Lecture 3 Flashcards
Ontology
Most broadly, ontology is the study of what there is
Ontologies are theories of being
Eg. Are my keys in my pocket? empirical, implies an ontology, a theory of existence,
Ontological questions include:
What is the nature of reality?
What “really” exists?
Is there a world “out there” independent of our experiences?
Ontology is the thinking of what exists
Social ontology
“Questions of social ontology are concerned with the nature of social entities.
The central point of orientation … the question of whether social entities can and should be considered objective entities that have a reality external to social actors, or whether they can and should be considered social constructions built up from the perceptions and actions of social actors” (Bryman, 2016, p. 28, emphasis added)
Foundationalism/objectivism/realism
“The world is… composed of discrete objects which possess properties that are independent of the observer” (LMS, p. 182)
There is a real world that exists outside of our perception of it
“There is a real-world which exists independently of our knowledge of it”
“Causality operates independently of the observer”
Anti-foundationalism / constructivism / relativism
“Realities are local and specific; they vary between individuals/groups” (LMS, p. 183)
“Reality is not discovered… it is actively constructed”
Note: this doesn’t (necessarily) mean they think there is no “real world” which is “out there”, but rather that it doesn’t matter - this “real world” has no causal power on social action independent of people’s understanding of it
If compared to theology foundationalists believe in a god, whilst anti-foundationalists are not necessarily atheists they are instead agnostics
epistemology
Most broadly, epistemology is the study of what we can know
Epistemologies are theories of knowledge
Epistemological questions include:
What is knowledge?
How do we gain knowledge of the world?
Are there boundaries to what we can know?
Applied epistemological questions
Epistemological questions don’t have to be abstract. They can be specific too:
Given that I can only ever observe people’s behavior, how do I know whether they have minds?
What distinguishes scientific knowledge from other forms of knowledge?
Can we study social and political phenomena using the scientific method?
Broad epistemological positions
Scientific / positivist
Hermeneutic / interpretivist
Critical realist
Scientific/positivist approaches
The goal of positivist approaches is the formulation of general laws and accurate predictions
Positivist approaches to social science think that the social sciences are analogous to the natural sciences
Social sciences should objectively pursue causal facts that lead to rule-like generalizations
This epistemology is linked to the theoretical
approaches behaviouralism and rational choice
theory
Deeper into positivism
Direct observation can serve as an independent test of the validity of a theory (LMS, p. 186)
Normative and empirical claims and questions can be entirely separated
“Social scientists who focus on only overt, observable behaviors are missing a lot, but how are we to know if we cannot see?” (King, Keohane, and Varga, 1994, p. 41)
critiques of positivism
Quine (1961) had made two important critiques:
The mediation of concepts on sensory experience - consider different languages
Theory guides fact-finding and interpretation: we can decide the facts are “wrong”
Hermeneutic/interpretative approaches
The interpretative tradition prioritizes understanding social action over explaining it
This distinction, between verstehen and erklaren arose in German philosophy and social theory
“Understanding relates to human reasoning and intentions as grounds for social action” (LMS, p. 184)
▪ Mainly linked to the constructivist theoretical approach
Deeper into interpretivism
“The [social] world is socially or discursively constructed” (LMS, p. 190)
Knowledge is discursively, theoretically and conceptually “laden”
We cannot have unbiased access to social facts, so “should focus on identifying those discourses or traditions [that make sense of interpretations of social phenomena]”
Critiques of interpretivism
Positivists think that scholars in the interpretivist tradition can offer merely their subjective opinions and the social and political world
How would we go about falsifying interpretative claims?
Even if such insights are valuable on some plane, they do not constitute scientific knowledge
Critical realism
Is a “mixed” view:
It follows an objectivist (foundationalist) ontology - which it shares with positivist approaches
But in its epistemology, it shares some features of interpretivists (or hermeneutic) approaches
Crucially, critical realists accept that the social and political world has structures that shape behavior but that there are not directly observable
Eg. the Patriarchy, social and economic class
“There is a real world which exists independently of our knowledge of it” (LMS, p. 182)
“Causality operates independently of the observer”
BUT
“There are deep structural relationships between social phenomena which can’t be directly observed, but which are crucial for any explanation of behaviour”
▪ Mainly linked to the Marxist theoretical approach
Broad ontological positions in polisci
What are the broad ontological positions
in political science described in LMS pp.
182-183?
–Foundationalism/objectivism
–Anti-foundationalism/relativism
