Truth and Social Science

Truth and Social Science PDF Author: Ross Abbinnett
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9781446239384
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This exciting and accessible guide to the discussions of truth in the social sciences can also be read as an account of the collapse of modernity, and the rise of new forms of thought which treat difference and ambivalence as positive values. Ross Abbinnett traces the debate on truth from the objectifying powers' of Kant through more than 200 years of critique and reformulation to the unravelling of truth by Lyotard, Foucault and Derrida.

Truth and Social Science

Truth and Social Science PDF Author: Ross Abbinnett
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9781446239384
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This exciting and accessible guide to the discussions of truth in the social sciences can also be read as an account of the collapse of modernity, and the rise of new forms of thought which treat difference and ambivalence as positive values. Ross Abbinnett traces the debate on truth from the objectifying powers' of Kant through more than 200 years of critique and reformulation to the unravelling of truth by Lyotard, Foucault and Derrida.

A Social History of Truth

A Social History of Truth PDF Author: Steven Shapin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022614884X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
How do we come to trust our knowledge of the world? What are the means by which we distinguish true from false accounts? Why do we credit one observational statement over another? In A Social History of Truth, Shapin engages these universal questions through an elegant recreation of a crucial period in the history of early modern science: the social world of gentlemen-philosophers in seventeenth-century England. Steven Shapin paints a vivid picture of the relations between gentlemanly culture and scientific practice. He argues that problems of credibility in science were practically solved through the codes and conventions of genteel conduct: trust, civility, honor, and integrity. These codes formed, and arguably still form, an important basis for securing reliable knowledge about the natural world. Shapin uses detailed historical narrative to argue about the establishment of factual knowledge both in science and in everyday practice. Accounts of the mores and manners of gentlemen-philosophers are used to illustrate Shapin's broad claim that trust is imperative for constituting every kind of knowledge. Knowledge-making is always a collective enterprise: people have to know whom to trust in order to know something about the natural world.

Duped

Duped PDF Author: Timothy R. Levine
Publisher: University Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817359680
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A scrupulous account that overturns many commonplace notions about how we can best detect lies and falsehoods From the advent of fake news to climate-science denial and Bernie Madoff’s appeal to investors, people can be astonishingly gullible. Some people appear authentic and sincere even when the facts discredit them, and many people fall victim to conspiracy theories and economic scams that should be dismissed as obviously ludicrous. This happens because of a near-universal human tendency to operate within a mindset that can be characterized as a “truth-default.” We uncritically accept most of the messages we receive as “honest.” We all are perceptually blind to deception. We are hardwired to be duped. The question is, can anything be done to militate against our vulnerability to deception without further eroding the trust in people and social institutions that we so desperately need in civil society? Timothy R. Levine’s Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception recounts a decades-long program of empirical research that culminates in a new theory of deception—truth-default theory. This theory holds that the content of incoming communication is typically and uncritically accepted as true, and most of the time, this is good. Truth-default allows humans to function socially. Further, because most deception is enacted by a few prolific liars, the so called “truth-bias” is not really a bias after all. Passive belief makes us right most of the time, but the catch is that it also makes us vulnerable to occasional deceit. Levine’s research on lie detection and truth-bias has produced many provocative new findings over the years. He has uncovered what makes some people more believable than others and has discovered several ways to improve lie-detection accuracy. In Duped, Levine details where these ideas came from, how they were tested, and how the findings combine to produce a coherent new understanding of human deception and deception detection.

Social Science for What?

Social Science for What? PDF Author: Mark Solovey
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262358751
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
How the NSF became an important yet controversial patron for the social sciences, influencing debates over their scientific status and social relevance. In the early Cold War years, the U.S. government established the National Science Foundation (NSF), a civilian agency that soon became widely known for its dedication to supporting first-rate science. The agency's 1950 enabling legislation made no mention of the social sciences, although it included a vague reference to "other sciences." Nevertheless, as Mark Solovey shows in this book, the NSF also soon became a major--albeit controversial--source of public funding for them.

How Does Social Science Work?

How Does Social Science Work? PDF Author: Paul Diesing
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822971534
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
The culmination of a lifetime spent in a variety of fields - sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, and philosophy of science - How Does Social Science Work? takes an innovative, sometimes iconoclastic look at social scientists at work in many disciplines. It describes how they investigate and the kinds of truth they produce, illuminating the weaknesses and dangers inherent in their research.At once an analysis, a critique, and a synthesis, this major study begins by surveying philosophical approaches to hermeneutics, to examine the question of how social science ought to work. It illustrates many of its arguments with untraditional examples, such as the reception of the work of the political biographer Robert Caro to show the hermeneutical problems of ethnographers. The major part of the book surveys sociological, political, and psychological studies of social science to get a rounded picture of how social science works,Paul Diesling warns that "social science exists between two opposite kinds of degeneration, a value-free professionalism that lives only for publications that show off the latest techniques, and a deep social concern that uses science for propaganda." He argues for greater self-awareness and humility among social scientists, although he notes that "some social scientists . . . will angrily reject the thought that their personality affects their research in any way."This profound and sometimes witty book will appeal to students and practitioners in the social sciences who are ready to take a fresh look at their field. An extensive bibliography provides a wealth of references across an array of social science disciplines.

Social Sciences as Sorcery

Social Sciences as Sorcery PDF Author: Stanislav Andreski
Publisher: Saint Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 9780312735005
Category : Social sciences
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description


The Logic of Social Science

The Logic of Social Science PDF Author: James Mahoney
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691214956
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
"Mahoney's starting point is the problem of essentialism in social science. Essentialism--the belief that the members of a category possess hidden properties ("essences") that make them members of the category and that endow them with a certain nature--is appropriate for scientific categories ("atoms", for instance) but not for human ones ("revolutions," for instance). Despite this, much social science research takes place from within an essentialist orientation; those who reject this assumption goes so far in the other direction as to reject the idea of an external reality, independent of human beings, altogether. Mahoney proposes an alternative approach that aspires to bridge this enduring rift in the social sciences between those who take a scientific approach and assume that social science categories correspond to external reality (and thus believe that the methods used in the natural sciences are generally appropriate for the social sciences) and those who take a constructivist approach and believe that because the categories used to understand the social world are humanly-constructed, they cannot possibly follow the science of the natural world. As the name suggests, scientific constructivism brings in aspects of both views and attempts to unite them. Drawing from cognitive science, it focuses on using the rational parts of our brain machinery to overcome the limitations and deeply seated biases (such as essentialism) of our evolved minds. Specifically, Mahoney puts forth a "set-theoretic analysis" that focuses on "sets" of categories as they exist in the mind that are also subject to the mathematical logic of set-theory. He spends the first four chapters of the book establishing the foundations and methods for set-theoretic analysis, the next four chapters looking and how this analysis fits with the existing tools of social science, and the final four chapters focusing on how this approach can be used to study and understand cases"--

Making Truth

Making Truth PDF Author: Theodore L. Brown
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252028106
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
A new perspective on how scientists reason about the world, design and interpret experiments and communicate with one another and with the larger society outside science.

The Philosophy of Social Science

The Philosophy of Social Science PDF Author: Martin Hollis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316101770
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
This textbook by Martin Hollis offers an exceptionally clear and concise introduction to the philosophy of social science. It examines questions which give rise to fundamental philosophical issues. Are social structures better conceived of as systems of laws and forces, or as webs of meanings and practices? Is social action better viewed as rational behaviour, or as self-expression? By exploring such questions, the reader is led to reflect upon the nature of scientific method in social science. Is the aim to explain the social world after a manner worked out for the natural world, or to understand the social world from within?

Social Science

Social Science PDF Author: Gerard Delanty
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816631278
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
It is argued that the conception of social science emerging today is one that involves a synthesis of radical constructivism and critical realism. The crucial challenge facing social science is a question of its public role: growing reflexivity in society has implications for the social production of knowledge and is bringing into question the separation of expert systems from other forms of knowledge.