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Lecture summary YSS36806
A summary of lecture 1 - 11 with notes of issues highlighted by the professor, explanations of models and theories and important aspects for the exam.
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YSS36806L01 Introduction to the course and the progrma
Shared social sciences chair group
Week 1: general introductions (course, paradigms, ethics)
Week 2: different approaches to protein transition (interpretivist, positivist, ethics)
Week 3: different approaches to low-carbon lifestyle (positivist, interpretivist, ethics)
Week 4: bringing it together, half term test, start of assignment
L02 Paradigms
Science: the careful study of the structure and behaviour of the physical world, especially by watching, measuring,
and doing experiments, and the development of theories to describe the results of these activities.
Careful study
Careful: giving a lot of attention to what you are doing so that you do not have an accident, make a mistake, or
damage something
Study: the activity of examining a subject in detail in order to discover new information
→ Giving a lot of attention to avoid mistakes in examining a subject to discover new information
Structure and behaviour
Structure: how it hangs together
Behaviour: how it changes
→ Giving a lot of attention to avoid mistakes in examining a subject to discover new information of the structure
and behaviour
Watching, measuring, and doing experiments
Watching: we have an open view at the structure and behaviour of whatever we study
Measuring: measure it (you probably need to get closer or even destroy it)
Experiments: do experiments on it (you have to influence something)
- a test done/try out something in order to learn something or to discover if something works or is true
→ Giving a lot of attention to avoid mistakes in examining a subject to discover new information of the structure
and behaviour especially by watching, measuring, and doing tests in order to learn something or to discover if
something works or is true
Social (consumer) science: the (scientific) study of (consumption) society and the way (consumers) people live
Philosophy of science addresses what qualifies as science? What makes theories reliable? What is the purpose of
science?
→ Reliability: how accurate or able to be trusted someone or something is considered to be?
Paradigm: a set of theories and approaches that explain the way a particular subject is understood at a particular
time → finding the right paradigm for the right object in the right context
As the selected paradigm determines the setof theories (and methods) which informs howa topic is studied it
provides a specific lens on the topic.
→ Philosophy of science addresses validity (is it science?), reliability (can it be trusted?) and purpose (does it
deliver?) of chosen paradigms
We introduce 2 main paradigms in social sciences positivism, interpretivism
1
,Positivism
Positivism: a philosophical perspective most commonly associated with scientific enquiry
Ontology = understanding of reality → realism
- Realism, there are true, real objects, independent of others (including the scientist studying them)
- Hardcore positivist: we can separate that from the researcher, the researcher is independent
- Hence scrutinising an object (in the correct way) will increasingly give
o Adding true information on the object until full understanding in reached (positivism rather naïve)
▪ Doesn’t allow interaction with environment and things to change because it’s zooming in more →
doesn’t fit with what we already know about the object
o Probabilistic and partial information that gradually increases understanding which can be revised (post
positivism)
▪ Partial information, we add that to our understanding step by step, but we won’t reach full
understanding → opening up to unexpected occurences
A positivist: things exist independently of me and my interpretation, if I use the right methods I can observe it,
experiment on it to learn more about it and fully understand it.
Epistemology = understanding of knowledge → objectivist & dualist
An objectivist: separating their values, experiences, and perspectives from their observation of phenomenon and
therefor coming to objective knowledge.
A dualist: differentiates between mental and physical states as two different modes of being → mind/ body divide
Modern dualism – substance dualism/ cartesian dualism
Objectivism and dualism
- Separating emotions from facts; i.e. mind from body is the way to find true knowledge (positivism) → we
can make the objective observer (scientist) neutral, so his emotions has no influence= positivism
- Acknowledging full separation of emotions from facts, from societal context is impossible for researcher
(post positivism)
- Probabilistic and partial information that gradual increases understanding which can be revised (post
positivism)
Impact on positivism: positivism foceses on the use of the scientific method to establish laws contextualized in social
thought and social conditions
Logical positivism → Vienna circle
Prerequisite of scientific verification of truth: this application tells us that metaphysics, theology, ethics, and
anything else that cannot be verified through sensory observation cannot be true
Empirics paradigm: genuine knowledge is true by definition or positive i.e., derived by reason and logic from
observations
Implying that:
- Theories are not purely formal theories but are subjective to observations, you need observations to make
sure that the theory actually makes sense
- Observations will ultimately lead to clear knowledge about specific cause – effect relations or at least
dynamic thereof
- Understanding of society can be built by combining these findings
→ “clean and logical observations” can be achieved by researcher being completely detached from topic of study →
makes no sense, the researcher spends a lot of time and effort in developing a theory so it is very attached to the
case
→ Requiring researchers to have no personal motivation, emotions, conviction and is belied by the long standing
observation that:
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather
because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it” (Max Planck, 1858 1947)
2
,Reductionism
As understanding can be derived from observations it is possible to subdivide a phenomenon
Each subdivision can then be studied
And by recombination we can then understand the whole as the sum of the parts.
Such “reductionism” is often related to objectivist approaches
Criticism on objectionism/ reductionism:
“hard” reductionism is often criticised for ignoring conditional effects/ interaction.
→ Pharmaceutical research on adult males (because less hormonal fluctuation than women, and less ethical issues
than children), under the assumption gender and maturity do not matter...
- Give the same variables to a 80kg man and to a 80kg women, don’t think about the difference in all the
factors that differ in the subjects
→ Yet some reductionism is unavoidable to make any study feasible
→ Criticised because if you break up a complex relation you don’t see the relations anymore
Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything.
Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.
(Konrad Lorenz, 1903-1989)
→ Positivist: see a hat, create a person around that hat → to superficial for criticism
Criticism: but perhaps caricatures
- (most) interpretavists would not consider the position of Jupiter (caricature). They draw system
boundaries (so they reduce)
- (most) positivist would not reduce all phenomena to the movement of atoms, instead they would look for
meaningful larger systems (Dennett, 1987) (so they do not reduce in absurdis) → you don’t take in
consideration where in the world this head is because it is irrelevant for the research
→ Pick your level of reduction depending on what you know
Criticism – but perhaps overstated
- (high quality) interpretavists do not redesign their entire scope and method for each problem in hand (so
they generalise)
- (high quality) positivists use one size fits no problem approaches regardless of the issue in hand (so they
revise to accommodate context)
Positivism in social sciences
Auguste Comte (1798–1857):
- Advocates adoption of the (then relatively recently developed) scientific method to social phenomena
- Considered sociology as the Queen of Sciences due to its complexity
→ We should start using social phenomena with the same scientific methods as fysics has been developed
→ Hasn’t happen yet because social phenomena are much more complex
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)
- Modernise Comte’s ideas maintaining the “natural science” elements objectivity, rationalism and causality
→ We should study society as a natural science → being objective, rational and assume some cause effect
relations we can predict and study
In the emerging science of Psychology positivism also resonated particularly in
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) “the father of experimental psychology”
Which can often be combined with the Pragmatist paradigm of William James (1842-1910)
But “strong positivism” would object to redefining reality giving the goal of the study → How does James turn
around the squirl? → Both can be definitions of around, don’t make it a semantic discussion but define the realities
to a level that is relevant to our research question → not one truth
3
, Positivism to Post positivism
Merely stacking observations is not good enough evidence → objectivism was objecting more and more until we
understand it, but people started to realise that you have to start looking for counter examples
Finding 1 counterexample counts heavier than induction based on a multitude of examples
Karl Popper (1902‐1994)
- Conventional wisdom based on observation – All swans are white
- But a black species was found (in Australia)
- Try to find counterexamples rather than stacking examples → try to look for these black swans instead of
the white ones
Popper – try to find counterexamples
Implemented in experimental design and statistics by Ronald Fisher (1890-1962) as Null-Hypothesis Significance
testing (NHST) – using a rather counterintuitive leap of reasoning → we want to look at a relation and we assume
that there is no relation (H0)
- Assume that what you do not want to be true is actually true (e.g. your intervention has no effect; your
new product is not more desirable, etc.)
- Create an artificial (experimental) situation where your intervention is present for some participants
- If any observed differences between treated and non-treated groups of participants would be so large to
be unexpected, given that the intervention did nothing, conclude the intervention must have worked.
Triumphs of post-positivism
Many simple effects could be proven.
- E.g. classical, operant and evaluative conditioning (e.g. Pavlov 1849-1936; Skinner, 1904- 1992), just
noticeable differences in perceptions (e.g. Weber 1795–1878 / Fechner 1801-
1887), etc.
- So the obvious next step would be to build up more complex human and
societal behaviour from these stepping stones.
→ Conditioning, impuls buying, logo’s
Limits to post-positivism
- Complexity of human behaviour is staggering
- Cognitive modelling efforts such as ACT-R (Anderson et al from 1973) or SOAR
(Newell et al from 1990) only make slow progress
- So does neural network approaches and neuroimaging. The human brain is just
very, very complex
- And society is even more complex....
- Efforts of combining models of human behaviour towards societal behaviour (e.g. Carver and Scheier,
1998) have not taken off
- And even underlying building blocks not as robust as sometimes thought.
- Seeing 3D in images (considered to be hardwired) turned out to require cultural training (Hudson, 1960)
Nevertheless
- Post-positivists are confident that in principle laws of physics and cause-effect relations underly human
and societal behaviour
- They respect that the complexity is (fundamentally) too large to fully model (cf Chaos theory in physics:
the butterfly effect)
- Some consider Quantum mechanics to have a role in brains (fundamental uncertainty) - but is that still
positivist?
→ Some things are to complex for humans to research so we simply cannot study that → effect butterfly – weather
4
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