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Phenomenology, Cultural Meaning, and the Curious Case of Suicide: Localizing the Structure-culture Dialectic Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Jienian Zhang, Colter Uscola, Seth Abrutyn, Anna S. Mueller
Sociology has largely followed Durkheim’s lead in ignoring the question: why do people die by suicide? This negation prioritizes a positivist, structuralist approach and stymies sociology’s contribution by closing off a wide range of tools sociologists might employ. An interpretivist turn in suicide studies accompanied by the growing adoption of qualitative methodology has opened up an array of opportunities
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A Science and Technology Studies Challenge to Trustworthiness Criteria: Toward a More Naturalistic Approach Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2024-04-10 Rahman Sharifzadeh
Lincoln and Guba provided some principles and four evaluative criteria called “trustworthiness” to guide social science research naturalistically. However, drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature, a field engaged with methods and practices of science for several decades, one can argue that this approach is not still fully naturalistic. In this paper, we review Lincoln and Guba’s
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Book Review: Unintended Consequences and the Social Sciences: An Intellectual History Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Kei Yoshida
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Book Review: Cold War Social Science: Transnational Entanglements Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2024-03-07 Jialu Xie
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Rethinking Ontological Individualism Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2024-02-01 Daniel Little
The paper offers a critique of ontological individualism as a framework for social ontology. The phrase gives unjustified priority to facts about individuals over facts about higher-level social features. The paper reviews several important contributions to more nuanced views, including Giddens, Archer, Granovetter, Mahoney, and Thelen. It is argued that our guiding “map” of the social world needs
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Classroom as Crucible in the Humboldtian University: Reply to Collin Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Steve Fuller
This reply to Finn Collin’s critically sympathetic review of my Back to the University’s Future: The Second Coming of Humboldt, addresses some of the tensions involved in realizing “Humboldt 2.0” in today’s higher education environment. Its focus is largely on the academic’s sense of researcher as being one of learner. In other words, the Humboldtian sees research as the necessary complement to teaching
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Historical Kinds in the Social World Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Muhammad Ali Khalidi
This paper makes a distinction between ahistorical causal-functional kinds and historical kinds, which include both type- and token-historical kinds, some of which are “copied kinds.” After showing how these distinctions play out in various social sciences, a number of reasons are put forward for the historical individuation of some social kinds. As in the natural sciences, historical individuation
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Inseparable Bedfellows: Imagination and Mathematics in Economic Modeling Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2023-05-11 Fiora Salis, Mary Leng
In this paper we explore the hypothesis that constrained uses of imagination are crucial to economic modeling. We propose a theoretical framework to develop this thesis through a number of specific...
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What Should Contractarian Economists Do? Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2023-05-03 Tomasz Kwarciński, Krzysztof M. Turek
The paper examines Robert Sugden’s arguments for contractarian economics, which exclude objective valuation. From a metaethical stance we claim that it is possible and desirable to enrich the axiol...
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An Analytical Approach to Culture Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2023-04-12 Omar Lizardo
In this paper, I outline a general framework for cultural analysis consistent with an “analytic” approach to explanation in social science. The proposed approach provides coherent solutions to thor...
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Coordination as Naturalistic Social Ontology: Constraints and Explanation Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2023-03-09 Valerii Shevchenko
In the paper, I propose a project of social coordination as naturalistic social ontology (CNSO) based on the rules-in-equilibria theory of social institutions (Guala and Hindriks 2015; Hindriks and...
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Legitimate Reactivity in Measuring Social Phenomena: Race and the Census Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2023-03-01 Rosa W. Runhardt
As a result of being measured, individuals sometimes alter their behavior and attitudes to such extent that subsequent measurement results are affected. This ‘reactivity’ to measurement problematiz...
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Robert K. Merton, Cudos and Magical Thinking in the Age of Covid Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Ian Jarvie
The ongoing efforts to explain the disease COVID-19 and the parallel efforts to devise and implement public health measures that mitigate it, are an opportunity to reconsider the values of science ...
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Aspiration and Self-Realization: The Ameliorative Projects of Steve Biko Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2023-01-25 David Miguel Gray
Work on the conceptual amelioration of race concepts is usually negative or critical: it uncovers social features that contribute to racial hierarchies. Much less focus has been placed on how ameli...
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Are There Really Social Causes? Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2023-01-13 August Faller
This article investigates the causal efficacy of social properties, which faces the following puzzle. First, for both intuitive and scientific reasons, it seems social properties have causal import...
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Agassi and Popper on Nationalism – and Beyond Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Malachi Hacohen
Popper and Agassi diverged on nationalism. Popper was a trenchant critic whereas Agassi formed a theory of liberal nationalism. At the root of their disagreement was Popper’s refusal of Jewish iden...
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Agassi on Morality and Ethics Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-11-22 Lydia Amir
This paper offers a summary of Agassi’s views of morality and ethics. Agassi proposes a non-reductive psychological theory of moral judgments, complemented by duties, and a psychological hypothesis...
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Agassi’s Treatment of Mental Illness: The Perspectives of Critical Rationalism and Institutional Individualism Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-10-20 Nathaniel Laor
Joseph Agassi, together with Yehuda Fried, presented the paradoxes of paranoia and proposed to explain and solve them by introducing innovative diagnostic criteria for psychosis as reflecting a spe...
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Joseph Agassi’s Critical Historiography of Science Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-10-19 Stefano Gattei
In Towards an Historiography of Science (1963) and in other related works spanning over his entire career, Agassi presents his wide-ranging and original understanding of the history of science. It ...
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Agassi’s “Sensationalism” and Popper on the Empirical Basis Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Jeremy Shearmur
This paper discusses Agassi’s critique of Popper’s theory of the “empirical basis”. It argues that Popper’s theory should be interpreted with emphasis on its realism and anti-subjectivism, and as s...
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All we Are Saying: Joseph Agassi’s Application of Critical Rationalism to Political Science Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Chen Yehezkely
Agassi’s chief contribution to the application of critical rationalism to political science is his claim that civic nationhood is a minimum requirement of democracy. This usually comes with the qua...
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One Step Forward From Agassi’s Inquiries on Logic: A Fallibilist Logic for Critical Rationalism Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-10-17 John Wettersten
Critical rationalists cannot reconcile their falibilism with the demand of logic for universality. Popper tried, but failed, to achieve universality in logic without proof. Attempts to find a limit...
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Metaphysical Perspectives and Their Role in Science Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-10-10 Nimrod Bar-Am
In this paper I offer a brief summary of Popper’s views on metaphysics. I then explain Agassi’s criticism of those views, and why I regard them as fruitful improvements.
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The Return of the Repressed: Subject, Truth and Critique in Times of Post-Truth Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-10-08 Johan Söderberg, Olle Bjurö
The surge of post-truth calls for a reassessment of psychoanalytic and ideology critique-approaches in the social sciences. Both traditions are dismissed by the principal antagonists in the post-tr...
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Popper and Agassi at Odds Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-07-18 Ian Jarvie
Three main conflicts between Popper and Agassi are discussed. Over the ethics of hard work which in reality turns out to be over perfectionism and optimism. Over the role of metaphysics in science....
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Rationality As A Meta-Analytical Capacity of the Human Mind: From the Social Sciences to Gödel Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-07-18 Nathalie Bulle
In contrast to dominant approaches to human reason involving essentially a logical and instrumental conception of rationality easily modeled by artificial intelligence mechanisms, I argue that the ...
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Agassi’s Contribution to the History of Science Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-07-09 Michael Segre
Agassi has undertaken the challenge of performing a microanalysis of the works of several scientists, pointing out areas of complexity, raising questions, and criticizing current histories of scien...
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Agassi on Technology Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-07-05 William Berkson
Joseph Agassi's distinction and characterization of science, applied science, and technology—with invention connecting applied science and technology—has been a signal contribution. His theory of s...
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The Pedagogical Perils and Promises of Critical Rationalism Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-07-01 Raphael Sassower
The philosophical principles guiding the pedagogy of Critical Rationalism emphasize the autonomy of individual students, the democratic organization of learning institutions, and a workshop setting...
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Reply to Michael Lynch’s Comment on “Is Representation a ‘Folk’ Term?” Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-06-17 Martyn Hammersley
I welcome Mike Lynch’s response to my article and thank him for it. It is, perhaps, necessary to reiterate that the article was not primarily about ethnomethodology, or even about ethnomethodological work in Science and Technology Studies (STS), but about a particular line of argument – what can crudely be called radical constructionism – which has long been part of STS and continues to be influential
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Comment on Martin Hammersley, “Is ‘Representation’ a Folk Term?” Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-05-24 Michael Lynch
Hammersley asserts that “radical” strands of ethnomethodology and constructionism in science and technology studies (STS) take an anti-representationalist approach which denies that “science produc...
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Jeremy Bentham’s Social Ontology: Fictionality, Factuality and Language Critique Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-05-23 Bryan Green
In terms of the distinction between relationalist and substantialist philosophies of science opened up by American pragmatist thinkers like Dewey and Bentley, Bentham’s social ontology is relationa...
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Joseph Agassi’s Contribution to Philosophy Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-04-30 Nimrod Bar-Am,Jeremy Shearmur
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CORRIGENDUM to Mathematical Models and Robustness Analysis in Epistemic Democracy: A Systematic Review of Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem Models Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-04-13
Sakai R. Mathematical Models and Robustness Analysis in Epistemic Democracy: A Systematic Review of Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem Models. Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 2020; 50(3):195–214. doi: 10.1177/0048393120917635
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Dissent and Diversity in Science and Technology Studies: Reply to Fuller, Kasavin and Shipovalova, and Turner Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-04-06 William T Lynch
My argument in Minority Report: Dissent and Diversity in Science is that Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend reconciled historicist and normative philosophy of science in ways that suggest a productive path forward for Science and Technology Studies (STS) and history and philosophy of science today. Though their influence on philosophy of science is generally considered significant, their approaches have
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Is ‘Representation’ a Folk Term? Some Thoughts on a Theme in Science Studies Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-03-30 Martyn Hammersley
An influential strand within Science and Technology Studies (STS) rejects the idea that science produces representations referring to objects or processes that exist independently of it. This radical ‘turn’ has been framed as ‘constructionist’, ‘nominalist’, and more recently as ‘ontological’. Its central argument is that science constructs or enacts rather than represents. Since most practitioners
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The Social Epistemology of Scientific Dissent: Responding to William Lynch’s Minority Report Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-03-27 Steve Fuller
William Lynch’s Minority Report is the most comprehensive and fair-minded attempt to give epistemic dissent its due in science that has appeared in recent times. Nevertheless, it remains too beholden to the scientific establishment as its epistemic benchmark. The sophistication of Lynch’s argument lies in the trading of counterfactual intuitions about whether suppressed dissenters would scientifically
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Proliferation Update. Testing the Science and Technology Studies Mainstream Through Current Science’s Controversies Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-03-12 Ilya Kasavin, Lada Shipovalova
Disputes in the field of science and technology studies (STS) demonstrate its topicality as they elucidate the prospects for a postmodern world, and William Lynch in his book, in search of a constructive solution to current controversies, employs the dialectical approach of Lakatos and Feyerabend. Lynch takes a bold step to present an apparently “degenerated scientific research program” as a competitive
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Science without the Romance Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-03-11 Stephen Turner
This is a commentary on William Lynch’s Minority Report, which is a synthesis of the last 75 years of STS writings with philosophical themes from Lakatos, Feyerabend, and others. The comment questions the continued relevance of older ideas of scientific opinion which rested on the supposed autonomy of scientists in the face of the present grant system and the bureaucracy of peer review. The magnitude
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Peter Winch and the Autonomy of the Social Sciences Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Jonas Ahlskog
This article offers a reassessment of the main import of Peter Winch’s philosophy of the social sciences. Critics argue that Winch presented a flawed methodology for the social sciences, while his supporters deny that Winch’s work is about methodology at all. Contrary to both, the author argues that Winch deals with fundamental questions about methodology, and that there is something substantial to
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Pigden Revisited, or In Defence of Popper’s Critique of the Conspiracy Theory of Society Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-02-24 Deane Galbraith
Charles Pigden’s 1995 article “Popper Revisited, or What is Wrong with Conspiracy Theories?” stimulated what is today a fertile sub-field of philosophical enquiry into conspiracy theories. In his article, Pigden identifies Karl Popper as the originator of the philosophical argument that it is naïve to believe in any conspiracy theory. But Popper was not criticizing belief in conspiracy theories at
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The Structure of Complexity and the Limits of Collective Intentionality Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2022-02-15 Francesco Di Iorio
According to Searle’s theory of collective intentionality, the fundamental structure of any society can be accounted for in terms of cooperative mechanisms that create deontic relations. This paper criticizes Searle’s standpoint on the ground that, while his social ontology can make sense of simple systems of interaction like symphony orchestras and football teams, the whole coordinative structure
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Defending De-idealization in Economic Modeling: A Case Study Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Edoardo Peruzzi, Gustavo Cevolani
This paper defends the viability of de-idealization strategies in economic modeling against recent criticism. De-idealization occurs when an idealized assumption of a theoretical model is replaced with a more realistic one. Recently, some scholars have raised objections against the possibility or fruitfulness of de-idealizing economic models, suggesting that economists do not employ this kind of strategy
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What’s the Point? A Presentist Social Functionalist Account of Institutional Purpose Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-11-24 Armin W. Schulz
Although it is clear that many of the major contemporary social problems center on the extent to which social institutions do or do not function as they are meant to do, it is still unclear exactly what the function of a social institution is—and thus when this function is undermined. This paper presents and defends a novel theory of social functionalism—presentist social functionalism—to answer these
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A model-based approach to social ontology Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-11-24 Matti Sarkia
This paper argues for theoretical modeling and model-construction as central (but not necessarily the only) types of activities that philosophers of social ontology (in the analytic tradition) engage in. This claim is defended through a detailed case study and revisionary interpretation of Raimo Tuomela’s account of the we-perspective. My interpretation is grounded in Ronald Giere’s account of scientific
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Rationality Assumptions and their Limits Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-11-22 Robert Feleppa
In “Different Cultures, Different Rationalities” (2000) Stephen Lukes weighs in on the controversies concerning the killing of Captain Cook by Hawaiians and what it says about the role of rationality assumptions in translation. While at first seeming to adopt a Davidsonian anti-relativist position concerning the enabling role of assumptions of common rationality in interpretation, Lukes rejects Davidson’s
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How to Put the Cart Behind the Horse in the Cultural Evolution of Gender Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-11-18 Daniel Saunders
In The Origins of Unfairness, Cailin O’Connor develops a series of evolutionary game models to show that gender might have emerged to solve coordination problems in the division of labor. One assumption of those models is that agents engage in gendered social learning. This assumption puts the explanatory cart before the horse. How did early humans have a well-developed system of gendered social learning
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Interventionism and Over-Time Causal Analysis in Social Sciences Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-11-17 Tung-Ying Wu
The interventionist theory of causation has been advertised as an empirically informed and more nuanced approach to causality than the competing theories. However, previous literature has not yet analyzed the regression discontinuity (hereafter, RD) and the difference-in-differences (hereafter, DD) within an interventionist framework. In this paper, I point out several drawbacks of using the interventionist
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Treading Water to Stay in the Same Place* Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-06-16 Joseph Agassi
Olivera offers a book of almost 500 pages in search of consensus in the social sciences, supposedly for its Galileo (14). Galileo’s status is indeed secure. Opinions on that status vary; mainly among social scientists: physicists show no interest. Many social scientists take for granted that the success of physics lies in its method. Let us admit this for now, at least tentatively. What then is this
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Thick Concepts in Economics: The Case of Becker and Murphy’s Theory of Rational Addiction Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-05-26 Charles Djordjevic, Catherine Herfeld
In this paper, we examine the viability of avoiding value judgments encoded in thick concepts when these concepts are used in economic theories. We focus on what implications the use of such thick concepts might have for the tenability of the fact/value dichotomy in economics. Thick concepts have an evaluative and a descriptive component. Our suggestion is that despite attempts to rid thick concepts
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Evidential Pluralism and Epistemic Reliability in Political Science: Deciphering Contradictions between Process Tracing Methodologies Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-04-28 Rosa W. Runhardt
Evidential pluralism has been used to justify mixed-method research in political science. The combination of methodologies within (qualitative) case study analysis, however, has not received as much attention. This article applies the theory of evidential pluralism to causal inference in the case study method process tracing. I argue that different methodologies for process tracing commit to distinct
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The Building Blocks of Social Trust: The Role of Customary Mechanisms and Property Relations for the Emergence of Social Trust in the Context of the Commons Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-04-22 Marc Goetzmann
This paper argues that social trust is the emergent product of a complex system of property relations, backed up by a sub-system of mutual monitoring. This happens in a context similar to Ostrom’s commons, where cooperation is necessary for the management of resources, in the absence of external authorities to enforce sanctions. I show that social trust emerges in this context because of an institutional
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When Experiments Need Models Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-04-21 Donal Khosrowi
This paper argues that an important type of experiment-target inference, extrapolating causal effects, requires models to be successful. Focusing on extrapolation in Evidence-Based Policy, it is argued that extrapolation should be understood not as an inference from an experiment to a target directly, but as a hybrid inference that involves experiments and models. A general framework, METI, is proposed
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A Critique of Searle’s Linguistic Exceptionalism Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-03-09 Gregory J. Lobo
John Searle’s social ontology distinguishes between linguistic and non-linguistic institutional facts. He argues that every instance of the latter is created by declarative speech acts, while the former are exceptions to this far-reaching claim: linguistic phenomena are autonomous, their meaning is “built in,” and this is necessary, Searle argues, to avoid “infinite regress.” In this essay I analyze
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Social Ontology and Model-Building: A Response to Epstein Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-02-07 Nadia Ruiz
Brian Epstein has recently argued that a thoroughly microfoundationalist approach towards economics is unconvincing for metaphysical reasons. Generally, Epstein argues that for an improvement in the methodology of social science we must adopt social ontology as the foundation of social sciences; that is, the standing microfoundationalist debate could be solved by fixing economics’ ontology. However
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Context in Mechanism-Based Explanation Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-02-03 Gianluca Pozzoni, Tuukka Kaidesoja
In this article, we discuss the issue of context-dependence of mechanism-based explanation in the social sciences. The different ways in which the context-dependence and context-independence of mechanism-based explanation have been understood in the social sciences are often motivated by different and apparently incompatible understandings of what explanatory mechanisms are. Instead, we suggest that
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Max Weber and Social Ontology Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-02-01 Joshua Rust
Key elements of John Searle’s articulation of the Standard Model of Social Ontology can be found within Max Weber’s ideal type of legal-rational authority. However, the fact that, for Weber, legal-rational authority is just one of three types of legitimate authority, along with traditional and charismatic authority, suggests limitations to the Standard Model’s scope of applicability. Where Searle takes
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The Source of Epistemic Normativity: Scientific Change as an Explanatory Problem Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-01-27 Thodoris Dimitrakos
In this paper, I present the problem of scientific change as an explanatory problem, that is, as a philosophical problem concerning what logical forms of explanation we should employ in order to understand the major conceptual ruptures throughout the history of science. I distinguish between two logical forms of explanation: (a) empirical-scientific and (b) normative explanations. Based on this distinction
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Book Review: A Sceptical Theory of Scientific Inquiry: Problems and Their Progress by LB Briskman Philosophy of the Social Sciences (IF 0.984) Pub Date : 2021-02-22 Nimrod Bar-Am
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