight defense for any of them – or any air tight attack for that matter. I have a hard time figuring out how anyone can be come a hard line believer in only one of them – but I am sure those kinds of people are out there, and I need to get ready for them. Thinking back on the debate, I probably would not have tried to beat out the opposing view as much as make a case that my view has a bit of an edge – for example, that qualitative has a slight edge on Quantitative because of the nature of the answers you get. People can lie on either one, but you can get a lot more out of a few sentences or paragraphs of responses than you can from “5”… “3”… etc. You will also be able to detect lies a bit better. It is a slight edge, but a slight edge is better than none.

So, the lifeworld idea of Habermas is a pretty big deal. I can see how that would impact research, especially of a social or qualitative nature. So it is our world that we experience and live together. So it would seem that Habermas and Bernstein are essentially writing what and how we come to experiences as we interact in our lifeworld. It would seem to be easy and straightforward, but coming to agreed upon terms and structures to describe these experiences would prove complex. I think if it was up to any one person to describe it for themselves, they would find it easy. Or easier – after all, you don’t have to agree on anything. In fact, it seems as you move across the paradigm scale, lifeworld becomes more difficult to describe. To relativists – what ever you say goes, so lifeworld is anything you say it is. To constructivists, you have to come to agreement with others and even society as a whole, so that takes more work. To empiricists, you have to test, experiment, prove things, and then go back to come to agreement on what it is all saying.

Or maybe that is just my take on it now, which could change as we go along.