POS 3713-Midterm Study Guide

1. How do we know what we know? a. Epistemology – how you know what you know b. Ways of knowing something i. Precedent – look at the past ii. Deferring to authority – look to scholars and scientists iii. Intuition/Common Sense – what does your gut say iv. The only thing that stands up time and time again is: observation 2. What do political scientists do, exactly? a. Look at relationships between individuals b. Why analyze relationships? i. Want to understand as much of the political world as possible ii. Rely on observation iii. Design research to collect data c. Political scientists develop causal theories about the political world and test them scientifically (the scientific method) i. Create theory ii. Form testable hypothesis iii. Carry out research to test hypothesis iv. Evaluate research v. Modification and extension 3. What is the difference between descriptive and causal inference? a. Causal Inference: Learning something about how the world works that we didn't know before i. Unknown causal relation between two or more variables b. Descriptive Inference: Learning something about the state of the world we didn't know before i. Unknown fact about a single variable 1. Inference is by definition uncertain 4. Which form of inference are political scientists most interested in? a. Political scientists are most interested in causal inferences. 5. Is the social world deterministic or probabilistic? Why do we care about this distinction? a. Deterministic – relationships such that if some cause occurs, then the effect will occur with certainty b. Probabilistic – such that increases in X are associated with increases (or decreases) in the probability of occurring, but those probabilities are not certainties c. The world of human interactions consists of probabilistic relationships. d. Whereas physical laws like Newton’s laws of motion are deterministic, the social sciences more closely resemble probabilistic causation like that in Darwin’s theory of natural selection e. In political science there will always be exceptions because human beings are not deterministic robots whose behaviors always conform to law like statements. ..............................................CONTINUED....................................