GOVT 6122 - Foundations of the Social Sciences

(crosslisted) ECON 6910, PHIL 6922

Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

R. Bensel.

Social science research almost always combines empirical observation (data), the construction of concepts (language), and the logical analysis of the relations between observations and concepts (statistics). This course examines the relations between these three dimensions as the analyst moves from one to the other both as practice and in the crafting of a formal summary of findings and argument. We will be particularly interested in the foundational assumptions that underpin the connections between empirical reality, language, and statistical analysis. While these foundational assumptions are often taken for granted by social scientists, they vary dramatically between social science disciplines. The implicit contradiction between that variance and their doxic acceptance within disciplines will be a primary focus of the course.