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An important methodological debate in the field of social sciences concerns the question of whether they deal with hard, objective, and value-neutral facts, as the natural sciences do. Positivists agree with this characterization, in contrast to interpretive and critical perspectives on the social sciences.
In the social sciences, methodological individualism is a method for explaining social phenomena strictly in terms of the decisions of individuals, each being moved by their own personal motivations. In contrast, explanations of social phenomena which assume that cause and effect acts upon whole classes or groups are deemed illusory, and thus ...
Methodological Nationalism, as a practice within Social Science, has been further critiqued by scholars such as Saskia Sassen, who contends that the nation-state and its borders are an insufficient unit of analysis and that the national is at times the "terrains of the global".
Methodological solipsism is the thesis that the mental properties or mental states of an organism can be individuated exclusively on the basis of that state or property's relations with other internal states of the organism itself, without any reference to the society or the physical world in which the organism is embedded.
For example, Occam’s Razor is a methodological principle of theory selection favoring simple over complex theories. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] A closely related aspect of philosophical methodology concerns the question of which conventions one needs to adopt necessarily to succeed at theory making. [ 5 ]
In praxeology, methodological dualism is an epistemological position which states that it is necessary ─ based on our current state of knowledge and understanding ─ to use a different method in analysing the actions of human beings than the methods of the natural sciences (such as physics, chemistry, physiology, etc.).
To support his position that methodological rules generally do not contribute to scientific success, Feyerabend analyzed counterexamples to the claim that (good) science operates according to the methodological standards invoked by philosophers during Feyerabend's time (namely, inductivism and falsificationism).
Methodological consultants primarily find work in academia and industry. In the private sector, consultants may be part of an organisation, employed by a consultancy firm, or self-employed. Many universities offer in-house methodological advice for researchers, as well as, in some cases, services for outside clients. The advisors may also be ...