POS-3204 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Communitarianism, Motivated Reasoning, Centrality
Document Summary
Human behavior is explainable and predictable: b= f (p, e) (b) behavior = function of personality and environment, p examples religious reasons, candidate positions, e examples work, transportation. Government exists to solve collective action problems: tragedy of the commons, natural resources. Humans are group centric: don(cid:1685)t act as individuals, context matters. Correlation is not causation but there are ways to show causation: experiments, research designs. Vox populi, or (cid:1688)the voice of the people(cid:1689) (cid:1688) . opinions held by private persons which government find it prudent to heed. (cid:1689) Individuals opinions that have any issues with the government. Plato: (cid:1684)children should be raised by philosopher-kings. Aristotle: people/citizens may be ignorant but collectively they can make rational decisions (always said democracy will devolve into mob rule) These all lead to action, whether a person is liable or not to hold their opinion: direction: means is this or yay or nay.
