J.D. Trout

In light of the growing philosophical interest in social science -- itself spawned by philosophical concerns regarding social theory and critique -- it will be necessary for informed philosophers to understand the methods of social research before subjecting the morals of that research to epistemic evaluation. In this course, we will provide the philosophical tools for this analysis, and no technical background will be presupposed. We will apply Verstehen approaches as well as statistical techniques, in the examination of such research fields as narrative history, psychoanalysis, and the relation between race and electoral participation in political science. Given the widespread success of, and adherence to, these inductive methods, we will examine the resulting influence on philosophical conceptions of rationality. Throughout, we will assess themes of realist and antirealist accounts of contemporary social and psychological science.