Name: Philosophy of Social Science
Author: Harold Kincaid
ISBN: 9780195392753

Summary

The philosophy of the social sciences considers the underlying explanatory powers of the social (or human) sciences, such as history, economics, anthropology, politics, and sociology. The types of question covered include the methodological (the nature of observations, laws, theories, and explanations) to the ontological—whether or not these sciences can explain human nature in a way consistent with common-sense beliefs.

Philosophy of Social Science is a major, comprehensive look at the key ideas in the field, guided by several principles. The first is that the philosophy of social science should be closely connected to, and informed by, developments in the sciences themselves. The second is that the volume should appeal to practicing social scientists as well as philosophers, with the contributors being drawn from both ranks, and speaking to on-going controversial issues in the field.

Finally, the volume promotes connections across the social sciences, with greater internal discussion and interaction across disciplinary boundaries. It is split into five sections: mechanisms, explanation, and causation; evidence; norms, culture, and the social-psychological; sociology of knowledge; normative connections.

1. Introduction: Doing Philosophy of Social Science – Harold Kincaid
Part I: Mechanisms, Explanation, and Causation
- 2. Micro, Macro, and Mechanisms – Petri Ylikoski
- 3. Mechanisms, Causal Modeling, and the Limitations of Traditional Multiple Regression – Harold Kincaid
- 4. Process Tracing and Causal Mechanisms – David Waldner
- 5. Descriptive-Causal Generalizations: “Empirical Laws” in the Social Sciences? – Gary Goertz
- 6. Useful Complex Causality – David Byrne and Emma Uprichard
- 7. Partial Explanations in Social Science – Robert Northcott
- 8. Counterfactuals – Julian Reiss
- 9. Mechanistic Social Probability: How Individual Choices and Varying Circumstances Produce Stable Social Patterns – Marshall Abrams
Part II: Evidence
- 10. The Impact of Duhemian Principles on Social Science Testing and Progress – Fred Chernoff
- 11. Philosophy and the Practice of Bayesian Statistics in the Social Sciences – Andrew Gelman and Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
- 12. Sciences of Historical Tokens and Theoretical Types: History and the Social Sciences – Aviezer Tucker
- 13. RCTs, Evidence, and Predicting Policy Effectiveness – Nancy Cartwright
- 14. Bringing Context and Variability Back into Causal Analysis – Stephen L. Morgan and Christopher Winship
- 15. The Potential Value of Computational Models in Social Science Research – Ken Kollman
Part III: Norms, Culture, and the Social-Psychological
- 16. Models of Culture – Mark Risjord
- 17. Norms – David Henderson
- 18. The Evolutionary Program in Social Philosophy – Francesco Guala
- 19. Cultural Evolution: Integration and Skepticism – Tim Lewens
- 20. Coordination and the Foundations of Social Intelligence – Don Ross
- 21. Making Race Out of Nothing: Psychologically Constrained Social Roles – Ron Mallon and Daniel Kelly
Part IV: Sociology of Knowledge
- 22. A Feminist Empirical and Integrative Approach in Political Science: Breaking Down the Glass Wall? – Amy G. Mazur
- 23. Social Constructions of Mental Illness – Allan Horwitz
Part V: Normative Connections
- 24. Cooperation and Reciprocity: Empirical Evidence and Normative Implications – James Woodward
- 25. Evaluating Social Policy – Daniel M. Hausman
- 26. Values and the Science of Well-Being: A Recipe for Mixing – Anna Alexandrova

Extract

Philosophy of Social Science is shaped by important developments in both the social sciences and the philosophy of the social sciences over the last several decades.

In this chapter, I outline these changes and argue that they represent significant advances in our thinking about the social world. Rather than providing linear summaries of more than twenty chapters, I delineate the frameworks and issues that motivate the kind of philosophy of social science and social science represented in this volume.

Both philosophy of social science and social science itself are intermixed throughout the following chapters. This is because the volume is built around a guiding naturalism that denies that there is something special about the social world that makes it unamenable to scientific investigation, and also denies that there is something special about philosophy that makes it independent of, or prior to, the sciences in general and the social sciences in particular.

In outlining recent developments, the chapters of the handbook are related and motivated, and open unresolved issues are discussed.

Autor

Marshall Abrams. Assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago and was an NSF-sponsored postdoctoral fellow at Duke University’s Center for Philosophy of Biology. His philosophical research focuses on the nature and role of probability and causation in evolutionary biology and the social sciences, and on interactions between biological evolution and social processes, with emphasis on modeling of cognitive coherence relations in cultural change. He is also engaged in scientific research on the evolution of obesity and diabetes, and is an associate editor at the journal Frontiers in Evolutionary and Population Genetics.

Anna Alexandrova. Philosopher of social science at Cambridge University. She has taught at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and received her PhD from the University of California, San Diego. She has written on the use of formal models for explanation and policymaking in economics and history, and on the measurement of happiness in psychology. Her current work examines well-being as an object of science and a social indicator.

David Byrne. Professor of sociology and social policy in the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University. His publications include Beyond the Inner City (1989), Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences (1998), Understanding the Urban (2001), Interpreting Quantitative Data (2002), Social Exclusion (2009), and Applying Social Science (2011).

Nancy Cartwright. Professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests include philosophy and history of science, causal inference, objectivity, and evidence-based policy. Her books include How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983), The Dappled World (1999), and Hunting Causes and Using Them (2007).

Fred Chernoff. Harvey Picker Professor of International Relations and chair of the Department of Political Science at Colgate University. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University and a PhD in political science from Yale University. Author of After Bipolarity (1995), The Power of International Theory (2005), and Theory and Metatheory in International Relations (2007).

Andrew Gelman. Professor of statistics and political science and director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University. His books include Bayesian Data Analysis, Teaching Statistics: A Bag of Tricks, and Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models.

Gary Goertz. Professor of political science at the University of Arizona. Author or editor of nine books, including Social Science Concepts: A User’s Guide and A Tale of Two Cultures.

Francesco Guala. Associate professor of economics and philosophy at the University of Milan. Author of The Methodology of Experimental Economics.

Daniel M. Hausman. Herbert A. Simon and Hilldale Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His books include The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics and Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy.

James Woodward. Distinguished professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His book Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation won the Lakatos Award in 2005.

Petri Ylikoski. Academy research fellow at the University of Helsinki. His research interests include explanation, science studies, and philosophy of the social and biological sciences.

David Henderson. Robert R. Chambers Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He has written on interpretation and explanation in the social sciences and in epistemology.

Allan Horwitz. Board of Governors Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. His books include The Loss of Sadness, Diagnosis, Therapy, and Evidence, and All We Have to Fear.

Daniel Kelly. Assistant professor of philosophy at Purdue University. Author of Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust.

Harold Kincaid. Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town. Author of Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences and coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics.

Ken Kollman. Professor of political science at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on parties, elections, lobbying, and formal modeling.

Tim Lewens. Reader in philosophy of the sciences at the University of Cambridge.

Ron Mallon. Associate professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis.

Amy G. Mazur. Professor of political science at Washington State University.

Stephen L. Morgan. Professor of sociology at Cornell University.

Robert Northcott. Lecturer in philosophy at Birkbeck College, London.

Julian Reiss. Associate professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Mark Risjord. Professor of philosophy at Emory University.

Don Ross. Professor of economics and dean of commerce at the University of Cape Town.

Cosma Rohilla Shalizi. Assistant professor of statistics at Carnegie Mellon University.

Aviezer Tucker. Author of Our Knowledge of the Past.

Emma Uprichard. Senior lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London.

David Waldner. Associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia.

Christopher Winship. Professor of sociology at Harvard University.

Book Details

philosophy of social science the oxford handbook book cover

Title	Philosophy of Social Science
Autor	Harold Kincaid
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year	2012
Pages	657
Country	United States of America
ISBN	9780195392753
Format	PDF
Filesize	10.5 MB
URL	Harold Kincaid Philosophy of Social Science PDF