Loyola University Chicago

Department of Philosophy

PHIL 382: Philosophy of Social Science

PHIL 382: Philosophy of Social Science

The Generic Catalogue Description

Study of philosophical problems involved in and topics emerging from the practice of contemporary behavioral sciences: for example, theory construction, fact and value, causality, relativism, functionalism, statistical generalization, social planning.


PHIL 382: Issues in the Philosophy of Human Nature

Michael Steltenkamp, SJ 

The “laboratory” for this course will be the American Indian world and its spirituality.  The course will provide a philosophical critique of interactions between theology and the social sciences, especially anthropology. We will examine the phenomena of acceptance of a spirit-world and belief in a Supreme Being, along with the resulting human responses of worship, prayer, sacrifice, lived priorities and values. We will critique theology's uses of categories and results from the social sciences, as well as the social sciences' tendency to reduce religious practices to epiphenomena of psychological, economic, or sociological conditioning. Fr. Steltenkamp is a visiting professor from Wheeling Jesuit University.