Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Research

Vocabulary flashcards based on the 'Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Research' book.

Philosophizing

Thinking about abstract ideas such as the nature of beauty or the purpose of life.

Metaphysics

That which is beyond physics; a form of abstract thought that attempts to establish some ‘first principles’ as foundations for knowledge.

Epistemology

Where does our knowledge come from and how reliable is it?

Ontology

A branch of metaphysical enquiry that asks if we make a claim concerning the social and natural worlds, what are the presuppositions that are built into our ideas regarding their nature?

Moral Questions

Moral questions concerned with what it is that makes human beings what they are and are there certain things that we should, or should not, do?

Social Research

Methodical investigations into a subject or problem that seeks answers that involve understanding and explanation.

Social Surveys

Single “one-off” studies of specific “target” populations at particular points in time in order to describe and explain sets of circumstances, behaviors, and attitudes.

Qualitative Research

There is no desire to isolate specific or certain causes and encompasses a range of strategies that allow researchers to “get close to the data” and are often characterized as being concerned with the daily actions of people and the meanings that they attach to their environments and relationships.

Ethnography

Direct observation of behaviours in a particular society.

Secondary Analysis

This does not originate as a result of the research, but is the product of earlier research activity or some form of record-keeping.

Philosophy and Social Research

The desire to improve our knowledge of the world.

Ordinary Everyday Knowledge

The view that scientific knowledge is reliable knowledge because it is objectively proven knowledge and is dependent upon the formulation of scientific theories derived in some rigorous way from the facts of experience acquired by observation and experiment.

Empiricism

The idea that all knowledge has its origins in experience that is derived through the senses.

Impressions

Those perceptions which enter with most force and violence.

Ideas

The faint images of impressions in thinking and reasoning.

Constant Conjunction

When event A occurs it is followed by event B.

Sufficient Conditions

The occurrence of A was sufficient for the occurrence of B.

Necessary Condition

B could not have occurred without A.

Induction

The derivation of a general principle which is inferred from specific observations.

Syllogism

A statement whereby something other than that which is stated necessarily follows.

Deductive Statement

A statement where the conclusion must follow from the premiss and the truth of the conclusion is contained in the premiss.

Logical Positivism

Logical Positivists attempt to ground scientific knowledge in principles as sound as those of mathematics and are the most radical of empiricists, denying not only that we could identify any form of natural necessity in the world but that, in principle, we could never come to know the real world.

Elementary Observation Statements

Simple statements about direct and basic observations.

Falsification

Insistence upon characterizing science as a search for disconfirming instances.

Normal Science

Where scientists engage in “puzzle solving” within the confines of a particular “paradigm”.

Paradigm

Comprises the intellectual standards and practices of a scientific community, but more than this it is based upon shared metaphysical and philosophical assumptions. Laws are held to be axiomatic and puzzle solving within a given theoretical structure.

Relativism

Entails the view that there are no universal, ahistorical standards to which scientists might allude in justifying their methods and findings.

Pragmatic Theory of Truth

The desire to eliminate error rather than seek truth leads us not to choose between propositions, whereas if we choose one or the other we have an even chance of being right.