Methodology of Social Sciences

The first half of the course gives an introduction to selected topics in general philosophy of science that are of particular interest to social scientists (such as problems of demarcation, verification-confirmation-falsification-corroboration, theory change, normativity, realism-instrumentalism, idealization, theory reduction, social science laws and performativity). The second half of the course focuses on the intertwined topics of probability, rationality, and causation: we are going to discuss interpretations of probability, Dutch book arguments, Bayesianism, and topics in (probabilistic) causality.

General remarks

A course website with links to lecture notes, readings, and reading assignments is available at: http://hps.elte.hu/~gyepi/methsocsci
Further online resources: pdf of the syllabus ; zip of all readings .

Classes will be held offline, on Thursdays between 12:15-13:45, in room 224 of the I building of ELTE at Astoria (BI-2-224).

The lectures, readings, and reading assignments are in English and sufficient reading/speaking skills are expected. The instructor makes the required readings available. For the second half of the course basic knowledge of probability theory and of statistics is useful, but not required.

Plagiarism and/or copying of each others' work will be severely penalized in this course. While discussion of the topics among students is encouraged, all submitted work should be your own work.

Requirements

Your grade gets determined on the basis of two components:

• (25%): reading assignments: links to 11 reading assignments will be made available on the course website. 25% of your grade score will be determined on the basis of your best 8 answer scores to these reading assignments; if you submit more than 8, only your best 8 will count towards your grade. IMPORTANT: the deadline for the submission of your answers is 9am on the morning of the class for which the reading was assigned! The deadline is strict and no late submissions are accepted!
• (75%): oral exam. You can choose a topic in philosophy of science that was discussed during the semester and prepare a 10 minutes long talk which you are supposed to present during the oral exam. The key focus of your presentation should be on philosophical problems/questions but the presentation should be self-contained and accessible to an intelligent person who hears from you about it first. The presentation is evaluated on the basis of the truth, clarity, structure and coherence of the presented material, and to a smaller extent on the presentation's delivery and fit in the 10 minutes timeframe. After the presentation we spend 10-15 minutes with discussing the topic of your presentation, which may also include questions about other related issues that were discussed during the relevant lectures and/or in the relevant course readings.

Exam questions (NOT FOR STUDENTS!)