Arms chair Research--

Different disciplines place different weight on purely theoretical research.

Some anthropologists argue that purely theoretical anthropological research is outdated
and that ethnographic fieldwork should be a necessary part of anthropological
research On the other hand, some commentators argue that economic theories are
designed to explain and predict economic phenomena, which requires analysis and
synthesis, and not necessarily collection, of data. Leland B. Yeager even argues that
economists can legitimately extrapolate from their own personal observations to design
new theories. In this sense, Yeager sees armchair theorizing as something better than
the "mere sterile juggling of arbitrary assumptions" saying that "it can have a sound
empirical basis."
While armchair scholarship contrasts with the scientific method, which inherently
involves the active investigation of the nature through data collection, armchair
philosophers and theorizers can assist in formulating theories that explain observations;
these theories can then be tested with further scientific investigation. While the methods
of the armchair philosopher are different from those of the scientist, they can
complement each other to produce new insights and discover necessary truths, whether
they are empirical or theoretical.
Logical truths are generally considered to be necessarily true. This is to say that they are
such that no situation could arise in which they could fail to be true. The view that logical
statements are necessarily true is sometimes treated as equivalent to saying that logical
truths are true in all possible worlds. However, the question of whether any statements
are necessarily true remains the subject of continued debate.
Treating logical truths, analytic truths, and necessary truths as equivalent, logical truths
can be contrasted with facts (which can also be called contingent claims or synthetic claims).
Contingent truths are true in this world, but could have turned out otherwise (in other
words, they are false in at least one possible world). Logically true propositions such as "If
p and q, then p" and "All married people are married" are logical truths because they are
true due to their internal structure and not because of any facts of the world (whereas "All
married people are happy", even if it were true, could not be true solely in virtue of its
logical structure).
Rationalist philosophers have suggested that the existence of logical truths cannot be
explained by empiricism, because they hold that it is impossible to account for
our knowledge of logical truths on empiricist grounds. Empiricists commonly respond to
this objection by arguing that logical truths (which they usually deem to be mere
tautologies), are analytic and thus do not purport to describe the world. The latter view
was notably defended by the logical positivists in the early 20th century.
Logical truths and analytic truths.
Logical truths, being analytic statements, do not contain any information about any matters
of fact. Other than logical truths, there is also a second class of analytic statements, typified
by "no bachelor is married". The characteristic of such a statement is that it can be turned
into a logical truth by substituting synonyms for synonyms salva veritate. "No bachelor is
married" can be turned into "no unmarried man is married" by substituting "unmarried
man" for its synonym "bachelor".
In his essay Two Dogmas of Empiricism, the philosopher W. V. O. Quine called into question
the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements. It was this second class of
analytic statements that caused him to note that the concept of analyticity itself stands in
need of clarification, because it seems to depend on the concept of synonymy, which stands
in need of clarification. In his conclusion, Quine rejects that logical truths are necessary
truths. Instead he posits that the truth-value of any statement can be changed, including
logical truths, given a re-evaluation of the truth-values of every other statement in one's
complete theory.
Truth values and tautologies-
Considering different interpretations of the same statement leads to the notion of truth
value. The simplest approach to truth values means that the statement may be "true" in one
case, but "false" in another. In one sense of the term tautology, it is any type
of formula or proposition which turns out to be true under any possible interpretation of
its terms (may also be called a valuation or assignment depending upon the context). This
is synonymous to logical truth.
However, the term tautology is also commonly used to refer to what could more specifically
be called truth-functional tautologies. Whereas a tautology or logical truth is true solely
because of the logical terms it contains in general (e.g. "every", "some", and "is"), a truth-
functional tautology is true because of the logical terms it contains which are logical
connectives (e.g. "or", "and", and "nor"). Not all logical truths are tautologies of such a kind.
Logical truth and logical constant.
Logical constants, including logical connectives and quantifiers, can all be reduced
conceptually to logical truth. For instance, two statements or more are logically
incompatible if, and only if their conjunction is logically false. One statement logically
implies another when it is logically incompatible with the negation of the other. A
statement is logically true if, and only if its opposite is logically false. The opposite
statements must contradict one another. In this way all logical connectives can be
expressed in terms of preserving logical truth. The logical form of a sentence is determined
by its semantic or syntactic structure and by the placement of logical constants. Logical
constants determine whether a statement is a logical truth when they are combined with a
language that limits its meaning. Therefore, until it is determined how to make a distinction
between all logical constants regardless of their language, it is impossible to know the
complete truth of a statement or argument.