Course Syllabus

Some Preliminary Definitions

• Culture=df A complex set of shared beliefs, values, and concepts that enables a group to make sense of its life and provides it with directions for how to live.
• Cultural Determinism=df Human behavior is completely the result of cultural influences, such as television ads, political propaganda, etc.
• Solipsism=df The view that one can know nothing other than one's own conscious self.
• Atomism, Social=df The view that the fundamental entities of a social system are individuals. To understand a particular society is just to understand all of the individuals in that society. Society = sum total of individuals
• Holism, Social=df Society as a whole is not reducible to the sum of its individuals--that is, soceities have real structure parts that define it and that may stay the same even when the individuals that compose a part change. Society > sum total of individuals.

Realism, Relativism, & Perspectivalism

• Relativism=df Each person is the measure of his own truth--i.e., each has a unique conceptual scheme through which he interprets reality.
• Realism (Objectivism)=df There is a reality independent of a person's perception of it and human investigation of that reality allows us to know it in some measure.
• Perspectivism=df What we know we know through a certain conceptual framework. Perspectivism, so defined, is consistent with relativism and realism. If each person has a unique conceptual framework, then relativism. If each person has roughly the same conceptual framework and that framework is somewhat in tune with reality, then realism.
• Fallibilism=df The view that no scientific knowledge is infallible (i.e., nothing about the world can be known for certain).
• Critical Intersubjectivity=df The dialectically driven view which states that (1) inquiry is objective insofar as it is an ongoing process of criticism, that (2) inquiry is intersubjective insofar as it is an ongoing dialogue among rival inquirers, each of whom is open to the possibility of revising his views, if needed, and that (3) inquiry is critical insofar as it involves the systematic examination of rival accounts and methods in a careful, probing, and open-minded manner.

Rationalism & Etiologism

• Rationalism=df To know why someone acted thus is to know that person's rationale.
• Etiologism=df To know why someone acted thus is to give the causes of that person's action. Etiologism takes into consideration irrational elements undergirding behavior.

Interpretivism & Intentionalism

• Intentionalism=df The meaning of an utterance or action is merely the underlying, conscious intention behind it.
• Interpretivism=df To know the meaning of utterances or actions of people of another culture we must know their beliefs, desires, and intentions.
• Deconstructivism=df The meaning of an utterance or action of a people must be disentangled from what is ostensible. Disentangling is a matter of knowing culture behind utterances or actions.
• Hermeneuticism=df The meaning of an utterance or action is a product of the underlying intention and consequences plus interpretation of the utterance or action. Meaning is thus a product of an agent and an interpreter and is ever-changing.

Nomologicalism & Historicism

• Nomologicalism=df An adequate scientific explanation must be law-based (universal-driven).
• Historicism=df To understand social entitities or actions is to see them throughout their historical development (particular-driven).
• Geneticism=df The event to be understood, e, is explained as the end result of a developing process (e.g., Comte). Geneticism, broadly grasped, is consistent with nomologicalism (see Comte) and historicism.

Narrativism

• Narrative Realism=df Narrative structures exist in the human world. They are not mere "stories" that people make up to give meaning and structure to people's lives.
• Narrative Constructivism=df Narrative structures are mere stories that people make up to give meaning and structure to people's lives.

Aristotle's Cosmos

Auguste Comte

The Ever-Pensive Max Weber

Objectivity in Social Sciences

Sigmund Freud and his Ever-Present Cigar

Thomas Kuhn, not to be Confused with Everyone's Favorite, Swingin' Dieter Thomas Kuhn

Suggestions for final paper:

• Why does Fay think that neither intentionalism nor hermeneuticism can give a sufficient account of meaning for the social science? Include his definition and his critique of each in your critique of Fay.
• Are our lives literally stories to be told, whose account may be told correctly or fictively? Or are the stories we and others tell about us after-the-fact constructions we make up to give meaning to our lives? Include Fay's account of "narravism" in your answer (both narrative realism and constructivism).
• What are the defects and merits of objectivism? Does critical intersubjectivism present itself as a viable alternative? Is fallibilism a viable compromise?
• Critically assess Kuhn's critique of nomologicalism. Is his paradigm relativism (as a form of historicism) a defendable alternative?
• What is the paradox of civilization for Freud? How do economic factors come into play? Is the tension resolvable?
• Critically assess Freud's genetic account of ethics. Does this genetic account, based on wish-fulfilment, make ethics futile?