Stipulating universal propositions with a ceteris paribus clause is normal practice in science and especially in economics. Yet there are several problems associated with the use of ceteris paribus clauses in theorising and in policy matters. This paper first investigates three questions: how can ceteris paribus clauses be non-vacuous? How can ceteris paribus laws be true? And how can they help in formulating successful policy interventions in a diversity of contexts? It turns out that ceteris paribus clauses are not always (...) used legitimately. They are meant to fence off a theory from disturbing factors, but economists who do not specify the clause well enough tend to fence variables in rather than off. In such cases, it would be better to use theoretical abstraction, which is something very different from the use of ceteris paribus clauses. However, abstract theorising conceptually leads one away from the concrete detail of real world situations in which policies take place. Hence, a fourth question arises: how can policy interventions be properly designed on the basis of abstract laws? To answer this question, I defend interdisciplinarity in concept choice. (shrink)

This article is a reply to Bevir and Hall, who recently argued in this journal that the English School needs to reflect more on its philosophy. They are right. Yet, their preferred distinction between a structural and an interpretivist strand of the School is not a constructive way forward. This is because their distinction between a structural and an interpretivist strand of the school is too stark, their chosen dimensions for sorting through the School are arguably not the most fruitful, (...) and the inclusion of the English School’s normative agenda must remain independent of whether one is inclined to start from structure or from agency. After elaborating these points, the article moves on to suggesting a number of other philosophical issues which would be more relevant for the English School to work through. It ends with an empirical illustration of what an integrated English School approach, inspired by structuration, could look like. (shrink)

In the Nordic countries, at a time when women have only recently won the right to their own bodies and to a sexuality of their own and for themselves, women nevertheless fake orgasms. Moreover, a .

For the last three decades, the discussion on Hilary Putnam’s provocative suggestions around the issue of realism has raged widely. Putnam’s various formulations of, and arguments for, what he called internal realism in contrast to what he called metaphysical realism have been scrutinised from a variety of perspectives. One angle of attack has been missing, though: the view from the social sciences and the ontology of society. This perspective, I believe, will provide further confirmation to the observation that (...) Putnam’s two concepts of realism are all too aggregative in that they conflate elements that had better be kept distinct, at least for many important purposes (e.g. Niiniluoto 1996). The present essay can be read as an argument for a topic-specific examination of realism. This means that it challenges the overall validity of Richard Boyd’s arguments against what he calls “realism about”, that is, against “a certain fragmented conception of scientific realism, one according to which realism is deeply topic specific” (Boyd 1990, p. 175). Boyd takes the ‘x’ in realism about x” to designate two kinds of things: entities postulated in scientific theories (“realism about the ether” and “realism about higher taxa”) and scientific disciplines (“realism about physics” and “realism about biology”) (ibid., pp. 175, 190). He also suggests that “it seems possible cogently to accept realism about the natural sciences while denying it about at least some of the social sciences” (ibid., p. 191). In Boyd’s view, the possibility of realism about social sciences is undermined by their weak instrumental success; it is the instrumental reliability of method that he takes as the basis for a realist account of science. I do not underwrite this connection between realism and instrumental success, thus I am not compelled to reject realism about social sciences on these grounds; and, as we shall see, social sciences have other peculiarities as well (see Mäki 1996). I think we should, at least to some degree, disaggregate and relativize the issue of realism. I do have sympathy with Boyd’s strategic arguments against “realisms about”, but yet I believe realists will be better off by adopting a more concrete and localized approach to the issue (Mäki 2005). Social objects and social sciences deserve a separate treatment. There are two strategies that can be followed in examining a realism about x (type of entity, theory, discipline). One is to first fix the meaning of realism’ and then specify the extension of ‘x’. This is Boyd’s strategy. The other is to fix some part of the extension of ‘x’ and then adjust the meaning of ‘realism’ so as to accommodate whatever peculiarities the x in question may have (and finally to check whether the adjusted meaning of ‘realism’ meets the criteria of a minimal notion of realism; it would be here that we encounter a relatively fixed idea of some minimal realism, or a set of realist intuitions). The latter is my approach here. I begin with the interconnected ideas of “realism about social objects” andrealism about social sciences”. I am not only interested in what comes after ‘about’; I am also interested in what goes before it, namely ‘realism’ itself. Here is one premise of the discussion: the issue of proper forms of realism for dealing with specific problems is an issue to be settled at least partly a posteriori. Here is the problem for which a solution will be sought: what constraints, if any, does what we know about the social sciences and society (as depicted by the social sciences and our commonsense views) impose upon the forms of realism that can justifiably be adopted about them? This paper suggests to offer only some partial insight into this issue. It seeks to do so indirectly by discussing Putnam’s characterizations of internal and metaphysical realism. The focus will be on two aspects of Putnam’s realisms: [1] the role and kinds of independence and dependence (in relation to the human mind and related things); and [2] the possibility of error. It is shown that the nature of social objects has implications concerning the appropriate constraints on [1] and [2], and thereby on the kinds of realism that are available to social scientists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 20-39 [Access article in PDF] Anderson and the Novel Jonathan Culler 1 Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism has, in the past decade, become a classic of the humanities and social sciences. Any theoretically savvy discussion of nations or of societies of any sort must cite it for its fundamental insight that nations and, as Anderson points out, (...) "all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined" [6]. In retrospect, it seems obvious that nationality, nationness, and nationalism "are cultural artifacts of a particular kind" [4], but this had previously been obscured by intellectuals' sense that nationalism was above all an atavistic passion, an often noxious prejudice of the unenlightened. Imagined Communities both argued that we had better seek to understand it, since "nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time" [3], and gave us a constructivist way of thinking about the phenomenon of nationalism, which becomes more interesting and intellectually more acceptable when we ask how it is created, what discursive, imaginative activities bring particular nationalisms into being and give them their distinctive form. When nationalism was vulgar passion provoked by empirically occurring nations, it was vulnerable to the objection implicitly or explicitly mounted against it: why should I feel more affinity with people who happen to inhabit the country I live in than with others, more like-minded, who happen to have been born in other nations? Anderson neatly turned the tables on us by taking this as a serious question. Why indeed do we feel such affinities? How to explain the fact that people are more willing to make great sacrifices for others of the same nation whom they have never met (and whom they might dislike if they did) than for worthy and unfortunate people elsewhere?Read today, the introduction to Imagined Communities has the rightness and efficiency of a classic ("why hadn't anyone realized this before?"), as it guides us into the paradoxes of the modern world of nationalism: nations are objectively recent but subjectively antique, even eternal; nations may be messianic, but no nation's citizens imagine that everyone should eventually join their nation. Already here Anderson displays what I take to be the key to his appeal to the nonspecialist: his ability concretely to show us the strangeness of the familiar by judicious comparisons. Try to imagine a "Tomb of the Unknown Marxist or a Cenotaph for fallen Liberals," he suggests. But a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier does not seem risible. Why? "Many different nations have such tombs without feeling any need to specify the nationality of their absent occupants. What else could they be but Germans, American, Argentinians...?" [10]. We are in a sentence or two brought to appreciate the necessity of accounting for a social and cultural phenomenon that comparison and humor highlight.The second edition of Imagined Communities demonstrates, in a compelling if serendipitous way, just how much we need Anderson to provide such insights, as it takes up what he and his readers had failed to notice in the first edition. There he had quoted Ernest Renan remarking "in his suavely backhanded way," "Or l'essence d'une nation est que tous les individus aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous [End Page 20] aient oubliés bien des choses [in fact the essence of a nation is that all the individuals have many things in common and also that they have all forgotten many things]," with a footnote continuing the quotation: "tout citoyen français doit avoir oublié la Saint-Barthélemy, les massacres du Midi au XIIIe siècle [every French citizen must have forgotten Saint Bartholomew's, the Provence massacres in the thirteenth century]" [6]. In the preface to the second edition Anderson notes, "I had quoted Renan without the slightest understanding of what he had actually said: I had taken as something easily ironical what was in fact utterly bizarre" [xiv]. He calls this a "humiliating recognition" [xiv], which led him to write... (shrink)

The issue of whether there are laws in biology and the “special science”1 has been of interest owing to the debate about whether scientific explanation requires laws. A well-warn argument goes thus: no laws in social science, no explanations, or at least no scientific explanations, at most explanation-sketches. The conclusion is not just a matter of labeling. If explanations are not scientific they are not epistemically or practically reliable. There are at least three well-known diagnoses of where this argument (...) goes wrong. First, the argument that there are no laws in social science adopts an account of laws that is too stringent, one that not even the physical sciences satisfy (Cartwright 1983, Mitchell 2000). On a less stringent definition, there are plenty of laws in social science (and biology). These laws are, sensu Fodor, “non-strict,” as opposed to the “strict laws” (if any—vide Cartwright 1983) of physics. Second, scientific explanation does not require laws, and when laws do explain, they do so because they satisfy some other requirement on scientific explanation, for example unification, or the identification of causal difference-makers (Friedman 1974, Kitcher 1989, Salmon 1984, Strevens 2009). A third view, increasingly attractive among philosophers of social science and biology is due to James Woodward (2000, 2003). This view, like the second one eschews laws and identifies causes as difference makers. On this view explanations do require regularities, but these regularities need only satisfy a requirement of “invariance” under certain specified circumstances, in order to be explanatory, and.. (shrink)

Critics of functional explanations in social science maintain that such explanations are illegitimate unless a mechanism is specified. Others argue that mechanisms are not necessary for causal inference and that functional explanations are a type of causal claim that raise no special difficulties for testing. I show that there is indeed a special problem that confronts testing functional explanations resulting from their connection to second-order causal claims. I explain how mechanisms can resolve this difficulty, but argue that this (...) does not provide support for methodological individualism since it is not necessary that the mechanisms be described in terms of individual interactions. (shrink)

A distinctive feature of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work after 1930 was his turn to a conception of philosophy as a form of social inquiry, John G. Gunnell argues, and Thomas Kuhn's approach to the philosophy of science exemplified this conception. In this book, Gunnell shows how these philosophers address foundational issues in the social and human sciences, particularly the vision of social inquiry as an interpretive endeavor and the distinctive cognitive and practical relationship between social inquiry (...) and its subject matter. Gunnell speaks directly to philosophers and practitioners of the social and human sciences. He tackles the demarcation between natural and social science; the nature of social phenomena; the concept and method of interpretation; the relationship between language and thought; the problem of knowledge of other minds; and the character of descriptive and normative judgments about practices that are the object of inquiry. Though Wittgenstein and Kuhn are often criticized as initiating a modern descent into relativism, this book shows that the true effect of their work was to undermine the basic assumptions of contemporary social and human science practice. It also problematized the authority of philosophy and other forms of social inquiry to specify the criteria for judging such matters as truth and justice. When Wittgenstein stated that "philosophy leaves everything as it is," he did not mean that philosophy would be left as it was or that philosophy would have no impact on what it studied, but rather that the activity of inquiry did not, simply by virtue of its performance, transform the object of inquiry. (shrink)

Cognition, or scientific knowledge, is the fulcrum of Gellner’s philosophy of history. Science, for Gellner, is central to understanding the rise of the West and also to his defence of Enlightenment rationality against postmodernism and other forms of relativism. This way of thinking has recently been challenged, first, by global historians who locate the ‘great divergence’ in the 19th century rather than earlier, and second, by those who assign to the Enlightenment a pernicious role and argue that rationality and (...) scientific knowledge are inextricably bound to particular social contexts, for good or ill. Gellner’s ideas can be defended against these challenges, but this requires, first, distinguishing between rationality and science and, second, tracing the course of science and technology outside of the West. Once this defence is in place, Gellner’s ideas about the relation between cognition on one side and production and coercion can also be re-examined: here, too, his account requires revision since the idea that rationality ‘trumps’ the other two orders needs to be specified on the ground: in everyday life, for example, scientific knowledge is rather remote, and so often does not supersede other social dynamics. This also relates to other tensions in the relation between science, technology and everyday life: as Gellner noted, technology yields rubber as well as iron cages, but consumer technologies are now in some respects on a path towards unsustainable growth. Separating this problem from cognition is a further task. These refinements to Gellner’s ideas provide a basis for rethinking the connection he makes between liberalism and modern cognition. (shrink)

This study is concerned with current images of Science Studies travelling to places outside Western Europe and North America. These images focus on the movement of Science Studies’ formative concepts and ideas. They eclipse other formative aspects specific to the context in which this field was established. For example, Science Studies has analysed science within the conceptual architecture of modernity. Michel-Rolph Trouillot has proposed the notion of “Elsewhere” as analytical lens to analyse the constitution of modernity. The paper (...) claims that modern science, too, can be studied through this analytical lens to call attention to characteristics of science that remain systematically eclipsed. Trouillot’s notion of Elsewhere is applied to a paradigmatic case study from the field of Science Studies—Leviathan and the Air-Pump by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer—to test and demonstrate its analytical potential. By proposing a Programme in Science Studies Elsewhere, this paper refers to David Bloor’s four ten.. (shrink)

_Purpose_ of the article is to find out the main content and ways of embodying freedom as a value of the volunteer movement in the context of analyzing the social motivation of human behavior in general. _Theoretical basis._ The theoretical basis of the research is the philosophical and anthropological understanding of freedom as a person’s creative overcoming of obstacles to establish his or her eccentric essence. Such a vision is embedded, in particular, in Karl Jaspers’ philosophy of existence, Helmuth (...) Plessner’s philosophy of positioning in the world, and Paul Ricœur’s philosophy of rational choice of life path. _Originality__._ The importance of freedom as a value, as well as other social values, is revealed and specified through the analysis of the values of the volunteer movement. In the desire of people engaged in volunteer work to achieve freedom through other values, the content of freedom as a basis for self-reproduction of the individual, community and society is revealed. _Conclusions._ Representatives of various humanities and social sciences have distinct research interests in analyzing the values inherent in volunteers. As members of a certain society and certain communities in this society, volunteers do not act outside the economy, politics and other spheres of public life, but reveal their freedom through creative and non-standard solutions to economic, political, and other problems. At the same time, research psychologists focus attention on the personal self-realization of a person, theorists and practitioners of social work study volunteers’ desire to gain recognition from peers and other small social groups, and representatives of sociology, political science and other social sciences focus their attention on such socially significant values of volunteering as patriotism, solidarity, etc. The task of social philosophy is to justify the desire to contribute to the public good, which is common to all volunteers. Representatives of philosophical anthropology look for the best social intentions inherent in a person as a member of society in volunteering. Analysis of the values of volunteering as a motivator of human behavior provides knowledge of socially significant values inherent in every member of society to a greater or lesser extent. (shrink)

Many of the cognitive and social sciences deal with the question of how beliefs or belief-like states are produced and transmitted to others. Let us call any account or theory of belief-formation and propagation a doxology. I don’t use that term, of course, in the religious or theological sense. Rather, I borrow the Greek term ‘doxa’ for belief or opinion, and use ‘doxology’ to mean the study or theory of belief-forming processes. How is doxology related to epistemology? Epistemology (...) is the theory of knowledge, and according to standard accounts knowledge is justified true belief. Since knowledge entails belief, doxology would seem to be intimately related to epistemology. How can we say what produces knowledge unless we can say what produces belief? Of course, many epistemologists are not so interested in what produces knowledge. They are interested in specifying the conditions definitive of knowing. We need not be so restrictive, however, about epistemology’s scope. Historically, epistemology was concerned with the sources or methods of knowing: which methods of belief-formation, which routes to belief, augur well not only for belief production but for the production of knowledge? Which routes to belief offer good prospects for yielding true, justified belief? (shrink)

Despite immediate appearances, this book is not primarily a hermeneutical exercise in which the superiority of one interpretation of canonical texts is championed against others. Its origin lies elsewhere, near the overlap of history, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, and social theory of the usual kind. Weber, Pareto, Freud, W. I. Thomas, Max Scheler, Karl Mannheim, and many others of similar stature long ago wondered and wrote much about the interplay between societal rationalization and individual rationality, between collective furor and private (...) psychopathology—in short, about the strange and worrisome union of “character and social structure” (to recall Gerth and Mills). Pondering the history of social thought in this century can lead to the unpleasant realization that such large-scale questions slipped away, especially from sociologists, sometime before World War II. Or, if not entirely lost, they were so transformed in range and rhetoric that a gap opened between contemporary theorizing and its European background. Perhaps this partly explains Weber’s continuing appeal. By dealing with him, one might again broach topics long at odds with “social science” of the last forty years.—From the Preface. (shrink)

In this review, I survey theoretical accounts of exploitation in business, chiefly through the example of low wage or sweatshop labor. This labor is associated with wages that fall below a living wage standard and include long working hours. Labor of this kind is often described as self-evidently exploitative and immoral (Van Natta 1995). But for those who defend sweatshop labor as the first rung on a ladder toward greater economic development, the charge that sweatshop labor is self-evidently exploitative fails (...) adequately to explain the nature of the alleged wrongdoing. While all sides might agree that poor working conditions are unfortunate and undesirable, defenders of sweatshop labor argue that they provide the best available employment alternative for some workers and the best chance at economic development for many low and middle income countries (LMICs). Some defenders of sweatshop labor even embrace the label of exploitation. <br><br>Unless there is a clear, widely understood account by which exploitation is a moral wrong, then charging a practice as exploitative will do little to advance debates over whether and why a practice is morally problematic. A considerable body of work has been developed applying a growing literature on exploitation to sweatshop labor. While many forms of moral wrong are associated with sweatshop labor, I will focus specifically on the worry that low wages allow relatively wealthy employers wrongfully to take advantage of or gain from relatively poor workers, especially in LMICs. In particular, I will focus on instances of alleged exploitation in employment relationships that are voluntary and mutually beneficial. I have two reasons for doing so. First, by restricting this review to voluntary and mutually beneficial instances of exploitation, I can isolate the moral wrong of exploitation from other moral wrongs, especially the wrongs of coercion and outright harms to workers. Second, the focus on mutually beneficial and voluntary relationships will allow for arguments that sweatshop labor is not only not exploitative, but is a morally praiseworthy means of helping to encourage economic growth in poor areas of the world and to provide jobs that pay better and are more stable than any existing alternatives.<br><br>In this review, I aim to accomplish three goals. First, I will provide an overview of the many different uses of the charge of exploitation in business practice through an examination of the uses of the term in the literature on sweatshop labor. While it is often not clear what kind of moral wrong is assumed to take place when the charge of exploitation is used, I will demonstrate that many distinct types of exploitation, connected to distinct moral wrongs, are used in the literature on sweatshop labor and elsewhere in business ethics. Specifically, I will identify two broad categories of exploitation—exploitation as unfairness and exploitation as the mere use of others—with subgroups under each main category of exploitation. Second, I will discuss which of these senses of exploitation are defensible as identifying clear moral wrongs that take place in the context of business and, specifically, sweatshop labor. As I will argue, not all uses of the charge of exploitation are capable of persuasively identifying clear moral wrongs. Moreover, there is not a single, clear type of exploitation that takes place in business but, rather, several distinct forms. Third, I will apply the lessons learned from my exploration of exploitation in sweatshop labor to other specific areas of business. As I will argue, there are multiple viable models of exploitation in the sweatshop literature that can illuminate exploitative practices of relatively well compensated employees, customers, suppliers, and entire communities. <br><br>While discussions of theories of exploitation tend to argue for a single, correct account of this moral wrong, my review of the literature on exploitation in sweatshop labor supports the conclusion that there are multiple defensible accounts of the moral wrong of exploitation. For this reason, those who would charge that a relationship is exploitative should specify the form of exploitation that they believe is taking place. (shrink)

This short article represents a contribution to the debate on the motion “Social science is explanation, or it is nothing.” While in the format of parliamentary debating the contribution would fall on the side of the opposition, I will not be arguing against explanation as such. The work of explaining is in no way oppositional to or mutually exclusive with critique. Instead, my contribution will revolve around two arguments: one is that both critique and explanation exhibit characteristics we commonly (...) attribute to science; the other is that reserving the label of science for explanation draws a boundary around social sciences in ways that exclude many of the interesting things it does. Some of the examples include the sociological analysis of governmental approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic, or critical analysis of concepts such as “cancel culture” or “terrorism.” The conclusion is that explanation and critique are mutually supporting elements of science, and that combined they give us insights we cannot glean from either alone. (shrink)

On 22 July, 2011, we were confronted with the horror of the actions of Anders Behring Breivik. The instant reaction, as we have seen with similar incidents in the past—such as the Oklahoma City bombings—was to attempt to explain the incident. Whether the reasons given were true or not were irrelevant: the fact that there was a reason was better than if there were none. We should not dismiss those that continue to cling on to the initial claims of a (...) wider Jihadist plot behind the actions of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols as Islamophobes (or merely lacking common sense): for, it is often easier to rely on reason—no matter how fictional—than not to have anything to cling on at all. In many ways, it is even better if the reason is fictional: for, if grounded in a certain fact, or reality, it can then go away. However, if it is in the realm of the imaginary, it is then always already metaphorical: thus, can be applied to any and every situation. And it is this, if we echo Friedrich Nietzsche, that gives us our “metaphysical comfort”; that we can know what is going on. This is why conspiracy theories are so popular: underlying them is the logic that someone—no matter how implausible—is in control of the situation. One would rather believe that all acts of terror stemmed from Osama bin Laden (and the narrative worked even better when he was in a ‘cave in Afghanistan’) than if they were the actions, and decisions, of singular individuals. For, if there is a head organizing everything, it can be cut off; there is no controlling a mass of singularities. As Jean Baudrillard continues to teach us, the term ‘mass’ is not a concept. It is a leitmotif of political demagogy, a soft, sticky, lumpen-analytical notion. A good sociology would attempt to surpass it with ‘more subtle’ categories: socio-professional ones, categories of class, cultural status, etc. This is wrong: it is by prowling around these soft and acritical notions (like ‘mana’ once was) that one can go further than intelligent critical sociology. Besides, it will be noticed retrospectively that the concepts ‘class’, ‘social relations’, ‘power’, ‘status’, ‘institution’, and ‘social’ itself—all these too-explicit concepts which are the glory of the legitimate sciences—but also only ever been muddled notions themselves, but notions upon which agreement has nevertheless been reached for mysterious ends: those of preserving a certain code of analysis. To want to specify the term ‘mass’ is a mistake—it is to provide meaning for that which has none.1 And it is this lack of meaning—this nothingness of not only the mass, but our inability to know in general—that truly scares us. For, if we are never able to legitimately make a generalizing statement, this suggests that we can never actually posit beyond a singular, situational, moment. Hence, we can never claim to know anyone: at best, we can only catch momentary glimpses. It is for this very reason that the insanity plea Breivik’s lawyer will attempt is the one that horrifies us the most. For, if Breivik is insane, this foregrounds our inability to understand, know. And as Aristotle has taught us, it is more important that something is plausible than if something were probable—in this context, we would rather have Breivik as a calculating mass murderer than someone who was completely out of his mind. This is especially ironic in the light of the fact that none of us would say that we have any similarity with Breivik. If that were so, the declaration that he was mad should be no more than a logical consequence. However, we also want Breivik to be accountable for his actions. And in order for that to be so, we need him to be of sound mind. But if that were true, we can then no longer distinguish ourselves from him. And it is precisely this that scares us. For, we are horrified not when there are abnormalities to our way of life. There are usually two different reactions to this—either oppose and destroy it; or subsume it under the dominant logic. We see this most clearly in reactions to immigration: there are either calls for immigrants to ‘pack up and leave’ or pseudo-liberal notions of ‘we are all alike’. Both of which are merely version of “all men are brothers”—the brutal translation of which is that you are my brother if you live the same way as me; otherwise not only are you not my brother, you are also potentially not part of mankind (you might as well be, to echo Giorgio Agamben, bare life ). This is played out in our age of what is commonly termed post-political bio-politics —an instance of horribly awkward theoretical jargon that Slavoj Žižek channeling Agamben unpacks rather elegantly: “ post-politics is a politics which claims to leave behind old ideological struggles and, instead, focus[es] on expert management and administration, while bio-politics designates the regulation of the security and welfare of human lives as its primary goal.”2 Žižek continues: Post-political bio-politics also has two aspects which cannot but appear to belong to two opposite ideological spaces: that of the reduction of humans to ‘bare life,’ to Homo sacer , that so-called sacred being who is the object of expert caretaking knowledge, but is excluded, like prisoners at Guantanamo or Holocaust victims, from all rights; and that of respect for the vulnerable Other brought to an extreme through an attitude of narcissistic subjectivity which experiences the self as vulnerable, constantly exposed to a multitude of potential harassments [….] What these two poles share is precisely the underlying refusal of any higher causes, the notion that the ultimate goal of our lives is life itself. That is why there is no contradiction between the respect for the vulnerable Other and […] the extreme expression of treating individuals as Homini sacer .3 This is why the ones that are harshest towards new immigrants are the recently naturalized citizens of any country. For, if there is no longer any “ideological struggle” and all life is reduced to mere automaton-living, there is the realization that we are all the same—not in a tree-hugging hippie sense—but that the immigrant is the same as us precisely because we are all immigrants. And since all nations, and by extension peoples in a nation (especially those who believe in the notion of nationality, and national identity), have to find some manner, no matter from where or what it is, to distinguish themselves from those around them, the other (in spite, and especially in the light, of its absence) is the most crucial aspect of the discourse of nationality. More precisely, in the interests of what Baudrillard calls “preserving a certain code of analysis” (nationality in this case), what has to be maintained is the absolute otherness of the other. Very rarely is Boris Johnson right: “it is not enough to say he is mad. Anders Breivik is patently mad.”4 However, much like Breivik in his manifesto, he should have stopped whilst he was ahead. By attempting to diagnose Breivik—“the fundamental reasons for their callous behavior lie deep in their own sense of rejection and alienation. It is the ideology that gives them the ostensible cause … that gives them an excuse to dramatize the resentment … and to kill.”—Johnson falls into the same trap that he accuses others of: “to try to advance any other explanation for their actions … is simply to play their self-important game.” More crucially, and this is the point that Johnson completely misses, attempting to rationalize Breivik’s actions—to rehabilitate reason—is a desperate attempt at maintaining his otherness. In fact, we’ll end up going one step further, insist on Breivik’s sanity, put him on the stand, and hope that he will display such a difference from all of us that we can rest safe that we are unlike him and his kind. That, in itself, is a dangerous game to play. One should not forget that the turning point in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is in the central part of her novel where she lets the monster speak. At that moment, the monster moves from an ‘it’ to a fully subjectivized person; with his own stories, historicities, emotions, and so on. In Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Frankenstein , this is the moment where “the ultimate criminal is thus allowed to present himself as the ultimate victim. The monstrous murderer reveals himself to be a deeply hurt and desperate individual, yearning for company and love.”5 But, in the case of Breivik, this goes beyond just a risk of us feeling for him: for, no right-minded person should ever deny another the opportunity to put forth her or his own case. The problem lies with us trying to deny the madness of Breivik’s act by putting him back under reason. The problem is in our inability to differentiate the act from the person; the singular from the universal.6 In our desperation to preserve the notion that we are rational beings incapable of becoming monsters, we’ve had to deny the meaninglessness—in the strict sense of it lying outside of reason—of Breivik’ act; we’ve had to “provide meaning where there is none.” For, if this act were a moment of madness—a moment that comes from elsewhere—we cannot say that it will not descend upon us one day. If Breivik’s actions were that of a sane person, one who is in control of his being, his self, we can then locate the otherness in his being. More importantly, this would allow us to distinguish ourselves from that said being. Breivik’s sanity is the only thing that allows us to say that ‘this act of terror is borne out of one with an ultra-right ideology’; and ‘since I am not of that ideology, I would never do such a thing’. By doing that, we attempt to protect ourselves by claiming that people who share Breivik’s ideology are foreign to us, other to us. However, if Breivik’s act was a moment of insanity, his otherness is no longer locatable: and the notion of ‘us and them’ shifts from a geographical, physical, religious, or cultural notion, to one in the realm of ideas. And this is what truly scares us. For, if what is foreign is not phenomenological, then it cannot be seen, detected, sensed. Anders Behring Breivik, Timothy McVeigh, and Terry Nichols, terrify us not merely for the fact that they were white in a white society, but more pertinently that their skin color did not matter: we would not be able to spot them even if they were blue, even if they were right next to us, even if we had known them all our lives. Even as we are grappling with holding Breivik accountable by declaring him of sound mind, what truly terrifies us is that deep down we know that Breivik’s act is a moment of madness; beyond all comprehensibility. And this means that we would not be able to spot the idea; even if it were in our heads at this very moment. We have gone to lengths to rehabilitate Breivik, McVeigh, Nichols, and such perpetrators of massive incomprehensible violence, in order to preserve our difference from them. What we have really been trying to deny is the fact that everyone, at any given moment, could have a moment of madness. And this is the true radicality of Mary Shelley: in allowing us to momentarily enter the head of the monster, she shows us not just the fact that he is like any one of us, but that any one of us could, in the right (or wrong) circumstance, be like him. Perhaps here, there is a lesson to be learned from Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street . The most dangerous thing that one could do on Elm Street was to mention Freddy’s name—once you had knowledge of him, you were open to the possibility of a visit during your dreams. This suggests that Freddy is a combination of externalities (after all, when you die, he survives) and your self (if you have never heard of him, he cannot come for you). In this sense, Freddy would be the manifestation par excellence of what Avital Ronell calls a “killer text”—it is one’s relationality with the text (and the ideas, notions, in the said text) that opens oneself to it, to the lessons of the text, to being changed, affected, even to the dangers of the text. After all, one should never forget Plato’s warning that ideas can corrupt, can be perilous. To compound matters, as Ronell reminds us, “the connection to the other is a reading—not an interpretation, assimilation, or even a hermeneutic understanding, but a reading.”7 Thus, in attempting to differentiate ourselves from Breivik by concocting some reason(s) why we are not like him, we have done nothing but read him, open a connection to him. *** Bang bang, he shot me down Bang bang, I hit the ground Bang bang, that awful sound Bang bang, my baby shot me down. “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” Sonny Bono, 1966. This is the part that we all know and remember. Whilst never quite remembering that this is a song that is not so much about violence, love, but about remembering. For, after the bridge comes the accusatory stanza: “Now he's gone, I don't know why/ And till this day, sometimes I cry/ He didn't even say goodbye/ He didn't take the time to lie.” Bang Bang is a game that the two lovers used to play; and all she has now is the memory of the game to remember him by. And the only reason she has to recall this game is: he never provided her a reason for his leaving, his death. Not that she will, can, ever get that satisfactory answer. This is precisely the game we are playing with Anders Behring Breivik. Even though he has left a 1500 page manifesto, even though we will allow him to use the court-room as his platform, we will continue screaming at him “tell me why …” For, what we want him to say is that we are not like him: what we really want him to do is, “take the time to lie …” Perhaps here, we should allow the echo of the infans to resound in baby . As Christopher Fynsk reminds us, the infans is one that is pre-language, pre-knowing, pre-understanding: it is the very finitude, and exteriority, of relationality itself.8 And thus, it is a position of openness to the fullness of possibility—and nothing else. This would be, in Ronell’s terms, a “connection to the other” that knows nothing other than the fact that it is a connection. The true horror of 22 July, 2011, is the fact that it is not Anders Behring Breivik who is mad, but the act itself that is. And this is precisely why only “my baby” that could have “shot me down.” For, it is an act that is from beyond, a sheer act of madness that—as Plato warns us—is whispered into our ears (and can so easily be mistaken for inspiration, and even wisdom), an act that can both seize, and cease, us at the same time. And what can this utter openness to an other, the other, be but a moment of love, a true ‘falling in love’. At the moment of whispering, nothing can be known as we are babies as our baby shoots us down …. Hence, all attempts at analyzing this event (including this one) are not only futile, but border on the farcical. The real tragedy is that we forget that all of us have the possibility of becoming Breivik. NOTES Jean Baudrillard. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities . Trans. Paul Foss, John Johnston, Paul Patton, & Andrew Berardini. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007. p. 37. Slavoj Žižek. Violence: Six Sideway Reflections . London: Profile Books, 2009. p. 34 Ibid: 35-36. Boris Johnson. “ Anders Breivik: There is nothing to study in the mind of Norway’s mass killer .” The Telegraph . (25 July, 2011): Slavoj Žižek. Violence: Six Sideway Reflections . London: Profile Books, 2009. p.39. What is killing us is the notion that Breivik’s act is beyond reason, beyond knowing, outside understanding itself. This is why Boris Johnson’s plea was for us to ignore Breivik as a madman. But to do so, Johnson conflates the notion of the act and the person; the singular and the universal. This is exactly the same gesture as insisting on his sanity: the ‘madman’ is merely the absolute other, one that we are not. Avital Ronell. The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989: 380. Christopher Fynsk. Infant Figures: The Death of the Infans and Other Scenes of Origin . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.  . (shrink)

The main question informing this paper is whether it is possible to extend democracy beyond its liberal forms. The paper reflects upon this question with regard to its implications for the individual. For the radicalization of democracy implies a need for self-transformation, if the everyday egoism of contemporary citizens is not to thwart reasonable discussion and participation. Theorists such as Richard Rorty argue that the philosophical resources required to guide such self-transformation can be made available only by sacrificing the political (...) freedom and cultural diversity liberalism has been able to precariously establish. Other theorists insist that the thresholds of pluralism and tolerance that existing liberal democracies are struggling to maintain actually require an extension of democracy. The paper evaluates two different theoretical strategies that aim to identify potentials for democratization without falling prey to the dilemma identified by Rorty: a ‘ deliberative’ strategy explicated with reference to Jürgen Habermas and an ‘existential’ approach represented here by William Connolly. Key Words: Connolly • democracy • existential • Habermas • individual • proceduralism • Rorty. (shrink)

Most areas of the cognitive and social sciences assume that knowledge representations are constructed and used during communication and that much of its content is social. Those of us who build computer models of comprehension and conversation are forced to be explicit about the nature of these knowledge representations and affiliated processes. There are some conditions when knowledge is not sufficiently social, and other conditions when knowledge is overly grounded in social mechanisms. The argument (...) is advanced that constraints, coherence, and precision are very much at the heart of an explanation of the nature and amount of social knowledge. Asocial content reigns supreme when the referential world knowledge is highly constrained, coherently structured, and precisely specified. The social context of knowledge construction becomes progressively more influential to the extent to that world knowledge is vague, open-ended, imprecise, underspecified, and fragmentary. (shrink)

The institutionalization of History and Philosophy of Science as a distinct field of scholarly endeavour began comparatively earl- though not always under that name - in the Australasian region. An initial lecturing appointment was made at the University of Melbourne immediately after the Second World War, in 1946, and other appoint ments followed as the subject underwent an expansion during the 1950s and 1960s similar to that which took place in other parts of the world. Today there are (...) major Departments at the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales and the University of Wollongong, and smaller groups active in many other parts of Australia and in New Zealand. "Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science" aims to provide a distinctive publication outlet for Australian and New Zealand scholars working in the general area of history, philosophy and social studies of science. Each volume comprises a group of essays on a connected theme, edited by an Australian or a New Zealander with special expertise in that particular area. Papers address general issues, however, rather than local ones; parochial topics are avoided. Further more, though in each volume a majority of the contributors is from Australia or New Zealand, contributions from elsewhere are by no means ruled out. Quite the reverse, in fact - they are actively encour aged wherever appropriate to the balance of the volume in question. (shrink)

William M. Epstein charges that most current social welfare programs are not held to credible standards in their design or their results. Rather than spending less on such research and programs, however, Epstein suggests we should spend much more, and do the job right. The American public and policymakers need to rely on social science research for objective, credible information when trying to solve problems of employment, affordable housing, effective health care, and family integrity. But, Epstein contends, politicians (...) treat welfare issues as ideological battlegrounds; they demand immediate results from questionable data and implement policies long before social researchers can complete their analyses. Social scientists often play into the political agenda, supporting poorly conceived programs and doing little to test and revise them. Analyzing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the recent welfare reform act, Food Stamps, Medicaid, job training, social services, and other programs, Epstein systematically challenges the conservative’s vain hope that neglect is therapeutic for the poor, as well as the liberal’s conceit that a little bit of assistance is sufficient. (shrink)

Some philosophers challenge the advisability of naturalizing social metaphysics by appeal to social science. They argue that social science fails to meet criteria for realist commitment, such as unity and novel predictive power, and that social science would therefore be a poor basis for naturalization. These skeptical challenges are rooted in traditions in the philosophy of science that have held the social sciences in poor esteem. Through a case study that highlights the ways in (...) which archaeology is methodologically converging on hard science, I show that the philosophical bias against social science is outmoded. I suggest that at least some of the methodological advances of archaeology and other social sciences are epistemologically significant and are relevant to the question of realism. However, I conclude with the thought that realist commitment need not be a precondition for naturalization. The paper therefore accomplishes two main things: 1) it allays objections to using social science to naturalize social metaphysics, and 2) it motivates a higher estimation of the epistemological credentials of social science as compared with more skeptical traditions. (shrink)

The paper investigates what is meant by "good science" and "bad science" and how these differ as between the natural (physical and biological) sciences on the one hand and social sciences on the other. We conclude on the basis of historical evidence that the natural science are much more heavily constrained by evidence and observation than by theory while the social sciences are constrained by prior theory and hardly at all by direct evidence. Current (...) examples of the latter proposition are taken from recent issues of leading social science journals. We argue that agent based social simulations can be used as a tool to constrain the development of a new social science by direct (what economists dismiss as anecdotal) evidence and that to do so would make social science relevant to the understanding and influencing of social processes. We argue that such a development is both possible and desirable. We do not argue that it is likely. (shrink)

As a philosopher, Richard McKeon spent his career developing Pragmatism in a new key, specifically by tracing the ways in which philosophic problems arise in fields other than philosophy—across the natural and social sciences and aesthetics—and showed the ways in which any problem, pushed back to its beginning or taken to its end, is a philosophic problem. The roots of this book, On Knowing—The Social Sciences, are traced to McKeon’s classes where he blended philosophy with (...) physics, ethics, politics, history, and aesthetics. This volume—the second in a series—leaves behind natural science themes to embrace freedom, power, and history, which, McKeon argues, lay out the whole field of human action. The authors McKeon considers—Hobbes, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Kant, and J. S. Mill—show brilliantly how philosophic methods work in action, via analyses that do not merely reduce or deconstruct meaning, but enhance those texts by reconnecting them to the active history of philosophy and to problems of ethics, politics, and history. The waves of modernism and post-modernism are receding. Philosophic pluralism is now available, fully formulated, in McKeon’s work, spreading from the humanities to the social sciences. (shrink)

What is the role of the Social Sciences and Humanities in the journey to the Fourth Industrial Revolution? What is the impact of these disciplines for the challenges the world faces, supposedly defined by a highly dynamic phase of industrial and social restructuring, where the adaptive capacity of societies needs to be enhanced by specific skills and techno-social dependencies? What is the role of SSH in building cognitive competences, and new professional paths? This paper, part of (...) the special focus of the Annual Review of New Directions in the Humanities, seeks to unveil the importance of SSH disciplines to the major STEM disciplines. Although disciplines and research in Social Sciences and Humanities play a fundamental role in the production of knowledge relevant to society, the last decade of the 20th century has seen a continuous trend towards their devaluation. After a relatively glorious period during the first half of the century, when SSH disciplines still held a relative social influence, the arrival of digital technologies in 1990s, accelerated their decline. This article traces a brief overview of this decline and explores some of the causes as well as the challenges in valuing SSH. Focusing mainly on Europe, the paper presents the attempts, on behalf of the European Commission, to correct this decline. It also outlines some new ideas that could help a true integration and transfer of knowledge across STEM AND STEAM disciplines, such as the creation of specific 'missions'. Precisely, one of the diagnoses of the Horizon 2020 experience in Europe has been that investment in research is not effectively linked to the solution of specific problems. Thus, it is necessary to put in motion co-creation mechanisms among research disciplines and advance in the establishment of intersectoral bridges, bringing SSH research closer to the industry and other social sectors in order to solve the pressing challenges we face. (shrink)

The institutionalization of History and Philosophy of Science as a distinct field of scholarly endeavour began comparatively earl- though not always under that name - in the Australasian region. An initial lecturing appointment was made at the University of Melbourne immediately after the Second World War, in 1946, and other appoint ments followed as the subject underwent an expansion during the 1950s and 1960s similar to that which took place in other parts of the world. Today there are (...) major Departments at the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales and the University of Wollongong, and smaller groups active in many other parts of Australia and in New Zealand. "Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science" aims to provide a distinctive publication outlet for Australian and New Zealand scholars working in the general area of history, philosophy and social studies of science. Each volume comprises a group of essays on a connected theme, edited by an Australian or a New Zealander with special expertise in that particular area. Papers address general issues, however, rather than local ones; parochial topics are avoided. Further more, though in each volume a majority of the contributors is from Australia or New Zealand, contributions from elsewhere are by no means ruled out. Quite the reverse, in fact - they are actively encour aged wherever appropriate to the balance of the volume in question. (shrink)

It has been widely discussed whether the existence of other universes than the known universe is a purely metaphysical consideration. This paper argues to the contrary that the existence of other universes is a meaningful hypothesis, which can be tested based on observable data. The paper applies the perspective of observer bias as an approach for assigning probabilities to the mutually excluding hypotheses of universe vs. multiverse, i.e., whether the known universe is the only universe, or just one (...) universe in an ensemble of universes, a so-called multiverse. The basic idea of the paper relies on the following consideration. In a multiverse, the vast majority of observers would live in universes that are more life friendly. Thus, conditional on there being a multiverse, we should expect to find ourselves in a universe with values of the fundamental parameters that provide particularly fertile grounds for life. In contrast, if there is only a single universe, it may well be the case that there is still a few observers even if the parameters are far from ideal for life, and in that case, those observers will find values of the parameters that are not ideal for intelligent life. It may well be the case that, among all parameter configurations that allow life at least somewhere, those that are not ideal for life far outnumber those that are ideal for life. Based on this elementary consideration, the paper proceeds to propose a quantitative framework to determine probabilities for either hypothesis. In particular, it is described how a future ab initio determination of some of the factors in the Drake equation may be used to infer which one of the two hypotheses is the more likely. A quantitative approach to this end is proposed. Expressing these factors of the Drake equation in the context of the two hypotheses, a general likelihood approach is first described. Then, to support intuition, example computations are provided, illustrating how an actual hypothesis test would work in practice. (shrink)

Mesoudi et al.'s case can be improved by expanding to compelling selectionist explanations elsewhere in the social sciences and by seeing that natural selection is an instance of general selectionist process. Obstacles include the common use of extreme idealizations and optimality evidence, the copresence of nonselectionist social processes, and the fact that selectionist explanations often presuppose other kinds of social explanations. (Published Online November 9 2006).

This book, which represents probably the most comprehensive discussion of the emergence of modem social science yet produced, is of far more than merely historical interest. The contributors set out to rewrite the history of the social sciences and to show the limitations of conventional conceptions of their development. These tasks they accomplish with great success and much distinction. Yet in so doing they contribute in a direct way to our understanding of the relation between social (...) analysis and the nature of human societies today. The brilliant and distinctive perspective of the papers in this collection is to demonstrate, with many specific examples, that social science and modem institutions have helped shape each other in mutual interplay. Modem systems are in some part con stituted through the reflexive incorporation of developing social science knowledge; on the other hand, the social sciences organise themselves in terms of a continuing reflection upon the evolution of those systems. Such a perspective, as Wagner and Wittrock in particular make clear, does not in any way either impugn the status of knowledge claims made within social science or destroy the independent reality of social institutions. The book questions the notion that the institutionalising of the social sciences can be understood as a process of their increasing autonomy from extemal social connections. 'Autonomy' forms a mode of legitima tion and a basis of power rather than a distinctive phenomenon as such. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eudora Welty House & GardenJessica RussellIf the past year had one theme, it would have been the gift of friendship. How heartening to reunite with fellow admirers of Eudora Welty on the grounds of her family home as our flagship events made their post-pandemic returns. Even so, among staff, 2022 brought challenges that, while unexpected, served to deepen our commitment to our mission and each other. Moreover, for (...) every achievement to follow in this report, there is a friendship to thank—whether with the Eudora Welty Foundation, our colleagues at the Mississippi Department of Archives & History (MDAH), individual volunteers, or community partners too numerous to list—each one a treasured marvel. For, in Eudora Welty's words, "as is true of all friendships, it might not have happened—and it did."Although we were saddened to say goodbye to our dear friend and former director Lauren Rhoades, to our delight she has returned time and again, as a volunteer, a guest, and even a guest speaker. Most impactful, Rhoades now supports sites like ours in an official capacity as the new director of grants at the Mississippi Arts Commission, where she connects arts-based organizations with potential funding opportunities. In this role, Rhoades informed the Eudora Welty Foundation about the Building Fund for the Arts Grant, to which they successfully applied. Because of this very grant, we can make perhaps our biggest announcement of 2022, which is that the Eudora Welty Foundation will break ground on the much-needed community arts building behind our Visitor Center. The report in this volume by the Foundation, which is supervising construction, contains more details on this exciting development.After Rhoades's departure, I had the great honor of transitioning to director. By December, we welcomed Lauren Claret to fill my former role as Garden Projects Specialist, ending a lengthy staff shortage. We even grew our team, adding Mary Atchley as a part-time Visitor Center Associate to handle our gift shop and ticket sales. All the while, my seasoned colleagues, Special Projects Coordinator Rachel Lott, and Education Specialist Jennifer [End Page 189] Rose, continued to shine in their respective roles: Lott coordinates volunteers and plans exhibits, events, and social media. Rose leads educational programs for students of all ages, in groups large and small, onsite and away.With such a small team, our museum depends heavily on volunteers to lead house tours and maintain the Welty garden, and recruiting new volunteers is our greatest need as we look ahead to 2023. We saw a precipitous drop in volunteers at the onset of the pandemic. Although visitation has started a noticeable rise, volunteer numbers have not yet picked up. (On that note, if you or someone you know is interested in becoming a Welty House volunteer, please email [email protected].) To each of our house docents and Cereus Weeders, we say a heartfelt "thank you."Fortunately, we had the support of two interns last fall. Victoria Richard (Millsaps College, via the Eudora Welty Foundation) led Welty House tours and updated our digital plant records database with an emphasis on the rose collection. Meanwhile, Nikki Maxwell (University of Southern Mississippi, via MDAH) worked primarily off-site with the MDAH Eudora Welty Collection, noting the numerous references to gardening in the recently unsealed Welty family papers.The annual teachers' CEU workshop took place virtually in February of 2022, comparing the works of Welty and Poe. Michael Pickard, Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Millsaps College, and Millsaps College Professor emerita Suzanne Marrs, led the course, and they will do so again on February 24, 2023—this time in person at the Eudora Welty House & Garden Visitor Center—comparing the work of Welty and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Thanks to support from MDAH and the Eudora Welty Foundation, teachers may attend the 2023 workshop at no charge.The in-person return of the Mississippi Book Festival in 2022 made for an exciting weekend in late August, when museum staff treated 110 festival panelists to private tours of the Welty House and Garden. We spent the next day seeing old friends, and making new ones, as 500 fellow book lovers visited our booth at the... (shrink)

Marxism, Psychology and Social Science Analysis applies Marxist theory, psychology, and the work of Lucien Sève to specific research in the social sciences. It shows in practical terms what guidance can be offered for social scientific researchers wanting to incorporate Sève's view of personality into their work. Providing case studies drawn from different social sciences that give the book significant breadth of scope, Roche reviews the impact of "Taking Sève Seriously" across the study of (...) international relations theory, economics, law, and moral philosophy. The book begins by placing the work of Lucien Sève in context and considers the development of psychology in relation to Marxism, before going on to summarise the work of Sève in relation to the psychology of personality. It considers the opportunities for refreshed research in social relations based on developments by Sève, before examining Marxist biography and the implications of Sève's views. The book also includes chapters on the social discount rate, on constructivism in international relations, on the concept of promising in moral philosophy and the Marxist conception of individual responsibility. It addresses not only how research should be carried out differently, but whether utilising the theoretical framework of other writers, even non-Marxists, can deliver a similar outcome. With its use of five distinct case studies to analyse the work of Lucien Sève, this unique book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of psychology, philosophy and social sciences. (shrink)

Academia is a competitive environment. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are limited in experience and resources and especially need achievements to secure and expand their careers. To help with these issues, this book offers a new approach for conducting research using the combination of mindsponge innovative thinking and Bayesian analytics. This is not just another analytics book. 1. A new perspective on psychological processes: Mindsponge is a novel approach for examining the human mind’s information processing mechanism. This conceptual framework is used (...) to construct models in studies. The framework is highly flexible and widely applicable for many different types of information processes. The mindsponge approach can help researchers discover interesting ideas or even formulate their very own theories when investigating psychosocial phenomena. This approach brings a fresh wind to the current landscape of social sciences and humanities (SSH). 2. Easy-to-follow analysis protocol: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF analytics) is useful in terms of computing and visualizing power but also easy to learn and apply. Contrary to being intimidating, the Bayesian analytics section of this book is presented in a reader-friendly manner with a detailed yet clear step-by-step procedure. Examples are from published BMF articles, allowing readers to immediately practice the method and quickly create their own applications. With educational purposes in mind, the book is very suitable for ECRs who are looking to innovate their research methods. 3. Advocating for low-cost, high-quality research: Doing science can be very costly. Mindsponge innovative thinking and BMF analytics help produce impactful studies using openly available data on online repositories. This is based on the authors’ previous works and experiences. The book presents examples of employing the open R package bayesvl on secondary data from different sources. With less financial constraints, researchers can have more freedom of thought to pursue their curiosity and creativity. ECRs in low- and middle-income countries may find this aspect crucial in their careers. 4. Support and collaboration: The authors share their insights from experiences in the academic publishing system to help readers get through the processes of manuscript writing and peer-reviewing more easily. The authors are also ready to support other researchers with further inquiries and collaboration opportunities at the following website, mindsponge(dot)info. This book is for: a) ECRs whose only abundant resources are their innovation capacity and strength of will; b) Researchers in SSH who want to explore a novel approach to thinking and study conducting; c) Low- and middle-income countries’ researchers looking for a cost-effective research protocol; and, d) Innovative thinkers who want to turn their interesting thoughts into good publications. (shrink)

This encyclopedia is the first of its kind in bringing together philosophy and the social sciences. It is not only about the philosophy of the social sciences but, going beyond that, it is also about the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences. -/- The subject of this encyclopedia is purposefully multi- and inter-disciplinary. Knowledge boundaries are both delineated and crossed over. The goal is to convey a clear sense of how philosophy looks at (...) the social sciences and to mark out a detailed picture of how the two are interrelated: interwoven at certain times but also differentiated and contrasted at others. The Entries cover topics of central significance but also those that are both controversial and on the cutting-edge, underlining the unique mark of this Encyclopedia: the interrelationship between philosophy and the social sciences, especially as it is found in fresh ideas and unprecedented hybrid disciplinary areas. -/- The Encyclopedia serves a further dual purpose: it contributes to the renewal of the philosophy of the social sciences and helps to promote novel modes of thinking about some of its classic problems. (shrink)

This volume, Applied Social Sciences: Philosophy and Theology, provides the reader with an important set of essays related to the two aforementioned fields of study. Aesthetics plays a key role in contemporary philosophy and several authors examine its various aspects, such as the question of identification of works of art; the concept of â oesocial aestheticsâ ; the social therapeutic function that art can have; and the relationships among hermeneutics, aesthetics and communication sciences. Other papers (...) deal with ethical issues, such as the role of human values in applied ethics and moral determinations in public life. The meaning and role of postmodernism in philosophy and society is examined at length in various contributions to the volume, and the same is true for phenomenology at large. Even the theoretical seduction and practical failure of Marxism is addressed, while anthropological issues are studied with reference to truth and other key philosophical concepts. John Searleâ (TM)s theory of intentionality is seen as a factor for creating social institutions, and the real meaning of â oeglobalizationâ is investigated in another article. Many essays deal directly with theological and religious topics. For instance the alleged â oeillusionâ of religion versus its persistency is analyzed, along with the current relations between Church and civil government in Romania, the presence of different forms of Christianity in the Romanian nation, the dialogue between social theology and anthropological research, and the antinomic nature of the Church. All papers included in the volume are original and open new perspectives on the many issues addressed by the authors. Even the philosophical styles are different: hermeneutics, analytic philosophy, historical approach, postmodernism, communication theory and linguistic approach. Some papers are theoretical and others have a more empirical or historical flavour. There is however an underlying unity because they all purport to provide new ideas to professionals involved in the socio-humanistic field. The information is divided into chapters in order to help readers to form by themselves an image of the issues that are studied. However, the volume is not addressed only to specialists, and is accessible to a wider public interested in an interdisciplinary approach. (shrink)

From the viewpoint of its Stalinist-era creators, the IKKN/INS could at best be described as a mixed success. Despite heroic efforts, it failed to train the cadres that might have permeated Polish scholarship with Marxism-Leninism. If it was the major channel for transmitting Soviet experience to Polish academia, then Poland's universities would not learn to be Soviet—the Polish historian Jerzy Halbersztadt has made the point that the institute was the only direct conduit of Soviet experience into Polish academic life. It (...) even had a major role in educating some of Poland's most famous critical thinkers, although they, unlike their master Adam Schaff, seem less fond of reminiscing about the institute. Leszek Koŀakowski writes that he does not regard his role in the ideological struggles of the early 1950s as a “source of pride”.90The legacy of the IKKN/INS has also been a mixed one. It was not only a “foundry of revisionists”. For every future critical thinker of world repute, it graduated several cadres who served the PZPR loyally over decades. Adam Schaff recognises this dual legacy. Looking back on a long and active life, he has called the institute a “pearl in my crown”.91 Its members filled top party and government posts throughout the history of People's Poland. Andrzej Werblan served as Central Committee secretary and a member of the Politburo, Sylwester Zawadzki became minister of justice, Stanisŀaw Wroński was minister of culture, Mieczysŀaw Jagielski was the Politburo member who negotiated the Gdańsk accords, Stanisŀaw Kania succeeded Edward Gierek, and Mieczysŀaw Rakowski acted as General Jaruzelski's Party First Secretary.92Undoubtedly much of the institute's strange course is to be attributed to the designs of Adam Schaff. Despite his Moscow training, Schaff retained an attachment to the Polish academic milieu which had formed him. He may have believed in Stalinist doctrine, but he also believed that this doctrine would show its superiority in competition with other views—even if the competition was far from a fair one. Of course, Schaff tried to retain ultimate control, and to play, as he now calls himself, the “grey eminence”. Nevertheless, his was a very unstalinist way of propagating Stalinism, and he must be given credit for helping to keep a spirit of intellectual inquiry alive in Poland during the dark years of the early 1950s.Yet Schaff tends to exaggerate his personal role in educating philosophers, dissidents and critical thinkers. This tendency is itself a legacy of the Stalinist period and its concentration of power. Stalinists view the present as their personal creation and therefore reject all criticisms of the past. At the final meeting of the Crooked Circle Club in 1962, Schaff encountered unwonted criticism from, among others, Andrzej Walicki. Schaff shot back at him: “You are ours, you are our creation, a creation of socialism ... we educated you, and we didn't do such a bad job.” But far from being a “creation” of Schaff's, the non-party member Walicki had been denied admission to graduate studies in philosophy. He felt relieved when those in attendance, who knew him better than Schaff did, burst out laughing.93The point is that the Polish intellectual world maintained its integrity outside the IKKN/INS, and in the end it was the institute which merged into the Polish intelligentsia, rather than the opposite. After 1957 the non-Marxist sociologists and philosophers made their way back to academia, and were joined by many former INS staff members. The basic unity of Polish social science training, and of the Polish intelligentsia, was restored.94Of course in a larger sense the fate of the IKKN/INS had little to do with the designs of its master. Schaff admits as much, proclaiming that “I did this because I did not know what I was doing!” If he had been asked to start such a project five years later, the answer would have been: “No!”95 The fatal flaw of the Institute for Training Scientific Cadres was cadres: Poland did not have them. By 1956, Schaff and the party leadership, and perhaps Soviet advisers as well, had learned that one could not create an elite party scientific institution almost out of nothing. It would either be party or scientific, because apparatchiki could not become scientists, scientists would not become apparatchiki, and students could not produce teachers. In the Stalinist period, Polish intellectual life had stood in the shadow of the party; yet during the Thaw the relationship was reversed—increasingly the tiny party training institute was engulfed by the shadow of the resurgent Polish universities. Talented young people, even those in the party, made their way into the traditional higher educational establishment.The IKKN/INS did not, therefore, fail because of its own failings, nor succeed because of its own successes. It was a failed part of a failed whole. To succeed, “mild” revolution would have required decades, and Poland's Stalinists had only a few years. To make matters worse—or better, depending on viewpoint—they did not use these years in a conventional Stalinist manner. Under Schaff's guidance and at somewhat erratic Soviet bidding, the institute became an awkward series of half-measures, reminiscent of much of Polish Stalinism. When Poland's communists fell back and regrouped in 1956, the IKKN/INS occupied a lonely position they preferred to abandon. (shrink)

In this paper a conception of rationality is developed which bears on three important issues in the social sciences -- the status of the principle of rationality, the criteria for rational actions, and the nature of rational explanations. It is argued that the principle of rationality should be interpreted as a methodological principle and is valuable only inasmuch as it leads to true hypotheses about human action. Definitions of rational beliefs, rational means, and rational ends are provided. These (...) definitions provide criteria for rational actions which better accord with our intuitive judgments about what should count as rational action than the criteria given in traditional accounts. Finally, the nature of rational explanations is specified and arguments for their usefulness and respectability presented although these explanations do not necessarily fit the standard covering law model. (shrink)

Hempelian orthodoxy on the nature of explanation in general, and on explanation in the social sciences in particular, holds that full explanations are arguments full explanations must include at least one law reason explanations are causalDavid Ruben disputes and but he does not dispute. Nor does he dispute that ‘explanations in both natural and social science need laws in other ways, even when not as part of the explanation itself. The distance between his view and the (...) covering law theory, he points out, ‘is not as great as it may first appear to be’. (shrink)

Political philosophy offers a range of utopian proposals, from open borders to global egalitarianism. Some object that these proposals ought to be constrained by what is feasible, while others insist that what justice demands does not depend on what we can bring about. Currently, this debate is mired in disputes over the fundamental nature of justice and the ultimate purpose of political philosophy. I take a different approach, proposing that we should consider which facts could fill out a feasibility requirement. (...) This search for the facts requires requires looking to the social sciences, but I argue that it turns out that the social sciences will not provide us with findings that rule out, nor even count against, the kinds of proposals that political philosophers actually make, whether ideal or non-ideal. At the least, to deny this requires adopting deeply controversial commitments within the philosophy of social science. Thus, I conclude that a feasibility requirement has little practical use for political philosophers. Disputes over that requirement ought to be replaced by other, more fruitful ways for political philosophers to address both the findings of social science and the debates over non-ideal theory or political realism. (shrink)

The word ‘social’ is used in many different contexts, in each of which the word has a general root meaning, common to all contexts in which it is found. But in addition, there are other specific meanings, peculiar to each context, which are intended by the user of the term. Frequently, these other meanings of the term are not made explicit, and hence ambiguities arise.The root meaning of the term involves some sort of relationship among two or (...) more people. ‘Social’ is derived from the Latin socius, meaning ‘companion’. At least two people are involved here: 1) the person having the companion, and 2) the companion. Nothing is intended as to the nature of the relationship between the two or more people. In each context in which the term ‘social’ is used it has this root meaning. This paper is concerned, however, with those other aspects of the meanings of the term which are intended to specify more precisely the nature of this relationship among two or more people, and therefore are different in different contexts. The contexts will be isolated, and the more specific meanings of the term in these different contexts will be distinguished and made explicit. (shrink)

Often scholars who call themselves social scientists have not meant by the term science the sort of activity which has generally concerned those calling themselves natural scientists. In the latter sense very little of what has been called “social science” can also be called scientific. The term “social science” as used here refers primarily to the studies which have gone under such titles as Politics, Sociology, Anthropology, Social and Clinical Psychology, and Economics. To some degree much (...) of what will here be said does not apply with equal justice to the field of Economics. It has a more highly developed system of general abstractions and considerably more precise techniques of analysis than have generally characterized the other social sciences. The difference, however, is one of degree not kind. Many of the difficulties mentioned below certainly plague the field of Economics as well as the others. (shrink)

Contemporary social science tends to suffer from too many misplaced attempts at mathematical or game-theoretical formulation, and much effort is wasted in either propounding such formulations, or in showing their inanity. Jon Elster does not entirely escape this himself, but Logic and Society is truly remarkable in pointing the way to some possibly very relevant formalizations. These are particularly to be found in the chapter on 'contradictions of society'. There Elster attempts to delineate the properties of certain self-frustrating predicaments (...) of action, and to relate them as well to Hegelian-Marxist conceptions of contradiction. It may be, however, that the relevance of this analysis is restricted to societies whose form of life has become atomistic, and whose members thus function in an individual-calculative way in many spheres of life. But even so, formalizations of the kind Elster provides would be useful in defining one kind of historically evolved society among others. (shrink)

A hallmark of recent critical social science has been the commitment to methodological and theoretical pluralism. Habermas and others have argued that diverse theoretical and empirical approaches are needed to support informed social criticism. However, an unresolved tension remains in the epistemology of critical social science: the tension between the epistemic advantages of a single comprehensive theoretical framework and those of methodological and theoretical pluralism. By shifting the grounds of the debate in a way suggested by Dewey's (...) pragmatism, the author argues that a thoroughgoing pluralism strengthens, rather than weakens, both the social scientific and political aims of critical social science. Not only does pragmatism offer a plausible interpretation of the epistemic pluralism of the social sciences, but it also provides a way of thinking about their fundamentally practical and political character. With a better normative vocabulary with which to discuss the epistemological issues of such a pluralistic mode of inquiry, the democratic role of critical inquiry and its specifically practical form of verification can be clarified. (shrink)

The ontology of social objects and facts remains a field of continued controversy. This situation complicates the life of social scientists who seek to make predictive models of social phenomena. For the purposes of modelling a social phenomenon, we would like to avoid having to make any controversial ontological commitments. The overwhelming majority of models in the social sciences, including statistical models, are built upon ontological assumptions that can be questioned. Recently, however, artificial neural (...) networks have made their way into the social sciences, raising the question whether they can avoid controversial ontological assumptions. ANNs are largely distinguished from other statistical and machine learning techniques by being a representation-learning technique. That is, researchers can let the neural networks select which features of the data to use for internal representation instead of imposing their preconceptions. On this basis, I argue that neural networks can avoid ontological assumptions to a greater degree than common statistical models in the social sciences. I then go on, however, to establish that ANNs are not ontologically innocent either. The use of ANNs in the social sciences introduces ontological assumptions typically in at least two ways, via the input and via the architecture. (shrink)

Galileo and his fellowers discovered, and subsequent centuries have amply confirmed, that you get much better predictions by thinking of things as masses of particles blindly bumping each other than by thinking of them as Aristotle thought of them — animistically, teleologically, anthromorphically. They also discovered that you get a better handle on the universe by thinking of it as infinite and cold and comfortless than by thinking of it as finite, homey, planned, and relevant to human concerns. Finally, (...) they discovered that if you view planets or missiles or corpuscles as point-masses, you can get nice simple predictive laws by looking for nice simple mathematical ratios. These discoveres are the basis of modern technological civilization. We can hardly be too grateful for them. But they do not, pace Descartes and Kant, point any epistemological moral. (shrink)

In his highly influential book (The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, first published in 1958), Peter Winch introduces an alternative concept of interpretive social science, in which the focus is shifted from the actors’ subjective motives to the common elements found in every understandable action: language-games and rule-following. This Wittgensteinian, linguistic version of interpretive social science has had its vast array of critics throughout the years: according to some of them, it neglects (...) the practical side of sociology; while others claim that it fails properly to answer the questions raised by the translation from one language-game to another, or that it renders critical social theory impossible. In my article, I try to reflect critically upon these critiques themselves, showing that the Winchian theory does not overlook the practice in understanding the different forms of life; that with slight modifications it is able to cope with the problem of translation, and that it does not aspire to be the critical theory that many of its critics would like it to be. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The epistemological and methodological wars that bedevil social science often pit those who follow in the footsteps of natural science and those who favor a more holistic, interpretive approach. Into this war-torn landscape, Mark Bevir and Jason Blakley have dropped a plea for interpretive social science that will surely serve as a touchstone for years to come. However, their anti-naturalism is of the methodologically ecumenical kind, with the qualitative toolkit cohabiting with mass surveys, large-N statistics, and (...) class='Hi'>other quantitative methods under well-specified conditions. The book’s insights therefore dovetail with emerging ecumenical trends in international political economy and even economics. (shrink)

Preview: No shortage of bigotry and prejudice can be found around the world. But why race to the bottom and compete for a monopoly on tragedy in human mistreatment? The philosophy of race is an intricate piece to the study of language, art, history, and culture and wants to learn about elsewhere and distant others. How we go about understanding the issues of identity politics and what solidifies a community’s sense of purpose and mythic consciousness hinges upon our attitudes (...) toward cultures and ethno-racial relations. When it comes to the migrant crises, socio-economic conditions aggravating inequalities, or geo-political conflicts, for example, people’s premonitions about race largely inform how they respond to the demands for social justice. Tracing the trajectory from chattel slavery, the trail of tears, Jim Crow laws and lynchings, the civil rights movements, police brutality and profiling, to Black Lives Matter should we be believers or skeptics of racial progress? Our global ethnoscape and diasporic makeup is vast and complex. Due to this, studying race is emerging from the backwaters of academia and becoming an essential mode of inquiry, especially in African American philosophy and philosophy of culture. Similar to the “linguistic turn,” philosophy is undergoing a “racial turn” of sorts. Philosophy’s transdisciplinary nature is well-suited to examine this ethno-racial complexity, but has not lived up to its potential by failing to take more seriously the social disadvantages endured by underrepresented groups. In many ways, philosophy contributed to the dark history of grounding antiblack racism in biology, anthropology, the social sciences, and speculative metaphysics. Hence, it is vital that all practioners in our profession, especially philosophers of culture, work on behalf of reconciliation and atonement for such sins. Furthermore, confronting questions about racism and social justice will “improve philosophy” as Naomi Zack and others have argued. (shrink)

Suppose that one accepts a theory that proposes that a certain group’s holding of a false belief is co-caused by a specified social structure. Then, Bhaskar has argued, one is rationally committed, ceteris paribus, to adopting a negative value judgment of that structure and a positive value judgment of activity directed towards removing it . Contrary to Bhaskar, I argue that any rational move from accepting a theory to value judgments is mediated either by further value judgments, or (...) by the role played by value-impregnated theoretical terms. Furthermore, I argue , Bhaskar’s argument tends not to be applicable in the case of theories that assign certain kinds of causal roles to social structures. Reflection on Bhaskar’s argument, however, leads to a deeper grasp of the relations between accepting theories in the social sciences and adopting value judgments. (shrink)

Ethnomethodologists (or at least many of them) have been reticent about their theoretical sources and methodological principles. It frequently falls to others to make such matters explicit. In this paper I discuss this silence about theory, but rather than entering the breach by specifying a set of implicit assumptions and principles, I suggest that the reticence is consistent with ethnomethodology's distinctive research 'program'. The main part of the paper describes the pedagogical exercises and forms of apprenticeship through which Garfinkel and (...) Sacks aimed to develop ethnomethodology as a practice. These efforts were not entirely successful, partly because ethnomethodological 'practice' required an engagement with other fully-fledged practices. Aside from the difficulties of mastering such practices, it was unclear what an ethnomethodological study would add to, or take from, them. Whether successful or not, ethnomethodological research points to the specificity of discourse and action in any given practice which a general theory is bound to misconstrue. Current disputes about cultural constructivist versions of natural science illustrate the problems that arise when the terms of a general theory are used to describe and evaluate specific domains of practice. The paper concludes by recommending ethnomethodology as a way to dissolve an unbridgeable gap between cultural theories and socially located practices. (shrink)

Understanding in its widest sense is the aim of all rational knowledge. A distinction can be made between interpretation (leading to the understanding of meanings) and explanation (leading to the understanding of facts). The view that in the social sciences facts and meanings are the same is criticized. In respect of the specific understanding of human and social facts empathetic and rational understanding are distinguished and some of the difficulties pointed out inherent in both, in particular with (...) regard to testability. On the other hand, it is found that a purely behaviouristic approach, although possible, would not be completely satisfactory, so that in spite of all difficulties the social sciences (history included) cannot do without specific understanding, as a heuristic device as well as an aim. (shrink)