My flight takes off for Kenya, and I come to the realization that I have never left the country without my mom. Although this is an exciting experience for me, it is also very overwhelming. Before takeoff, I come up with a sleeping pattern that would help reduce the Jet Lag and fatigue due to […]
Research Portfolio Post #3: Philosophical Wagers
Contemporary academic research rests on several philosophical wagers, beginning with the concept of ontology, or the question of what kind of knowledge is out there to know. When we discussed the debates between objectivism and constructionism, or what Andrew Abbott calls realism and constructionism, I approached them feeling entirely certain of my beliefs about how […]
Philosophical Wagers
Ontology and methodology are two concepts that stand at the basis of understanding research. As defined, ontology is the belief about the nature of reality. It is a philosophical study that allows researchers to understand the logic of reality and being. Ontology can be used in social research to understand why and how beings and individuals exist (and […]
RPP#3: PHILOSOPHICAL WAGERS
While reading Abbotts debates on methodology, I came to understand Ontology and Methodology as two separate stages of research that together to create the foundational bedrock to how to frame and engage in your research. Ontology I found to be especially interesting and more difficult to grasp because it is a lot more theoretical and […]
Research Portfolio #3 – Philosophical Wagers
Ontology is still a difficult concept for me to understand given the complexity of the term. It is not simple to fully grasp what there is to know about the world because it is far beyond what just one person can know. Given my interest in the statistical approaches to research, I find ontology to […]
Philosophical Wagers
I understand the concept of ontology to be how a researcher views the world they are studying. Basically, what a researcher believes that we can learn about the world through research. Meanwhile, methodology is the set of assumptions about the world and the nature of knowledge that inform what tools we use to get at […]
Research Portfolio Post #3: Philosophical Wagers
I understand ontology to be a philosophical conversation about the fundamental characteristics of the social world. I tend to believe that social realities exist separately from people (and the researcher) and are enduring in their own right. This opinion would certainly fall on the side of objectivism. Conversely, a constructionist would probably argue that social […]
Research Portfolio Post #3: Philosophical Wagers
Ontology and methodology provide foundation for scholarly inquiry. Without them, any research we undertake would fall apart, incapable to withstand the tests of validity and reliability. It is also ontological and methodological assumptions that guide our work in specific directions instead of just letting it ramble around. As Patrik Aspers puts it, ontology “is concerned with […]
What’s That You Wager?
Throughout history, we see that many very important people come from various backgrounds, and these many backgrounds inform their world view and how they think that things will operate. For example, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes thought that people were inherently evil, needing a government over them to keep them in line. John Locke (also an […]
Philosophical wagers
When reading through the introduction to these philosophical debates, I fell firmly on what I’ll call the “universal” side of all of them. That is, those sides of each debate which held that generalizeable research could be done and facts could be pulled closer to our grasp, even if we never achieve absolute certainty. (I.e. […]