Minor research proposal
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lect03.pptxFoundations of social science research - OEM
SOSC 1000
Lecture 3
Jan Krouzil PhD
May 18, 2021
Agenda
Announcements
Part I Social ontology
Part II Social epistemology
Part III Research methodology
Keywords
Supplementary sources
Part I Social ontology (1)
What is ‘social ontology’ about?
study of the nature and properties of the social world
concerned with analyzing the various entities in the world that arise from social
interaction
deals with the analysis of social groups
Basic questions
do social groups exist at all? If so, what sorts of entities are they, and how are they
created?
is a social group distinct from the collection of people who are its members, and if
so, how is it different?
what sorts of properties do social groups have? Can they have beliefs or
intentions?
can they perform actions? And if so, what does it take for a group to believe,
intend, or act?
Social ontology (2)
Other entities investigated in social ontology
money, corporations, institutions, property, social classes, races,
genders, artifacts, artworks, language, and law
Scope for the field
the entities explored in social ontology largely overlap with those that
social scientists work on
a good deal of the work in social ontology takes place within the social
sciences
Social ontology (3)
Social ontology - questions about the nature of the social world
one set of questions pertains to the constituents, or building blocks, of social things in general
for instance, some theories argue that social entities are built out of the
psychological states of individual people
while others argue that they are built out of actions
and yet others that they are built out of practices
still other theories deny a distinction between the social and the non-social
Social ontology (4)
Different set of questions pertains to how social categories are constructed or set up
are social categories and kinds produced by our attitudes?
by our language?
are they produced by causal patterns?
is there just one way social categories are set up, or are there many varieties of social construction?
The term ‘social ontology’
has only come into wide currency in recent years, but the nature of the social has been a topic of inquiry since ancient Greece
the field can be understood as a branch of metaphysics, the general inquiry into the nature of entities
Social ontology (5)
Key themes and innovations in the history of social ontology
ancient and early modern debates on the sources of social entities
ancient inquiries into the nature of social phenomena introduced questions that remain active today
which features of the world are products of humans or society, and which are products of nature?
what does it mean to say that something is a social creation?
the contrast between nature (phusis) and custom, law, habit, or convention (nomos)
a central concern of Sophism, a school of Greek philosophy in the fifth century BCE
sources of justice, law, and language: are these rooted in phusis or in nomos?
Social ontology (6)
ancient philosophers explored the mix between natural and human contributions in the construction of familiar features of the world
didn’t theorize much about exactly what people do in order to create the social world
instead they wrote of agreements, compacts, conventions, habits, laws, customs without paying particular notice to separating these from one another
in the early modern period, theories of these sources broadened considerably as did the variety of social phenomena being investigated
Social ontology (7)
Approaches developed in the 17th and 18th centuries include social entities as
products of covenants (Hobbes, in Leviathan 1651)
products of convention
products of God and Nature
products of the individual mind (Locke)
Problem of demarcating social ontology
which things are social?
how are they distinguished from those that are not social?
Social ontology (8)
one option for interpreting the ‘non-social entities’ is that they include only the objects of physics, chemistry, biology, and other “hard sciences”
according to some theorists, even these are socially constructed and therefore fall on the social side of the division (Pickering 1984, Woolgar 1988)
Constituents of the Social World
many positions on these matters descend from the debates between individualism versus holism that took place in the early part of the twentieth century (cf. O’Neill 1973, Udehn 2001, Zahle & Collin 2014a).
individualism - the somewhat vague thesis that the social is built exclusively out of individual people
holism - the even vaguer thesis that social entities are “sui generis”, or ontologically fundamental in some sense
Social ontology (9)
Practices and ‘embodied agency’
theories of practice developed in anthropology in the 1970s and 1980s
attention to actions, routines, and the engagement of people with the world
a range of theories are now classified under the broad rubric of ‘theories of practice’ (Bourdieu 1977, Giddens 1984)
theorists as diverse as Foucault, Garfinkel, Butler, Latour, Taylor, Ortner, and Schatzki count among the practice theorists
Social ontology (10)
What are ‘social groups’?
debate in the literature concerns the kind of entities that ‘social groups’ are - collections, classes, sets, fusions, structures, or some other kind of entity
may seem natural to think of a group as a set of people in the mathematical sense
groups can persist through changes in membership, while sets are generally understood as having their members essentially
Social ontology (11)
different approaches to groups make different commitments with regard to the entities that should be included among the social groups
e.g., committees, teams, corporations, universities, nations, races, genders, red-haired people.
some theorists also propose that social groups must have certain distinctive characteristics, such as the members being in certain cognitive states or being subject to certain norms
Group minds, collective intentionality, and ‘group agency’
can groups take actions? Can they have intentions or beliefs? Can they bear responsibility? If so, how are these to be understood?
through much of the 20th century ascriptions of intentions and actions to groups were widely regarded as either erroneous or else merely ‘summative’
that is, for a group to have an intention or take an action is merely for all the members of the group to have that intention or take that action (see Tollefsen 2015)
Social ontology (12)
Race, gender, and disability
much recent interest in social ontology has been sparked by new approaches to race, gender, disability, and related social categories
historically, erroneous ontological claims have contributed to and been used to justify social oppression
claims about the genetic nature of race, for instance, are historically tied to claims about intellectual, character, and cultural differences between racial groups
likewise, claims about the nature of gender differences are historically tied to claims about how women ought to behave
Social ontology (13)
Controversy over race categories, gender categories, and other categories
pertains both to their construction and their essential properties
the term ‘essentialism’, as applied to categories such as race and gender, has a different meaning than it does in mainstream metaphysics.
as applied to race, for instance, ‘essentialism’ is often understood as synonymous with ‘biological essentialism’ - the view that races have simple, natural, and heritable biological properties, such that every member of a racial group has that biological property
this should not be confused with a metaphysical claim that might be made by a social constructivist proposing a ‘social essence’ of race
for instance, a claim that membership in a racial group essentially involves identifying with other people for reasons of solidarity, or that it involves being descended from a historically and geographically situated population
such a theorist would flatly deny ‘essentialism’ in the old sense, while still analyzing the (socially set up) essential properties of race (for a critique of essentialism, see Phillips 2010; see also entry on race)
Social ontology (14)
questions pertaining to the metaphysics of sex and gender resemble those pertaining to race
historically, descriptive and normative categories were conflated in simplistic biological theories
an important difference between sex/gender and race, however, concerns the distinction between sex and gender (Beauvoir 1949, West & Zimmerman 1987)
many theorists propose that sexes are biological categories and that genders are categories of social norms and behaviors that are traditionally attached to sexes
other theorists argue that it is incorrect to regard sex as biological (Fausto-Sterling 2000, Butler 2004)
thus in the case of sex/gender, there are arguably multiple socially constructed categories that interact with one another
some theorists reject the distinction between sex and gender (see entry on feminist perspectives on sex and gender)
Social ontology (15)
Question of racial and gender categories
whether these are descriptively adequate categories in the first place
many of the political phenomena associated with differential treatment of groups and oppression cut across lines of race, gender, and class
some theorists of intersectionality argue that it is misleading to regard standard gender and racial groups as if they were unified (see Crenshaw 1991, McCall 2005, Jones 2014)
Social ontology (16)
a central problem in the ontology of race, gender, and other categories is that how social scientists categorize not only has ethical implications, but is affected by ethically-laden facts
some theorists challenge the idea of a purely descriptive analysis of such groups; others propose that there can be descriptive analyses, but that such analyses are a stepping stone to ethically preferable categories
Haslanger (2000, 2012) argues for the ‘ameliorative’ analysis of racial and gender categories
part of the role of social ontology is to analyze the concepts and categories that are ‘operative’ in a social system
an equally important aim is to explore how we might otherwise construct social categories with the aim of social improvement
Barnes (2016) argues for an ameliorative account of disability
Part II Social epistemology (1)
Epistemology—the study of ‘knowledge’ and ‘true justified belief’
until relatively recently was heavily ‘individualistic’ in focus
the emphasis was on evaluating doxastic attitudes (beliefs and disbeliefs) of individuals in abstraction from their social environment
social epistemology seeks to redress this imbalance by investigating the epistemic effects of social interactions and social systems
Key points
an introduction a brief review of the history of the field
discussion of central topics in social epistemology including testimony, peer disagreement, and judgment aggregation
recent approaches using formal methods to address core topics in social epistemology, as well as wider questions about the functioning of epistemic communities like those in science
questions related to social epistemology and the functioning of democratic societies
Social epistemology (2)
The phrase ‘social epistemology’
in contrast with what might be dubbed ‘individual’ epistemology
epistemology - concerned with how people should go about the business of trying to determine what is true, or what are the facts of the matter on selected topics
in the case of individual epistemology, the person or agent in question who seeks the truth is a single individual who undertakes the task all by himself/herself, without consulting others
by contrast ‘social epistemology’ is an enterprise concerned with how people can best pursue the truth (whichever truth is in question) with the help of, or in the face of, others
also concerned with truth acquisition by groups, or collective agents
Social epistemology (3)
Western epistemology
standard epistemology takes the form of individual epistemology in which the object of study is how epistemic agents, using their personal cognitive devices, can soundly investigate assorted questions
René Descartes (1637)
represents the most influential tradition in (Western) epistemology
contended that the most promising way to pursue truth is by one’s own reasoning
the question was how, exactly, truth was to be found by suitable individualistic maneuvers, starting from one’s own introspected mental contents
John Locke (1690)
insisted that knowledge be acquired through intellectual self-reliance
as he put it, ‘other men’s opinions floating in one’s brain’ do not constitute genuine knowledge
Social epistemology (4)
Social epistemology
in contrast with the individualistic orientations of Descartes and Locke,
social epistemology proceeds on the idea that information can often be acquired
from others
to be sure, this step cannot be taken unless the primary investigator has already determined that there are such people
a determination that presumably requires the use of individual resources (hearing, seeing, language, etc.)
social epistemology should thus not be understood as a wholly distinct and
independent form of epistemology but one that rests on individual epistemology
Social epistemology (5)
Shaping the field of social epistemology
the middle part of the 20th century
sociologists and deconstructionists set out to debunk orthodox epistemology
challenging the very possibility of truth, rationality, factuality, and/or other presumed desiderata of mainstream epistemology
members of the ‘strong program’ in the sociology of science challenged the notions of objective truth and factuality
argued that so-called ‘facts’ are not discovered or revealed by science but instead ‘constructed’, ‘constituted’, or ‘fabricated’
‘There is no object beyond discourse. The organization of discourse is the object’. (Latour and Steve Woolgar 1986)
Social epistemology (6)
Richard Rorty
rejects the traditional conception of knowledge as ‘accuracy of representation’ and seeks to replace it with a notion of ‘social justification of belief’
argued that there is no such thing as a classical ‘objective truth’ - merely the practice of ‘keeping the conversation going’ (Rorty 19790
other forms of deconstruction inspired by social factors but less extreme in embracing anti-objectivist conclusions about science
Thomas Kuhn (1962,1970) held that purely objective considerations could never settle disputes between competing theories; hence scientific beliefs must be influenced by social factors
Social epistemology (7)
Michel Foucault developed a radically political view of knowledge and science, arguing that practices of so-called knowledge-seeking are driven by quests for power and social domination (1969,1977)
Moral social epistemology
expanding the notion of social epistemology by incorporating moral or ethical elements
‘epistemic injustice’ - arises when somebody is wronged in their capacity as a knower (Miranda Fricker 2007)
when a person or a social group is unfairly deprived of knowledge because of their lack of adequate access to education or other epistemic resources
Social epistemology (8)
Caveats re ‘creation of knowledge’
debates about these topics persist under the heading of ‘the science wars’
within the mainstreams of both science and philosophy the foregoing views are generally rejected as implausibly radical
this does not mean that no lessons can be learned about the status of social factors in science and philosophy
offer important insight into the role of cultural beliefs and biases in the creation of knowledge
Part III Research methodology (1)
Visualizing research - schematic conceptualization
defining the concepts of research and methodology
a model of research
different types of research activities
the steps involved in research
devising a research question
Research methodology (2)
Basic elements of research
observation and data collection
descriptive research
facts (tangible and perceptible and intangible and imperceptible)
conceptualization and classification
causal theory
models & hypotheses
operationalization & experimentation
hypothesis testing
applied theory/applied theoretical research
the applied 'trial-and-error' approach
theoretical refinement
Keywords
social ontology
individual epistemology
social epistemology
individualism vs holism
essentialism
social constructivism
postmodernism
moral social epistemology
Supplementary sources
Ontology, Epistemology, Methodology and Methods in Research Simplified!
2015 11:59
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCOsY5rkRs8
The End of Social Science as We Know it | Brian Epstein | TEDxStanford
2015 16:42
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLbEKpL-5Z0&t=84s
