PHIL 154 SC - Philosophy of Social Sciences

What are the methods appropriate to the study of human actions, institutions, and culture? Are the aims and methods of the social sciences different from those of the natural sciences? Ought they to be? We begin with an investigation of the dispute between “naturalists” and “anti-naturalists” in the social sciences and, then, turn to a consideration of such issues and areas of dispute as: explanation and prediction in the social sciences, methodological individualism versus holism, interpretivist social science, the appeal to rationality in the understanding of behavior, the challenge of relativism and the claims of objectivity.

Course Credit: 1.0

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