Complexity and individual psychology

The dispute between the empiricist and interpretivist conceptions of the social sciences is properly conceived not as a matter of reduction or covering laws. Features specific to the social sciences include the following. Explanations of human behavior make reference to intentional causation; social phenomena are permeated with mental components and are self-referential; social science explanations have not been as successful as those in natural science because of their concern with intentional causation, because their explanations must be identical with the propositional content of the mind of the actor, and because a social phenomenon exists only if people believe it exists. Elements of an apparatus necessary to analyze this problematic social ontology are given and include selfreferentiality, constitutive rules, collective intentionality, linguistic permeation of the facts, systematic interrelationships among social facts, and primacy of acts over objects.

A biologist and an anthropologist use evolutionary biology to explain the causes and inform the prevention of rape. In this controversial book, Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer use evolutionary biology to explain the causes of rape and to recommend new approaches to its prevention. According to Thornhill and Palmer, evolved adaptation of some sort gives rise to rape; the main evolutionary question is whether rape is an adaptation itself or a by-product of other adaptations. Regardless of the answer, Thornhill and Palmer note, rape circumvents a central feature of women's reproductive strategy: mate choice. This is a primary reason why rape is devastating to its victims, especially young women. Thornhill and Palmer address, and claim to demolish scientifically, many myths about rape bred by social science theory over the past twenty-five years. The popular contention that rapists are not motivated by sexual desire is, they argue, scientifically inaccurate. Although they argue that rape is biological, Thornhill and Palmer do not view it as inevitable. Their recommendations for rape prevention include teaching young males not to rape, punishing rape more severely, and studying the effectiveness of chemical castration. They also recommend that young women consider the biological causes of rape when making decisions about dress, appearance, and social activities. Rape could cease to exist, they argue, only in a society knowledgeable about its evolutionary causes. The book includes a useful summary of evolutionary theory and a comparison of evolutionary biology's and social science's explanations of human behavior. The authors argue for the greater explanatory power and practical usefulness of evolutionary biology. The book is sure to stir up discussion both on the specific topic of rape and on the larger issues of how we understand and influence human behavior.

The debate about explanations in social and human sciences is multifaceted. In my view the fundamental dispute concerns deep metaphysical convictions about the relations between individuals and society and how one conceives a human being, a person. The dividing line goes between those who conceive individual human beings as basically independent of society and other persons, (which seems to be implicit in the liberal political tradition), and those who rejects this view, holding that a human being is constituted by its social relations. The former view is taken for granted by thinkers in the liberal tradition, and latter view is clearly expressed by Marx and is also stated by Aristotle. These views give rise to different methodological views regarding scientific explanations; those who conceive man to be constituted by its social relations are naturally methodological collectivists, while those who think of people as independent individuals are methodological individualists. The difference concerns what is explanans and explanandum: collectivists hold that explanans are social structures and explanandum consists of individual’s actions, whereas methodological individualists have it the other way round: explanans consists of individual’s actions and explanandum consists of social structures and facts.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the nature of explanations as given in both natural and social sciences. It discusses models of explanation adopted in natural and social sciences. The author also elaborates upon naturalistic and anti-naturalistic views and other types of explanations such as functional, purposive, etc in social science. The volume elaborates upon themes like bridge principle; functional explanation; purposive explanation; teleological explanation; prediction; methodological individualism; methodological collectivism; illocutionary redescription; principle of action; and dispositional explanations to understand whether the explanations given in the realm of social sciences are the same or different from the explanations that are given in the field of natural sciences. This introductory book is a must read for students and scholars of philosophy of science, logic, science and technology studies, social sciences and philosophy in general.

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.

As early as 1970, M. S. Archer argued that Bourdieu's sociology of education was the product of the particular conditions of the French educational system within which it was formulated. The same argument was subsequently advanced more generally by Richard Jenkins, who insisted that Bourdieu's sociology of culture, particularly the analysis contained in La Distinction/Distinction (Bourdieu, 1979, 1986), was an expression of the peculiarly French emphasis on taste as a basis for social differentiation. Bourdieu was himself interested in the relations between particular and universal explanation in social science, and in many of his later articles he focused specifically on the question of the transferability of his concepts, such as ‘cultural capital’. The English Preface to Homo Academicus (Bourdieu, 1988) is an explicit discussion of how the analysis presented in the text of French higher education should be read and adopted by English readers, while Practical Reason (Bourdieu, 1994, 1998) contained published lectures in which Bourdieu considered the applicability of La Distinction to Japanese society. The purpose of my proposed contribution is to trace the development of Bourdieu's sociology of education in the context of educational policy developments in France during his lifetime and, equally, to trace the ways in which his work has been used in the British context during the period between the first reception of his educational work in the United Kingdom in Knowledge and Control (Young, 1971) to the reception of his more polemical political interventions of the 1990s, many of which implicitly invoked earlier educational thinking. The intention is that this discussion should revive interest in the relevance of Bourdieu's work to the British situation by reference to many of the later texts that appeared after the emphasis of the British field of reception had shifted from education to cultural studies. La noblesse d'e´tat/State nobility (Bourdieu, 1989, 1996) and La mise`re du monde/The weight of the world (Bourdieu et al., 1993, 1999) have direct implications for British thinking about education that are different from the implications of the texts of the 1960s, and it is important to disrupt the tendency still to see the importance of Bourdieu's educational work primarily in relation to Les he´ritiers/The Inheritors (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1964b; 1977) and La reproduction/Reproduction (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970, 1977). Finally, the discussion will confront the question of transferability and ask whether the comparative conditions in Britain and France between 1960 and 2002 justify the transfer of his analyses and research methods across the cultures in the future beyond his death.

Darwin’s Conjecture is a bold attempt to bring evolutionary explanation to the social sciences, particularly economics. The book outlines the history of Darwinian explanation in social science then puts forward a generalized replicator account of social evolution by natural selection. The authors identify habits and routines as examples of the generative replicators necessary in order that social evolution is Darwinian. This reviewer notes that the replicator approach limits the generality of this account and suggests that habits and routines might better be seen as members of a Darwinian population in the tradition of Godfrey-Smith’s (2009) generalized account of natural selection instead. Furthermore, the existence of levels of social evolution will constrain what evolution can occur low in the hierarchy.

Laws and explanation in social sciences

The Problem of Explanation in Social Science: A Weberian Solution?

This chapter explores why and how — path dependence explanations offers us a useful way to analyze the role of history in social change. However for path dependence, to help us to achieve better understanding we must clearly specify it. For these reasons the emphasis in this chapter lies in differentiating and defining the many approaches all which are now confusingly called path dependence, even when each is based on a different set of assumptions about how the world works, and hence, embody different ontology and give us different ways in which to understand social change and conditions for change (Hall, 2003). In so doing this chapter is taking the challenge issued by Paul Pierson, Kathleen Thelen, John L. Campbell, and Colin Crouch to encourage such a debate (Campbell, 2004; Crouch, 2005; Pierson, 2000a; Pierson, 2000b; Thelen, 2004).

This article provides an overview of causal thinking by characterizing four approaches to causal inference. It also describes the INUS model. It specifically presents a user-friendly synopsis of philosophical and statistical musings about causation. The four approaches to causality include neo-Humean regularity, counterfactual, manipulation and mechanisms, and capacities. A counterfactual is a statement, typically in the subjunctive mood, in which a false or ‘counter to fact’ premise is followed by some assertion about what would have happened if the premise were true. Three basic questions about causality are then addressed. Moreover, the article gives a review of four approaches of what causality might be. It pays attention on a counterfactual definition, mostly amounting to a recipe that is now widely used in statistics. It ends with a discussion of the limitations of the recipe and how far it goes toward solving the epistemological and ontological problems.

Journal Article XI.—NEW BOOKS Get access Explanation in Social Science. By ROBERT BROWN. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963. Pp. viii+198. 25s. PETER WINCH PETER WINCH Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Mind, Volume LXXIII, Issue 291, July 1964, Pages 451–455, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LXXIII.291.451 Published: 01 July 1964

Book Reviews: Communication and Social Order, Explanation in Social Science, Evangelicals in Action. An Appraisal of Their Social Work, the British Political Elite, on the Shop Floor, Coal and Conflict, the Enterprise and its Environment, Dark Strangers: A Sociological Study of the Absorption of a Recent West Indian Migrant Group in Brixton, South London, the Urban Villagers: Group and Class

On the Independence of Singular Causal Explanation in Social Science: Archaeology

In this chapter, the author responds to Jon Elster's criticism of his use of functional explanation in his account of historical materialism. Elster rejects the association between Marxism and functional explanation, arguing that there is no scope for functional explanation in social science. He therefore concludes that the Marxist theory of society and history should abandon functional explanation and that it should, instead, draw for its explanations on the resources of game theory. The author offers an explanation of historical materialist theory that he attributes, on a textual basis, to Karl Marx, and that he articulates and defends in his book Karl Marx's Theory of History. He asserts that game theory cannot replace functional explanation within Marxist social analysis and that it has no place at the heart of historical materialism, alongside functional explanation.