POLSCI 3N06 Lecture Notes - Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, Logical Positivism

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLSCI 3N06
• Professor: Todd Alway

Document Summary

Ask questions, that have not been asked before- literary review. Political research, no matter how specific, parochial, and mundane, always starts with assumed answers to big-picture questions. We always have implicit answers, but we might not be aware of what they are. Ontology:- being; what is the nature of reality. A) foundationalist: there is an objective world out there that is what it is regardless of how we perceive it. Essential characteristics like the difference between men. B) anti-foundationalist and women: reality is socially constructed and therefore socially variant, no objective and semi permanent, the world is at a constant flux look at the social world, a product of our mind. Have to ask the question regardless of what the world is made of. How can we know the world given the fact we are social creatures. How do we gather knowledge about the world. What techniques can we use to access true knowledge.