POLS 110 Lecture : September 19-20, 2012- How do we study politics.docx
14 Apr 2013
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The importance of ideas, concepts, values and facts. Ideas: idealist vs. materialist: a general form of a mental concept, attitude is negative or positive, platonic shadow: we only perceive reality from indicative reality; shadows on the wall, idea has to exist before the concept is created. Concepts: generalized idea of something: helps us impose meaning on the world to make sense of it, all concepts have a similar basis; they all share something, ways words are put together to have semantic meaning. Values: normative concepts: moral principles; what ought to be. Congenial truth: a belief we have that reinforces our existing prejudices. Deductive: goes from general to the specific. A model is a representation of something. Models tell us something about the world; are ways of organizing and. It has certain characteristics which we generalize integrating facts. Politics usually has a state centered focus. A more expansive definition sees the state as only one actor.
