Chapter 2: Philosophy of Science. Knowledge and Knowing

Question 1

What is involved in providing an explanation of social phenomena? How is explanation
distinct from and related to interpretation?

Answer 1

To explain social phenomena we should employ individualist and or holist ontologies and methodologies. These in turn help us explain how social phenomena produce social outcomes. Explanation = reasoning, interpretation = mimic

Question 2

ontology + question

Answer 2

What is the nature of the social world? Is the social world fundamentally different from the social one?

Question 3

epistemology

Answer 3

What is knowable? What sort of knowledge is possible? How can we know about it>? What form of knowledge can we treat as legitimate about the social world?

Question 4

methodology

Answer 4

What strategies can we use to gain knowledge about the social world? What are the means and methods that can provide us with legitimate knowledge of the political world?

Question 5

who is Auguste Comte?

Answer 5

creator of the term sociology, positivism daddy/ researchers can arrive to factual, reliable and objective answers to questions about the social world by using natural sciences methods

Question 6

positivism

Answer 6

studying society through empirical scientific evidence - statistics and controlled experiments

Question 7

positivism characteristics

Answer 7

credibility, factual/reliability, objectivity

Question 8

3 tenets of positivism

Answer 8

naturalism, empiricism, laws

Question 9

what is induction

Answer 9

an investigational method/ methodology of classical positivism which starts from specific observations and measurements, then identifies patterns and regularities then formulates a hypothesis.

Question 10

induction formula/cycle

Answer 10

obs - pattern - tentative hypothesis - theory

Question 11

What is deduction

Answer 11

A methodology used by logical positivism (alongside induction) starts from broad generalizations and then narrows in on specific statements

Question 12

deduction formula

Answer 12

theory - hypothesis - observation - confirmation

Question 13

black swan

Answer 13

Popper’s now famous story
of the black swan illustrates what happens when we attempt to formulate laws based on
observation. The story is that, once upon a time, Europeans thought all swans were white
because, having found nothing but white swans for thousands of years they concluded on
the basis of their experience that all swans were white. But one day Europeans went to New
Zealand (as Popper had), and there they found black swans. What this story tells us is that
no matter how many observations confirm a theory, it only takes one counter-observation
to falsify it: only one black swan is needed to repudiate the theory that all swans are white.
it only takes a single unforeseen or seemingly improbable event to invalidate a
generalization based on empirical observation, then empirical observation alone cannot
generate ‘laws’. Popper therefore concludes that, rather than endeavouring to discover laws
through induction, what scientists should be doing is testing theory deductively

Popper proposes that to establish truth claims we should in fact do the reverse of what logical
positivists propose: rather than continually attempting to verify or prove a theory, scientists
should attempt to disprove it.

Question 14

hempel’ deductive nomological model aka DNM aka dinamita

Answer 14

A deductive-nomological explanation is deductive because we can logically deduce
the phenomenon we want to explain (explanandum) from that which does the explaining (the explanans); and it is nomological because the explanans includes at least one law
(‘nomos’ is the Greek word for law). According to this model, then, something is explained
when it is shown to be a member of a more general class of things, when it is deduced from
a general law or set of laws.

Question 15

hempel’s hypothetico-deductive model

Answer 15

According to his hypotheticodeductive model of confirmation, we confirm that the generalization is a law (rather than
an accidental generalization) by treating it as a hypothesis, and then we test the hypothesis
by deducing from it a sufficient number of explicit predictions of further phenomena that
should be observable as a consequence of the hypothesis.

generalizations treat as hypothesis, test it by deducing consequences

Question 16

verifiability

Answer 16

the goal of social scientific inquiry is to verify proposition

Question 17

falsifiability

Answer 17

1. theory must be formulated in a way that enables it to be disconfirmed
2. when testing theories, we should seek to fasify not verify them

Question 18

what is Margaret Archer’s contribution in 1995

Answer 18

An influential conception of how objective structure and individual, subjective agency interact over time is Margaret Archer’s (1995)
‘morphological model’ in which structural conditioning (which is treated as temporally
prior) conditions social interaction, which in turn generates structural elaboration

Question 19

What are the ontology, epistemology and methodology of scientific realism?

Answer 19

naturalist ontology, empiricism + we know unobservable elements of social life because we can see their consequences, induction + deduction

Question 20

individualism

Answer 20

ontology - basic units of society are individuals, social phenomena is the result of individual actors / methodology - social phenomena (class, power, nations) can be reduced to characteristics of individuals

Question 21

holism

Answer 21

ontology - the whole of something is distinct from its individual parts, social facts are irreducible to facts abouts individuals / methodology - the properties of a system cannot be deduced by the properties of its components, the system itself determines how its parts behave

Question 22

reification

Answer 22

treat macro-social entities independent of their constituent elements ( human agency)

Question 23

Coleman’s Bathtub / boat

Answer 23

Causal relations between macro phenomena can be explained with micro foundations, macro lvl : doctrine/econ system etc (meth holism) -> micro lvl : behaviour of actors, economic actions (meth individ) ->macro outcome: capitalistic econ syst

Question 24

naive realism

Answer 24

there is a reality that exists separate from our perception or observation of it

Question 25

interpretivism

Answer 25

social world is fundamentally different from the natural world, cannot use same methods to gain knowledge about it. social phenomena is subjectively created + discursively constructed, observable objective regularities don’t exist in the social world / individual social actions + meanings need to be interpreted

Question 26

hermenutical approach

Answer 26

human behaviour is the product of the meaning and intentions of actor’s actions

Question 27

hermeneutical approach goal

Answer 27

interpret social phenomena by understanding the meaning actors give their actions

Question 28

structure vs agency ontological questions

Answer 28

Who has primary or prior ontological status - agents or structures?

Do social structures exist independently from individuals?

Question 29

structure vs agency methodology questions

Answer 29

What is the focus of social science explanation?
Should explanations of social phenomena be expressed in terms of individuals?

Question 30

There are different conceptions of causality. What are these different conceptions? How,
according to different conceptions of causality, do we establish that something causes
something else?

Answer 30

necessary connection cause- effect / Hume ‘constant conjunction we discover observable regularities; and the experience of observing this ‘constant conjunction’ between events conveys to our minds a necessary relation between these events / positivism - causality = discovering observable regularities through direct obs / scientific realism - causality = discovering unobservable underlying generative mechanism through direct obs + logic applied to both obs and unobs structures / interpretivism - causality = we cannot seek cause but can uncover meanings that provide the reasons for action, method- interpretive theory and textual strategies, social world like a text has to be interpreted to discover meanings and sub-texts

Question 31

goal of positivism

Answer 31

the goal of social inquiry should also be to establish causality, or a cause–effect relationship,
between events in the world

Question 32

David Hume on causality

Answer 32

Hume pointed out that a ‘necessary connection’ or causal relationship cannot be directly
perceived; ‘we cannot in any instance discover a power, necessary connexion, or quality’
which renders one event ‘an infallible consequence of the other’ (1966: 51). Instead, what we
observe is only the ‘constant conjunction’ of events.