Weber

Theory 1

• Science, values, and objectivity

• Values guide the selection of research topics, but objective scientific analysis must distinguish evidence-based findings from judgments about what ought to be.

• Erkenntnis des Seins:

• Erkenntnis des Seins means empirical knowledge of what exists or happens.

• Erkenntnis des Sollens:

• Erkenntnis des Sollens means normative knowledge concerning what ought to exist or what people should do.

• Empirical knowledge

• Empirical knowledge consists of claims about reality that can be investigated through observation and evidence.

• Normative knowledge:

• Normative knowledge concerns judgments about what is right, desirable, or obligatory and cannot be established by empirical evidence alone.

• Facts and values:

• Facts concern what is the case, while values concern what matters or ought to be pursued, so factual findings alone cannot establish moral obligations.

• Value-freedom:

• Value-freedom requires researchers to prevent personal value judgments from determining their factual conclusions and to report inconvenient findings honestly.

• Value-relevance:

• Value-relevance means selecting aspects of reality for study because of their significance in relation to cultural concerns and values.

• Objectivity:

• Objectivity means producing logically sound, evidence-supported knowledge whose validity does not depend on accepting the researcher’s personal values.

• Ultimate values:

• Ultimate values are fundamental commitments pursued for their own sake whose validity empirical science cannot establish.

• Value conflict:

• Value conflict occurs when commitments demand incompatible choices, and science cannot conclusively determine which ultimate value should prevail.

• Science and policy:

• Science can clarify policy options, feasibility, and consequences, but choosing ultimate goals requires ethical or political judgments.

• Internal consistency of value-judgments:

• Scientific criticism can examine whether a person’s stated values and desired goals logically contradict one another.

• Means and ends:

• Ends are desired goals, while means are the actions or resources used to achieve them, whose effectiveness and consequences science can investigate.

• Cultural ideals

• Cultural ideals are historically situated conceptions of what is significant or desirable that orient conduct and influence research interests.

• Kantian influences:

• Weber’s neo-Kantian influences, particularly Rickert, support the view that knowledge selectively organises reality through concepts rather than reproducing it completely.

• Irrationality or inexhaustibility of reality

• Reality contains an inexhaustible complexity and uniqueness that no system of concepts can fully capture.

• Cultural sciences and natural sciences

• Natural sciences primarily seek general regularities, while cultural sciences investigate culturally significant phenomena in their particular historical contexts.

• Teleology:

• Teleology explains developments through an ultimate purpose or predetermined destination, which Weber rejects as an inherent feature of history.

• Weber’s sociology and methodology:

• Sociology interpretively understands social action and causally explains its course and consequences.

• Action and behaviour

• Action is conduct to which an actor attaches subjective meaning, whereas mere behaviour lacks that meaningful orientation.

• Social action:

• Social action is meaningful conduct oriented toward the actual, expected, or remembered behaviour of others.

• Subjective meaning:

• Subjective meaning is the significance an actor attaches to their own conduct.

• Cultural meaning:

• Cultural meaning is a phenomenon’s wider significance in relation to cultural values and concerns, making it relevant for investigation.

• Verstehen

• Verstehen is the interpretive understanding of the subjective meanings and motives that make an actor’s conduct intelligible.

• Causal explanation

• Causal explanation identifies the conditions and mechanisms contributing to an action’s occurrence, development, and consequences.

• Social causality

• Social causality involves historically situated, often multiple conditions that make outcomes more likely rather than mechanically determining them.

• Ideal types:

• Ideal types are deliberately simplified conceptual models that accentuate selected features to enable comparison and explanation, rather than describing perfect or average cases.

• Methodological individualism:

• Methodological individualism explains collective phenomena through individuals’ meaningful actions and orientations within social and historical structures.

• Interpretive understanding:

• Interpretive understanding reconstructs an action’s meaning from the actor’s standpoint without requiring agreement with or approval of that action.