Philosophical Methods. Philosophy as an academic discipline covers a wide range of topic areas and methods (see perspective on philosophy). However, as a method, one of its key approaches is that of the thought experiment (these are also sometimes referred to by their German name, Gedanken experiment). These involve trying to bring to light some conceptual or logical factor, by constructing an imaginary situation involving some manipulation of the topic under investigation. The logical consequences of this can then be explored. A classic example would be Searle's 'Chinese room', where the scenario constructed involves a person locked in a room, with Chinese ideograms passed through to him. Although he knows no Chinese, he has been given a set of rules telling him what ideograms to pass out, according to the different symbols which are input. Although the outputs may make sense to Chinese people (if the rules are appropriately constructed), the person in the room can't possibly be said to understand the Chinese terms. \nThis thought experiment therefore acts as a way to argue against the concept of 'strong artificial intelligence (AI)', e.g. the claim that if a computer was devised with programs that could talk and speak as effectively as a human, the computer would actually understand what was being said. We can see from this example, how philosophical methods can help us think through conceptual issues arising from psychology. Philosophical tools might also be used, for example, to help analyse the meaning of the term 'understands'. Careful analysis of the meaning of terms is another key tool of philosophy. There is a contrast with methods such as discourse analysis (DA), which is also concerned with analysis of language, but in a different way. DA tries to look at how the language people use acts to socially construct their worlds, and so analyses relatively large chunks of text. Philosophy typically takes a much more technical approach to language, focusing on the meaning of perhaps a single concept, in terms of its logical implications, relationships with other concepts etc. Traditional scholarship\nThis could refer to a number of different things, but in particular would include reviewing the literature to examine the theoretical and empirical contributions of other researchers. These are weighed against each other, looking for mutual support, inconsistencies etc. It might also involve finding new ways of making sense of existing ideas and/or data by synthesizing and integrating what were previously separate concepts/research. 
Modelling – theoretical, cognitive, neurological. A psychological model is a theoretical construct which aims to help psychologists understand psychological phenomena through simplification. This is done by developing a representation that aims to represent important aspects of the phenomenon through reducing it to its essential features. By ignoring the less central aspects of the phenomenon, and focussing on a few, important aspects, the model can then help psychologists think about and explain the key processes involved in the phenomenon. This definition would apply to any kind of theoretical modelling, though models can often take a mathematical form, sometimes in the shape of a computer program. In this way, computers can be used as a tool in studying psychological processes – in particular, they are often used to study cognitive processes, such as perception. \nResearchers can use models in several ways: firstly, they would use their existing knowledge to try to identify the essential features of, for example, perception or problem-solving. Initially, this might simply be put in the form of a 'flow diagram', representing the essential stages of the psychological process being studied, with arrows to show the flow of information etc. This theoretical model could then be taken a stage further through being represented mathematically, and perhaps even written as a computer program. The program could then be run to examine predicted performances, for any given input. Researchers then compare the performances of the program with human cognitive processes, to see how closely they match. Research using such models has advantages over research directly on the brain in that it is much simpler, and is also appropiate for detailed analysis (in a way we simply cannot do with the enormous complexity of the brain's network).\nThe need for precise specification in a computer program, arguably has the merit of forcing the cognitive scientist to explain clearly exactly how every aspect of their theoretical model actually operates. This has often shown just how sophisticated apparently 'simple' human activities are – such as perceiving a cup of tea and picking it up. Modelling these activities is a considerable challenge for cognitive scientists, and has been a valuable source of insight into some of the processes involved in such typical human activity.\nThe principles of psychological modelling have also been used to develop mathematical models that represent and simplify the complex interactions withina system of neurons in the brain (referred to as neural nets). Models of neural networks work on a quite different mathematical basis from cognitive models based on a precisely specifying every action taken. Models of neural networks use a more 'associative' type of model, where the patterns of interactions between different 'neurons' leads to an output which varies according to the stimulus. By being exposed to a range of stimuli, the model can go through stages of 'learning', which may shed some light on, for example, the ways in which human language is learnt.