SOCI 217 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Data Analysis, Homo Sapiens
Week 1- Human Inquiry and science
• What are some things about the social world that you know for sure?
▪ earth is round
• everyone knows
• experts tell us, we trust their expertise
Looking for reality
• A. ordinary human inquiry
• B. tradition
• C. Authority
• D. Errors in Inquiry and some solutions
• E. What’s really real?
• Agreement reality
o What we know as part and parcel of the culture we share with those around us
• Experiential reality
o What we know from personal experience and discovery
• Epistemology: the science of knowing
o Methodology, a subset of epistemology: the science of finding out
Ordinary human inquiry
• We as homo sapiens, see predisposed to:
o Use causal reasoning
o Use probabilistic reasoning
o Predict future events by understanding why things are related to one another
• Human inquiry aims at what and why
Tradition
• Information passed on through socialization
• Acquired from culture, social institutions, common knowledge
• Cumulative knowledge
• Problems:
o Can limit inquiry, as we rarely want to see things in a different light than
perceived by everybody
o Can lead to prejudice, close-mindedness, and culture relativism
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Document Summary
Week 1- human inquiry and science: what are some things about the social world that you know for sure, earth is round, everyone knows, experts tell us, we trust their expertise. Ordinary human inquiry: we as homo sapiens, see predisposed to, use causal reasoning, use probabilistic reasoning, predict future events by understanding why things are related to one another, human inquiry aims at what and why. Authority: comes from those who hold some status and expertise, pros, trusting the judgement of experts in a field can help human inquiry, cons, authority figures can make mistakes and misuse their position of authority. Inquiry can be hindered by legitimate authorities that are within their own fields: halo effect where we generalize that the expertise is great, the advertising industry misuses authority. Illogical reasoning: reaching conclusion that is not logical, solutions, use conscious and explicit systems of logic, ask if conclusion necessarily follows from the premise.
