Philosophy of Social Science Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Philosophy of Social Science - Essay Example (Gordon, 3) The considering of this second aspect engendered by social science, connects it to ethics, to the study of values. Dealing with the concept of "philosophy of social science", the same author defines it as "the study of how we are able to know whether our notions or theories about empirical phenomena are true or false." (3) Another definition is that the philosophy of social science is the study of the logic and the methods of social sciences. This second definition appears in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. According to the same source the problems it deals with are those connected to answering questions like: "What are the criteria of a good social explanation", "How are the social sciences distinct from the natural sciences", "Is there a distinct method for social research", "Through what sorts of empirical procedures are social science assertions to be evaluated", "Are there irreducible social laws", "Are there causal relations among social phenomena", "Do social facts and regularities require some form of reduction to facts and regularities involving only the properties and actions o f individuals" One of the problems the philosophy of social science is concerned with is that regarding methodology... dividuals having to conform to a model or pattern offered by society, nowadays conceptions emphasize on the importance of respecting one's individuality, conception based on the idea that all human beings are free to choose their own and personal way of life. As a consequence of individualization, a new method of social science research appeared: the biographical method.Extensively discussed in The Turn to Biographical Methods in Social Science: Comparative Issues and Examples, the biographical method is new to the field of the social science methodology. The explanation the authors give in regard to the fact that social science researchers rejected this method until recently, lies in the fact that "modeling themselves on the natural scientists", they "set out to construct models of body and mind which described uniformities and regularities, and which enabled human behavior to be understood "objectively", that is in terms of its abstracted common attributes" (Chamberlayne, Bornat an d Wengraf, 36). The authors mention the fact that, although biography is commonly regarded today as a written work, it is, in fact, a production of face to face oral communication. The definition provided by the same researchers connects it to the social integration aspect: "The work of orienting the temporal process of the individual's life and of social change." (115) Through biography, meaning by telling their life, people integrate themselves in a context and realize that they belong to a structure, they reconstruct themselves. The biographical method was attacked, researchers warning about its inadequacy and supporting their position by two main reasons: the possibility of having to do with what was called "a neurotic narrator", or a person who invents the facts presented as