Authorities

Occam’s Razor: A way to judge theories, the sharp end is logical and is deductive reasoning, the point to
bring reality to one simple truth. The dull end represents psychological science and is inductive, where
many small truths are the goal. The simpler explanation the better.

Induction vs. Deduction: Empiricism vs. Logic: Science is based on observations

“I am not a poet. I am simply a very consciences poet.” He wasn’t trying to present or give the world any
type of view point. Fond statement of the empirical society, one simply states what they see and is not
trying to “say” something about the world.

Positive or normative. Are men and women equal? Empirical, in terms of strength, body… Leads to many
problems and misunderstandings. One can say women are different. One might think you are saying
they are not of the same value. Problem between empirical and normative. Harvard president fired for
suggesting Women aren’t as interested in arts and sciences and nothing to do with discrimination in the
field. He looked at it empirically board of trustees normatively. Normative is what something should be
like, the positive is stating what something is.

Rationality vs. Non-rationality

Division in whether people act rationally or not. Rationally is defined as one who knows what they wants
and tries to get what they want most efficiently. Non-rational has to deal with values, emotions, sex
drive, et cetera (sub-rational and supra-rational). Irrational is the failure to maximize yield. Some
instances they are incommensurable, but mostly commensurable.

Individualism vs. Institutionalism

Whether it is more important to understand and look at people or is it more important to look at these
institutions around people. Depends whether you think the sum is the just the sum of the parts, than
one should look from an individualism lens, but if the difference of the sum – the parts is greater than
the parts, one should use and institutional rule.

History (yes or no)

Whether you accept or reject history as a means to understanding people. Are people just what they
are? Or do the people prior impact us? Do history and circumstances shape who a person is? In order to
understand a person you have to understand their history and cultural influences. Or people just are
who they are. Basic human characteristics, humans are self sustaining. Gender is it universal or not?

Path dependence: once you go down a certain path, things follow along that path, you are now path
dependent and can’t go back.
Ontological vs. Epistemic:

Ontological, things that exist in the real world. This table. Epistemic things that exist in the head, can’t
see them. What is running the world, the Ontological or Epistemic side? Most people don’t have an
opinion on the Afghan war.

Huge debate in Western society. Hegel vs. Marx. Marx’s influence has to do with ontological vs.
epistemic. Hegel says ideas has moved humanity and events. The idea of nationalism, Christianity, idea
of nations, armies, et cetera. Way people define themselves. Events are derived by ides, it is what
changes the world. Marx says what was moving the world was physical technological changes. As
technology changed the world changed. Idea sets are superstructural, they are sitting on top the
technology changes. Capitalism was a way to rationalize technology. In the feudal system, Christian
thoughts had such a large impact because it said up a hierarchy and Christianity is an after world focus,
the next life is better. You are rewarded for suffering. It is the perfect set up for people who wanted to
have a lot of serfs. For serfs who would suffer because they thought the next life would be a better life.

Rational vs. Anti-Rational

Rational the World is orderely, uniformities, regularities, laws (permanent or definite), the World is
systematic. Anti-Rational perspective, the World is much more chaotic, no patterns to it.

Some of rationality might have been foundation, some we made it rational ourselves. Humans have free
will and can create chaos. Do we really have free will? Or are these decisions programmed into us? How
much freewill do we actually have? Christianity/Religion or not has a big part to deal with the debate.
Religious more likely to have a Rational view. Humans not comfortable with the Anti-Rational
perspective. We want to understand anything and see order.

Search for order or system/finding patterns. We also can find things that aren’t there, rational grounded
in religion and grounded in the desire to not have a problematic world. Black Swans bring up the idea
that it is a much more anti-rationalist world than we would think.

Laws vs. Mechanisms

Systematic laws that are eternal. There are in fact universal laws, that are always true, across time,
across cultures, A will always lead to B. Mechanisms, there may not be Universal Laws, there is too much
free will, the World is too chaotic. There are only Mechanisms. Much smaller generalization one can
make. Doesn’t happen all the time, might just be in one small community or point in time, not universal.
Mechanistic World most often the case sometimes A leads to B, but B sometimes leads to A. IF that’s the
case you can only know after the fact. In between laws and mechanisms, probalistic law, not universal,
but it is probable. Mechanistic worldview have to develop a tremendous number of mechanisms.

3 Soc. Science Laws:

1) Duverger’s Law- In a first past-the-post election, first person to get 50% wins, there will be two
and only two legitimate political parties.
2) Pareto’s Law of Income or Pareto’s Principle- Every known society has a distribution of Income
with a ratio of 80-20. In which at least the top 20% hold at least 80% of the income and vice-
versa.
3) Democratic Peace Theory- Two Democracies do not go to war against each other.