Philosophy of social science Summary

Philosophy of Social Science 2023
Risjord Book + Articles
- Lawton - De Vries - Dooremalen
- Metcalf - Okasha - Longino
- Smith II - Smith III - Bilgrami


CH 1
 What is it
- Normativity  concerns the place of values in social scientific inquiry
 Can social science be objective?  social policy/ethics
- Naturalism  relationship between the natural and the social sciences
 Follow natural science or unique methods?
- Reductionism  can social sciences be reduced to the sciences that make them
 Social sciences  psychology  biology  physics?
 Democratic peace
- Kant  elected government = people govern themselves  war bad, people die
 don’t go to war unless necessary  democracies do not go to war against each
other
- Philosophical questions bring to scientific research to respond to those questions
 Azande magic
- All humans have intellectual abilities  we simply don’t understand it  what is
rationality?
 Free rider problem
- Everyone benefits if the system changes  someone else can do it
 Classic liberal view  humans as autonomous choosers seeking best interest 
community is only possible when group benefits are also individual  why do
people follow norms against self-interest?
 Communitarians  humans as fundamentally social  what force do social
norms have?
 General philosophy
- Value theory  source and justification of values, rules and norms
- Epistemology  theory human knowledge  seeks true knowledge
- Metaphysics  questions on the fundamental characteristics of the world
 Ontology  philosophical domain of being  what it is to be
 Normativity
- Philosophical domain of the influence of norms and values
- The phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as
good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible 
questions the role of values and fact in societies and how we conceptualize them
 Value freedom  ethical and political values influence scientific research 
necessary?
 Social scientists are influenced by rules, norms and values  can we be
value free?

, Naturalism
- Whether and how do social sciences differ from natural sciences  naturalism
believes that social sciences should be like natural sciences  insider VS outsider
perspective
 Anti-naturalists  social sciences and natural sciences should be distinct in
method and theory  natural world and social world is not comparable
- Epistemological naturalism  concerns issues about theory, explanation and
method  can be acquired in a similar manner as the natural world
 Epistemological anti-naturalism  qualitative research (never used) ≠
quantitative research
- Metaphysical naturalists  humans are part of the world therefore they must be
understood in the terms of the same causes and mechanisms that animate all
other creatures
 Metaphysical anti-naturalism  humans and human societies are distinctive in
some deep way  cannot be understood in the same way
 Descartes considered the human mind of a non-physical substance
 Reductionism
- Hierarchy of sciences  reduction as a relationship between theories
- Epistemological reductionism  theories at one level can be replace by theories at
a lower level
 Methodological individualism  the requirement that social theories must
explain social events in terms of the choices, beliefs, and attitudes of individual
people  epistemologically reductionist thesis  often a mix of metaphysical
and epistemological considerations
- Metaphysical reductionism  things at one level are nothing but objects at another
 minds don’t exist, only brains
 Anti-reductionism  accepted metaphysical reductionism but do not think that
theories of the social sciences could be replaced by psychology
 All reductionists are naturalists  metaphysical naturalists



Lawton
- Reality check  all is not well with science
 Fraud
 Questionable research practices
 Bias, sloppiness
 Failing peer review
 Replication crisis
 Bad incentives for researchers




Metcalf/Klein – Polarization

, - Klein  caused by innated instincts  ingroup VS outgroup thinking causes
division
- Metcalf  criticizes lack of focus on people’s beliefs and desires  all about
unconscious tendencies that supposedly explain polarization
 To explain human behavior we shouldn’t exclude agency and reasons  people
actively polarize
 Insider VS outsider perspective


Smith II (Lec 2)
 Logical positivism
- 20th century Vienna group  development of a strictly scientific worldview 
describe the world as it is in itself
- Creation of an ideal scientific language  no speculative philosophy
 Strictly empirical
- Analytic VS synthetic statements
 Analytic  true just on the basis of the meaning of the words  all bachelors
are single
 Synthetic  made true/false based on what the world is actually like  needs
further investigation
 Empirical sciences are concerned with synthetic statements
- Precise language of science
 Gate-keeping  statements that are firmly based on empirical observation
belong in the language of science
 Verifiability criterion of meaning  meaning of synthetic statement is in its
method of verification
- Inductive method  from observations to general theories and empirical
regularities/laws  let the data speak for itself
- Behaviorism  how individuals respond to various stimuli or conditions in ways
that maximize rewards and minimize punishment
 Exclusive focus on observable behavior  nothing about internal cognition 
unobservable and unverifiable
 Thinking in terms of prediction and control
 Popper (Lec 3)
- Fallibility and tentativeness of human knowledge  dogmatic VS critical thinking
 Critical thinking  learning from mistakes
- Problem of induction  reasoning from individual observations to general
conclusions is logically invalid
 Induction can never completely support general scientific laws and theories
- Falsification rather than verification  set of procedures for scrutinizing existing
knowledge claims
 Focus on the refutation rather than the confirmation of the hypothesis
 Science is about formulating theories/conjectures in such a way that they
can be falsified by empirical observations
 Theories must then be tested rigorously  attempted refutations
 We accept those theories that have survived testing (so far)