Philosophy of Social Science, Misc

In the social sciences, within the explanatory paradigm of structural individualism, a theory of action – like rational choice theory – models how individuals behave and interact at the micro level in order to explain macro observations as the aggregation of these individuals actions. A central epistemological issue is that such theoretical models are stuck in a dilemma between falsity of their basic assumptions and triviality of their explanation. On the one hand, models which have a great empirical success often (...) rest on unrealistic or even knowingly false assumptions; on the other hand, more complex models, with additional more realistic hypotheses, can (trivially) adapt to a wide range of situations and thus loose their explanatory power. Our purpose here is epistemological and consists in wondering to which extent demanding realistic assumptions in such cases is a relevant criterion with respect to the acceptance of a given explanatory model. Via an analogical reasoning with physics, we argue that this criterion seems too strong and actually irrelevant. General physical principles are not just idealized or unrealistic, they can also be formulated in many different yet equivalent ways which do not imply the same fundamental unobservable entities or phenomena. However, the classification of phenomena that such principles allow to highlight does not depend, at the end, on any particular formulation of these basic assumptions. This suggests that some hypotheses in theoretical models are actually not genuine empirical statements that could be independently tested but only substrates of modeling embodying a classification principle. Thus, we develop a structural invariance criterion that we then apply to rational choice models in the social sciences. We argue that this criterion allows to escape from the epistemological dilemma without condemning formal approaches like rational choice theory for their lack of realisticness nor being stuck to any antirealist viewpoint. (shrink)

- Sự phát triển của công nghệ thông minh đã khiến bài toán về mô hình hóa quá trình chắt lọc từ biển thông tin hỗn loạn để tạo ra tri thức hữu ích ngày càng trở nên cấp thiết. Bài viết giới thiệu mô hình hành vi chấp nhận công nghệ qua tiếp biến văn hóa mindsponge, gọi tắt là mô hình MTAM. - Lý thuyết về sự sàng lọc qua tiếp biến văn hóa về công nghệ cho chúng (...) ta ba gợi ý để giảm bớt sự hỗn loạn của biển thông tin. - Ưu tiên trong việc làm rõ về giá trị cốt lõi của cá nhân và tổ chức, qua đó phân tích sự tính tương thích của các hệ thống công nghệ mới, thông tin mới với các giá trị đó. - Việc phát triển chuyên môn sâu, có tính kỉ luật giúp nền tảng bộ lọc thông tin của các cá nhân và tổ chức trở nên mạch lạc hơn. - Cuối cùng, việc đổi mới và sáng tạo để thích nghi trong điều kiện chuyển đổi số và công nghệ phát triển như vũ bão là quá trình đồng thời phản tỉnh về giá trị cốt lõi, kỉ luật phát triển chuyên môn sâu, nhằm tạo ra kết nối thông tin mới có tính giải thích, suy phóng cao. -/- . (shrink)

Today, when reading about multicollinearity – one of the most dreaded problems in regression analysis, I came across the statement of Blanchard [8]: “Multicollinearity is God’s will, not a problem with OLS or statistical techniques in general.” Immediately, I thought: “If it is really God’s will, we should keep the problem within our grasp, but not rely on God.”.

على مدى سنواتٍ طويلة، شغلتني إشكالية العلاقة بين العلم والسياسة، قراءةً وبحثًا وإشرافًا على أطروحات تُعالج هذه العلاقة وتأثيراتها على الكوكب المُثقل بنا وبما كسبت أيدينا. قد تبدو هذه العلاقة للوهلة الأولى علاقة اعتماد متبادل؛ فالبحوث والكشوف العلمية في حاجةٍ إلى تمويل، والتمويل يأتي من قبل الحكومات، أو من قبل أرباب رؤوس الأموال الذين يُهيمنون على سياسات الدول والحكومات؛ كما أن الدول والحكومات في حاجة إلى البحوث والكشوف العلمية لتنفيذ برامجها التنموية والانتصار لأيديولوجياتها. يُمكننا تمثيل هذه العلاقة بين العلم والسياسة (...) بعلاقة الأعرج والأعمى؛ فالأول مُقيد في تنقلاته بكرسي مُتحرك، فهو في حاجةٍ إلى من يدفعه، والثاني فَقد بصره، فهو في حاجةٍ إلى من يُوجهه، ومن ثم فقد ارتبطا معًا بمصيرٍ واحد، وباتا يعتمدان على بعضهما البعض وإن اختلفت أهدافهما! لكن الأعمى في الحقيقة هو الذي يقود، وقد يصُم أذنيه عن نداءات الأعرج فيهوي به في الظلمات سبعين خريفًا! وهل يُمكن للسياسي حين تغلب عليه أيديولوجيته، وتطغى عليه طموحات التفوق والهيمنة، أن يُدرك تعقيدات القوة التي يمكن للعلم أن يُطلقها من عنانها؟ وهل بإمكانه أن يُوازن دومًا بين هذه القوة وما تتسم به النفس البشرية من ضعف وتناقضٍ وتحول وفقًا لشروط الزمان والمكان؟! تلك هي القضية الكبرى التي تواجه الإنسان منذ منتصف القرن الماضي، وبصفة خاصة منذ أن ألقيت أول قنبلة ذرية على هيروشيما؛ يومها أعلن الفيزيائي الأمريكي «جاكوب روبرت أوبنهايمر» أن العلم قد فقد عذريته، ولم يعد لنا أن نتخيله تلك العذراء الطاهرة الحنون! لكن عالــــم الكيمياء الحيوي النمســــوي «إروين شارجــــــاف» ذهب إلى أبعد من ذلك؛ رأى أن العلم قد فقد عذريته مع بدء مشروع مانهاتن، أول معسكر اعتقال علمي جُمع فيه أكثر العلماء عبقرية من كيميائيين وفيزيائيين تحت حراسة مشددة، وقيل لهم: هيا العبوا واقتلوا. كانوا يعرفون جميعـًا أنهم سيقومون بأكبر عملٍ شيطاني: تفجير الذرة، وأن هذا الاكتشاف سيسُتخدم في أكبر مذبحة في تاريخ البشرية! ومنذ ذلك الحين، بات جليًا أن الحياد العلمي أمرًا يوتوبيًا مُفارقًا للواقع، وأن القدرة على تطهير العقل العلمي من أدرانه الأيديولوجية مسألة عصية على العلماء في عالمٍ تنهشه السياسة وتبتلعه بطون السادة على موائد الأموال، وهو ما تعكسه بوضوح أزمة جائحة كورونا. (shrink)

From Plato to the present day, political theorists have used models of idealistic societies to think about politics. How can these idealistic models inform our thinking about political life in our non-ideal world? Not, as many political theorists have hoped, by providing normative guidance -- by showing us how things should be or where we should go. Even still, we can use these models to interpret the concepts we depend on to explain and evaluate political behavior and institutions, thereby sharpening (...) our explanations of how things work and our estimations of how to make things better. Seeing idealistic models in this light reveals a promising route to a form of political inquiry that integrates our explanatory aims and our normative aspirations. -/- (Updated: October 2024. The book is in production for publication by Oxford University Press, to appear in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics series. I have uploaded the table of contents, chapter 1, and the bibliography.). (shrink)

The literature on pluralism in economics has focused on the benefits expected from the plurality of theories, methods, and frameworks. This overlooks half of the picture: the costs. Neither have the multifarious costs been systematically analyzed in philosophy of science. We begin rectifying this neglect. We discuss how the benefits of plurality and diversity in science presuppose distinct types of plurality and how various benefit and plurality types are associated with different types of costs. Finally, we ponder how the general (...) mechanisms that give rise to the costs of plurality and diversity are aggravated by various disciplinary characteristics of economics. (shrink)

Private schools are working tirelessly to provide a quality education without support from the government. This article aims to evaluate the internal and external job stress of high school teachers in private schools in Leyte, Philippines, and determine its governing factors. The study involved a complete enumeration process in selecting the participants and gathering primary data. In analyzing and extracting relevant information from the data, standard descriptive metrics, correlation analysis, and Chi-square test for independence were employed with the aid of (...) statistical software. The findings of the study depicted that private teachers are both internally and externally moderately stressful in their jobs. The Chi-square test revealed that employment status and years in service are associated with the private teachers’ internal job stress and it is significant at a 10% level. In addition, it is depicted that gender, monthly salary, and years in service are significantly dependent on the teachers’ external job stress at a 10% level. Conclusively, the school heads and management of private schools must lessen the work assignments to avoid exhaustion and increase benefits to improve the well-being of teachers. Moreover, it is suggested that teachers in private schools must be provided with training and seminars, incentives, supplies for teaching, and other benefits that improve their productivity and become globally competitive educators. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that generics (i.e., unquantified generalizations) are pervasive in communication and that when they are about social groups, this may offend and polarize people because generics gloss over variations between individuals. Generics about social groups might be particularly common on Twitter (X). This remains unexplored, however. Using machine learning (ML) techniques, we therefore developed an automatic classifier for social generics, applied it to 1.1 million tweets about people, and analyzed the tweets. While it is often suggested that generics (...) are ubiquitous in everyday communication, we found that most tweets (78%) about people contained no generics. However, tweets with generics received more “likes” and retweets. Furthermore, while recent psychological research may lead to the prediction that tweets with generics about political groups are more common than tweets with generics about ethnic groups, we found the opposite. However, consistent with recent claims that political animosity is less constrained by social norms than animosity against gender and ethnic groups, negative tweets with generics about political groups were significantly more prevalent and retweeted than negative tweets about ethnic groups. Our study provides the first ML-based insights into the use and impact of social generics on Twitter. (shrink)

The question of how disability affects wellbeing has occupied a number of philosophers in recent years. However, this literature has proceeded without a careful examination of the fairly vast empirical research on the topic. In this paper, I review the scholarly literature and discuss some philosophically-relevant aspects of it. On average, those with disabilities have a significantly lower level of wellbeing than those without disabilities. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that this reduction in wellbeing is not due entirely to ableist (...) factors. Hence, I argue that it shows that the Mere Difference View of disability is most likely false. However, the literature indeed shows that disabled people typically live good lives. Thus, despite its rejection of the Mere Difference View, it still upholds a disability-affirmative view. These findings allow for a measured critique of some of Peter Singer’s writings on disability. (shrink)

Museums lose their conceptual complexity and polysemy under conditions of war, forced confrontation, and struggles for survival, which may lead to a loss of diversity in the long run. Parametric General Systems analysis allows us to consider a museum as a system and to explore substratum, structural, and conceptual types of simplicity and complexity. Such qualitative analysis makes it possible to move the discussion from the ideological and value sphere to the field of rational and science-based justification. This justification, in (...) turn, illustrates why it is important to maintain complex interpretations in Ukrainian museums during the current war. (shrink)

There are many historical concerns about freedom that have come to be deemphasized in the free will literature itself—for instance, worries around the tyranny of government or the alienation of capitalism. It is hard to see how the current free will literature respects these, or indeed how they could even find expression. This paper seeks to show how these and other concerns can be reintegrated into the debate by appealing to a levels ontology. Recently, Christian List and others have considered (...) how the notion of levels could be relevant to the free will debate. Invariably, however, the focus is on the significance of facts at lower levels. The threats come from below, from fundamental physics or neuroscience. Here, I aim to show how we can frame many interesting concerns about free will in terms of threats from above. After arguing that determination from above is no less threatening, I catalogue such concerns that might constitute threats to our freedom. Doing this not only allows us to show how these concerns relate to those standardly discussed, but it pushes us to expand our conception of freedom. (shrink)

Voces de Carnaval: ritualidad festiva, resignificación cultural y mercantilismo, surge del interés de compartir experiencias de la ritualidad festiva en varias latitudes, especialmente latinoamericanas, para generar nuevos sentidos de encuentro cultural. Este espacio plural, motivado desde la Red Colombia Festiva junto con el Instituto de Estudios en Comunicación y Cultura de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia sede Bogotá, varias universidades públicas, la Universidad Politécnica Salesiana de Quito, a través de la carrera de Antropología, el grupo de investigación Filosofía de la (...) Educación GIFE y la editorial Abya-Yala, abrieron la puerta a esta polifonía de reflexiones analíticas y críticas que se decantan en este libro. El lector encontrará pensamientos diversos que re-crean la fiesta desde los cuerpos individuales y colectivos y sus formas de entender y sentir la ritualidad heredada, pero a la vez mediada por las necesidades emergentes de relacionarse y participar del goce y disfrute de la libertad como principal desinhibidor de colectivos sociales que reclaman su derecho a expresar lo que les es limitado, a través de las formas prohibidas fuera de la esfera ceremonial. (shrink)

Addicts are often portrayed as compelled by their addiction and thus as a paradigm of unfree action and mitigated blame. This chapter argues that our best scientific theories of addiction reveal that, psychologically, addicts are not categorically different from non-addicts. There is no pairing of contemporary accounts of addiction and of prominent theories of moral responsibility that can justify our intuitions about the mitigation of addicts but not non-addicts. Two conclusions are advanced. First, we should either treat addicts as we (...) normally treat non-addicts (as fully culpable) or embrace the skeptical conclusion that everyone is less responsible than we thought—perhaps not responsible at all. Second, we should be doubtful that theorizing about responsibility will be advanced by focusing on particular kinds of psychopathologies. (shrink)

This paper argues that ethical propositions can legitimately be used as evidence for and against empirical conclusions. Specifically, I argue that this thesis is entailed by several uncontroversial assumptions about ethical metaphysics and epistemology. I also outline several examples of ethical-to-empirical inferences where it is extremely plausible that one can rationally rely upon their ethical evidence in order to gain a justified belief in an empirical conclusion. The main upshot is that ethical propositions can, under perfectly standard conditions, play both (...) direct and indirect evidential roles in (social) scientific inquiry. (shrink)

It is an open question whether well-being ought to primarily be understood as a temporal concept or whether it only makes sense to talk about a person’s well-being over their whole lifetime. In this article, I argue that how this principled philosophical disagreement is settled does not have substantive practical implications for well-being science and well-being policy. Trying to measure lifetime well-being directly is extremely challenging as well as unhelpful for guiding well-being public policy, while temporal well-being is both an (...) adequate indirect measure of lifetime well-being, and an adequate focus for the purposes of improving well-being through public policy. Consequently, even if what we ought to care about is lifetime well-being, we should use temporal measures of well-being and focus on temporal well-being policies. (shrink)

The presented Research Topic explores the potential of citizen science to contribute to the development of social innovations. It sets the ground for analysis of mutual relations between two strong and embedded in the literature concepts: citizen science and social innovation. Simultaneously, the collection opens a discussion on how these two ideas are intertwined, what are the significant barriers, and the need to use citizen science for social innovation.

In recent years, the practice of tax exemption for churches has become a source of open scrutiny, argument, and controversy on the part of both government and religious leaders. The study attempted to assess the main principles that government base on to impose taxes on its citizenry and to assess the tax exemption status of the churches in Ghana. Exploratory, descriptive and cross-section surveys were used to investigate and discover from respondent’s information on the topic to provide a report on (...) the background, facts, settings and concerns about the principles of taxation and the tax exemption status of churches. The study considered 120 people as its targeted sample of which 114 responded by the use of questionnaires. Also, descriptive analysis such as frequency and percentages were used to analyse the data. From the information gathered on the research, it was revealed that most Ghanaians representing 65.8% prefer the government to allocate taxes based on the benefits that taxpayers receive for paying taxes rather than the ability to pay or any other principle for the allocation of taxes. In addition, 57% of Ghanaians would like the religious organizations to enjoy their tax-exempt status despite allegation by critics that they are amassing wealth for themselves and not contributing to the development of Ghana. Some of the reasons given were that: churches are not profit-making businesses; churches contribute to the development of the nation; churches care for the people more than the government. Some of them concluded that failure to grant the church tax exemption may give room for the churches to engage in business activities. For those with the opposing view, some gave reasons such as: churches have become some sort of commerce; the churches have more money in this world; the payment of taxes by churches may as well boost the revenue of the government. Despite the various arguments, there was an agreement that the Ghana Revenue Authority should check the sales of rosaries, anointing oil, holy water, charge of consultation fees, as these should attract taxation. The paper recommends that Tax-Exempt Division should develop policies and administer tax exempt organizations (including religious organizations) laws. The division should be responsible for exempt organizations tax education and training to enable them understand their tax law obligations. This will improve tax compliance by the exempt organizations. (shrink)

"Correlation is not causation" is one of the mantras of the sciences—a cautionary warning especially to fields like epidemiology and pharmacology where the seduction of compelling correlations naturally leads to causal hypotheses. The standard view from the epistemology of causation is that to tell whether one correlated variable is causing the other, one needs to intervene on the system—the best sort of intervention being a trial that is both randomized and controlled. In this paper, we argue that some purely correlational (...) data contains information that allows us to draw causal inferences: statistical noise. Methods for extracting causal knowledge from noise provide us with an alternative to randomized controlled trials that allows us to reach causal conclusions from purely correlational data. (shrink)

Inductive thinking is a universal human habit; we generalise from our experiences the best we can. The induction problem is to identify which observed regularities provide reasonable justification for inductive conclusions. In the natural sciences, we can often use strict laws in making successful inferences about unobserved states of affairs. In the social sciences, by contrast, we have no strict laws, only regularities which most often are conditioned on ceteris paribus clauses. This makes it much more difficult to make reliable (...) inferences in the social sciences. In particular, we want knowledge about general causal relations in order to be able to determine what to do in order to achieve a certain state of affairs. Knowledge about causal relations that are also valid in the future requires experiments or so called ‘natural experiments’. Only knowledge derived from such experiences enable us to draw reasonably reliable inferences about how to act in order to achieve our goals. (shrink)

Humanity faces two fundamental problems of learning: learning about the universe, and learning to become civilized. We have solved the first problem, but not the second one, and that puts us in a situation of great danger. Almost all of our global problems have arisen as a result. It has become a matter of extreme urgency to solve the second problem. The key to this is to learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second one. (...) This was the basic idea of the 18th century Enlightenment, but in implementing this idea, the Enlightenment blundered. Their mistakes are still built into academia today. In order to le arn how to create a civilized, enlightened world, the key thing we need to do is to cure academia of the structural blunders we have inherited from the Enlightenment. We need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academia more broadly so that the basic aim becomes wisdom, and not just knowledge. (shrink)

This study assessed the professional variables of academic staff in African varsities and their readiness to Utilise Internet-Based Channels for Research Communication in an era of Covid-19. Drawing from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, the study was guided by four null hypotheses. The quantitative research method based on the virtual cross-sectional survey design was adopted. A total of 8,591 academics in African universities were the targeted demographic of this study. However, data were collected from a virtual snowball sample of 1,977 (...) respondents (males, N = 1347; females, N = 630) from 24 African countries. A validated electronic survey, with three major aspects, was employed for data collection. The e-survey was released on the Association of African Universities' Telegram forum, which includes 1,622 participants from diverse African nations and regions. Members of the forum, who are all academics, were invited to complete the survey and publish it on their universities' internet-based forums. Coded data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics such as the Kruskal Wallis Non-parametric test. The non-parametric test was used because the data failed to meet the normality assumptions required to perform a parametric test. Results indicated, amongst others, that there are considerable variances in staff preparedness to use internet-based channels for research communication based on their educational credentials, educational qualification, rank and areas of research interest. According to the survey, academics with a doctoral degree; grade II lecturers; staff with 3 to 6 years of service; and staff in the medical sciences demonstrated a higher propensity of readiness to use internet-based channels for research communication. Based on these findings key theoretical, practical and research implications are discussed. (shrink)

There are presently two approaches to the study of well-being. Philosophers typically focus on normative theorizing, attempting to identify the things that are ultimately good for a person, while largely ignoring empirical research. The idea is that empirical attention cannot be directed to the right place without a rigorous theory. Meanwhile, social scientists typically focus on empirical research, attempting to identify the causes and consequences of well-being, while largely ignoring normative theorizing. The idea is that conceptual and theoretical clarity will (...) come with time and more data. This paper argues that neither is a good approach to the study of well-being. The traditional philosophical approach underappreciates the vital importance of empirical investigation, while the atheoretical empirical approach underappreciates the vital importance of normative theorizing. The proposed solution is to bring these methods together. Well-being research should be interdisciplinary. The paper proposes a “conceptual engineering” approach as a novel alternative. This approach involves an iterative process of normative theorizing, empirical investigation, and conceptual revision, with the aim of articulating concepts and theories of well-being that optimally suit particular interests and purposes. (shrink)

Strategies are mentioned across a variety of domains, from business ethics, to the philosophy of war, philosophy of sport, game theory, and others. However, despite their wide use, very little has been said about how to think about what strategies are or how they relate to other prominently discussed concepts. In this article, I probe the close connection between strategies and plans, which have been much more thoroughly characterized in the philosophy of action. After highlighting the challenges of analyzing strategies (...) in terms of plans, I show how the work done on the connection between plans and intentions can inspire further questions about the nature of strategy. I conclude by showing how one particular innovation in the understanding of plans—how they can be more or less partial—can be used to help us to mark what makes for a good strategy. (shrink)

The central claim of the volume in which this chapter appears (*Fermented Landscapes*, ed. Colleen C. Myles, Univ. of Nebraska Press 2020) is that the chemical process of fermentation supplies an apt metaphor for understanding certain kinds of landscape change. The kinds of landscape change in question are, fortuitously, those often occasioned by commercial processes centered around fermentation itself: the commercial production of beer, wine, spirits, cider, cheese, and related fermented products. But what makes this metaphor apt? Which kinds of (...) landscape change are most fruitfully conceptualized as exhibiting “fermentation,” and how do they differ from other sorts of landscape change? What is it about fermentation-centered industries that effects fermentation-modeled landscape change, and when (if ever) do these industries contribute to other, different forms of landscape change? Is there any essential reason why fermentation-centered industries should create in their environs processes of transformation usefully characterized in terms of ferment? Or is this little more than a happy linguistic coincidence? In short: how much mileage do we get from this metaphor? This chapter offers a number of considerations germane to an evaluation of the “fermented landscapes” research paradigm—considerations to which readers may wish to remain alert as they study the contributions in this volume. (shrink)

Generating an account that can sidestep the disagreement among substantive theories of well-being, while at the same time still providing useful guidance for well-being public policy, would be a significant achievement. Unfortunately, the various attempts to remain agnostic regarding what constitutes well-being fail to either be an account of well-being, provide useful guidance for well-being policy, or avoid relying on a substantive well-being theory. There are no theory-free lunches in well-being policy. Instead, I propose an intermediate account, according to which (...) well-being is constituted by endorsed veridical experiences. This account refers back to theories of well-being but does so as agnostically as possible. An intermediate account of well-being is meant as a policy guiding compromise between the different theories of well-being that make claims regarding what constitutes well-being. An intermediate account does as well as can be hoped for in providing a basis for well-being policy. (shrink)

1. A multidisciplinary group of scholars within the International Commission on Stratigraphy – known as the Anthropocene Working Group – recently recommended the Anthropocene as a new geological ep...

A view inherited from Max Weber states that purposive rational action, value rational action and affective action are three distinct types of social action that can compete, oppose, complement or substitute each other in social explanations. Contrary to this statement, I will defend the view that these do not constitute three different types of social actions, but that social actions always seem to concurrently involve rationality, normativity and affectivity. I show this by discussing the links between rational actions and consequentialism (...) and non-consequentialism, and by elaborating on certain major relationships between rationality, normativity and emotions. (shrink)

Evaluative claims and assumptions are ubiquitous in positive psychology. Some will deny this. But such disavowals are belied by the literature. Some will consider the presence of evaluative claims a problem and hope to root them out. But this is a mistake. If positive psychology is to live up to its raison d’être – to be the scientific study of the psychological components of human flourishing or well-being – it must make evaluative claims. Well-being consists in those things that are (...) good for us, that make life go well. Thus, one cannot investigate this topic without making claims about what is good for people and what they have reason to do. It’s time, therefore, to embrace the fact that positive psychology is value-laden. Doing so would benefit the field by allowing for more rigorous theorizing, and – perhaps counterintuitively – increasing the field’s objectivity. (shrink)

There is an under-appreciated tradition of genealogical explanation that is centrally concerned with social functions. I shall refer to it as the tradition of pragmatic genealogy. It runs from David Hume (T, 3.2.2) and the early Friedrich Nietzsche (TL) through E. J. Craig (1990, 1993) to Bernard Williams (2002) and Miranda Fricker (2007). These pragmatic genealogists start out with a description of an avowedly fictional “state of nature” and end up ascribing social functions to particular building blocks of our practices (...) – such as the fact that we use a certain concept, or live by a certain virtue – which we did not necessarily expect to have such a function at all. That the seemingly archaic device of a fictional state-of-nature story should be a helpful way to get at the functions of our actual practices must seem a mystifying proposal, however; I shall therefore endeavor to demystify it in what follows. My aim in this chapter is twofold. First, by delineating the framework of pragmatic genealogy and contrasting it with superficially similar methods, I argue that pragmatic genealogies are best interpreted as dynamic models whose point is to reveal the function – and non-coincidentally often the social function – of certain practices. Second, by buttressing this framework with something it notably lacks, namely an account of the type of functionality it operates with, I argue that both the type of functional commitment and the depth of factual obligation incurred by a pragmatic genealogy depend on what we use the method for: the dynamic models of pragmatic genealogy can be used merely as heuristic devices helping us spot functional patterns, or more ambitiously as arguments grounding our ascriptions of functionality to actual practices, or even more ambitiously as bases for functional explanations of the resilience or the persistence of practices. By bringing these distinctions into view, we gain the ability to distinguish strengths and weaknesses of the method’s application from strengths and weaknesses of the method itself. (shrink)

The rapidly growing transdisciplinary enthusiasm about developing new kinds of Anthropocene stories is based on the shared assumption that the Anthropocene predicament is best made sense of by narrative means. Against this assumption, this article argues that the challenge we are facing today does not merely lie in telling either scientific, socio-political, or entangled Anthropocene narratives to come to terms with our current condition. Instead, the challenge lies in coming to grips with how the stories we can tell in the (...) Anthropocene relate to the radical novelty of the Anthropocene condition about which no stories can be told. What we need to find are meaningful ways to reconcile an inherited commitment to narrativization and the collapse of storytelling as a vehicle of understanding the Anthropocene as our current predicament. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of how human science categories yield projectable inferences by critically examining Ron Mallon’s ‘social role’ account of human kinds. Mallon contends that human categories are projectable when a social role produces a homeostatic property cluster (HPC) kind. On this account, human categories are projectable when various social mechanisms stabilize and entrench those categories. Mallon’s analysis obscures a distinction between transitory and robust projectable inferences. I argue that the social kinds discussed by Mallon yield the former, (...) while classifications of biological kinds yield the latter. Classifications from psychiatry (‘schizophrenia,’ ‘hysteria’) are discussed as examples. (shrink)

Winner of the 2020 Essay Competition of the International Social Ontology Society. -/- Ian Hacking uses the looping effect to describe how classificatory practices in the human sciences interact with the classified people. While arguably this interaction renders the affected human kinds unstable and hence different from natural kinds, realists argue that also some prototypical natural kinds are interactive and human kinds in general are stable enough to support explanations and predictions. I defend a more fine-grained realist interpretation of interactive (...) human kinds by arguing for an explanatory domain account of the looping effect. First, I argue that knowledge of the feedback mechanisms that mediate the looping effect can supplement, and help to identify, the applicability domain over which a kind and its property variations are stably explainable. Second, by applying this account to cross-cultural case studies of psychiatric disorders, I distinguish between congruent feedback mechanisms that explain matches between classifications and kinds, and incongruent feedback mecha- nisms that explain mismatches. For example, congruent mechanisms maintain Western auditory experiences in schizophrenia, whereas exporting diagnostic labels inflicts incongruence by influencing local experiences. Knowledge of the mechanisms can strengthen explanatory domains, and thereby facilitate classificatory adjustments and possible interventions on psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

We identify several ongoing debates related to implicit measures, surveying prominent views and considerations in each debate. First, we summarize the debate regarding whether performance on implicit measures is explained by conscious or unconscious representations. Second, we discuss the cognitive structure of the operative constructs: are they associatively or propositionally structured? Third, we review debates whether performance on implicit measures reflects traits or states. Fourth, we discuss the question of whether a person’s performance on an implicit measure reflects characteristics of (...) the person who is taking the test or characteristics of the situation in which the person is taking the test. Finally, we survey the debate about the relationship between implicit measures and (other kinds of) behavior. (shrink)

This thesis studies the formation of rules of experience in Weberian methodology and its adequacy to scientific validation criteria. It was sought to investigate, in the first part of the work, a proposal of justification for the so-called eligibility criteria. It was also tried to explain the meaning used in this research of the term “reason”, which is based on the theoretical conception of the operative reason exposed by Newton da Costa. Again, with the help of the writings of the (...) same author, we have examined those, so named by him, pragmatic principles of scientific reason. The second section of this study presented the three eligibility criteria, namely: i) the difference between to be (sein) and to ought to be (sollen); ii) the possibility of subsumption of individual action; iii) the construction of concepts as ideal types. In the third part of this work, rationally correct action was justified as an anticipated conjecture for a reflexive operation. However, it was supported that there is a significant difference in relation to the rules of experience when applied for the construction of the agent’s actions and in their use for validating the imputation of causal links between social phenomena. In order to validate the results of the research, the rules of experience must be cleverly designed to be general propositions of the experiment, and for this, the characterization of these rules was based in the so-called “Fermi solution”. Subsequent to this methodological proposal, we pondered how the scientist conducts a thought experiment in the empirical sciences of action and the judgment of objective possibility as a counterfactual proposition was logically structured. Thus, we tried to demonstrate the logical structure of the validation mode of knowledge produced in the empirical sciences of action from Weberian pattern. (shrink)

Since Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), historians and philosophers of science have paid increasing attention to the implications of disciplinarity. In this chapter we consider restrictions posed to interdisciplinary exchange between ecology and economics that result from a particular kind of commitment to the ideal of disciplinary purity, that is, that each discipline is defined by an appropriate, unique set of objects, methods, theories, and aims. We argue that, when it comes to the objects of study in (...) ecology and economics, ideas of disciplinary purity have been underwritten by the artificial-natural distinction. We then problematize this distinction, and thus disciplinary purity, both conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, the distinction is no longer tenable. Empirically, recent interdisciplinary research has shown the epistemological and policy-oriented benefits of dealing with models which explicitly link anthropogenic (i.e., “artificial”) and non-anthropogenic factors (i.e., “natural”). We conclude that, in the current age of the Anthropocene, it is to be expected that without interdisciplinary exchange, ecology and economics may relinquish global relevance because the distinct and separate systems to which each “pure” science was originally made to apply will only diminish over time. (shrink)

Big Data has the potential to enable unprecedentedly rigorous quantitative modeling of complex human social relationships and social structures. When such models are extended to nonhuman domains, they can undermine anthropocentric assumptions about the extent to which these relationships and structures are specifically human. Discoveries of relevant commonalities with nonhumans may not make us less human, but they promise to challenge fundamental views of what it is to be human.

Two great problems of learning confront humanity: learning about the nature of the universe and about ourselves and other living things as a part of the universe, and learning how to become civilized or enlightened. The first problem was solved, in essence, in the 17th century, with the creation of modern science. But the second problem has not yet been solved. Solving the first problem without also solving the second puts us in a situation of great danger. All our current (...) global problems have arisen as a result. What we need to do, in response to this unprecedented crisis, is learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second one. This was the basic idea of the 18th century Enlightenment. Unfortunately, in carrying out this programme, the Enlightenment made three blunders, and it is this defective version of the Enlightenment programme, inherited from the past, that is still built into the institutional/intellectual structure of academic inquiry in the 21st century. In order to solve the second great problem of learning we need to correct the three blunders of the traditional Enlightenment. This involves changing the nature of social inquiry, so that social science becomes social methodology or social philosophy, concerned to help us build into social life the progress-achieving methods of aim-oriented rationality, arrived at by generalizing the progress-achieving methods of science. It also involves, more generally, bringing about a revolution in the nature of academic inquiry as a whole, so that it takes up its proper task of helping humanity learn how to become wiser by increasingly cooperatively rational means. The scientific task of improving knowledge and understanding of nature becomes a part of the broader task of improving global wisdom. The outcome would be what we so urgently need: a kind of inquiry rationally designed and devoted to helping us make progress towards a genuinely civilized world. We would succeed in doing what the Enlightenment tried but failed to do: learn from scientific progress how to go about making social progress towards as good a world as possible. (shrink)

Публикация (#4) из научно-популярного цикла: "Структурная онтология познания с доктором Шимко".

Публикация (#13) из научно-популярного цикла: "Структурная онтология познания с доктором Шимко".

Публикация (#15) из научно-популярного цикла: "Структурная онтология познания с доктором Шимко".

Antes de comentar detalladamente sobre Haciendo lo Mundo Social (MSW) primero voy a ofrecer algunos comentarios sobre la filosofía (psicología descriptiva) y su relación con la investigación psicológica contemporánea como ejemplificado en las obras de Searle (S) y Wittgenstein (W), ya que siento que esta es la mejor manera de lugar Searle o cualquier comentarista sobre el comportamiento, en la perspectiva adecuada. Será de gran ayuda para ver mis comentarios de PNC, TLP, PI, OC, TARW y otros libros de estos (...) dos genios de la psicología descriptiva. S no hace ninguna referencia a la declaración de la mente presciente de W como mecanismo en TLP, y su destrucción de ella en su trabajo posterior. Desde W, S se ha convertido en el principal deconstructor de estas vistas mecánicas de la conducta, y el psicólogo descriptivo más importante (filósofo), pero no se da cuenta de cómo completamente W lo anticipó ni, en general, hacer otros (pero ver los muchos papeles y libros de Proudfoot y Copeland en W, Turing y AI). El trabajo de S es mucho más fácil de seguir que W, y aunque hay cierta jerga, es sobre todo espectacularmente claro si te acercas desde la dirección correcta. Vea mis reseñas de W S y otros libros para más detalles. En general, MSW es un buen Resumen de los muchos avances sustanciales sobre Wittgenstein resultantes del medio siglo de trabajo de S, pero en mi opinión, W todavía es inigualable para la psicología básica una vez que entiendes lo que está diciendo (ver mis comentarios). Idealmente, deben leerse juntos: Searle para la clara prosa coherente y generalizaciones sobre la operación de S2/S3, ilustrada con los ejemplos perspicaces de W de la operación de S1/S2, y sus brillantes aforismos. Si yo fuera mucho más joven escribiría un libro haciendo exactamente eso. Aquellos que deseen un marco completo hasta la fecha para el comportamiento humano de la moderna dos systems punto de vista puede consultar mi libro 'La estructura lógica de la filosofía, la psicología, la mente y lenguaje nn Ludwig Wittgenstein y John Searle ' 2nd ED (2019). Los interesados en más de mis escritos pueden ver 'Monos parlantes--filosofía, psicología, ciencia, religión y política en un planeta condenado--artículos y reseñas 2006-2019 3rd ED (2019) y delirios utópicos suicidas en el 21St Century 4TH Ed (2019) y otras. (shrink)

Trung Tran, Phuong-Thao T. Trinh, Thu-Trang Vuong, Hiep-Hung Pham (2019). Chapter 1. The debates and the long-awaited reform. In Quan-Hoang Vuong, Trung Tran (Eds.), The Vietnamese Social Sciences at a Fork in the Road (pp. 17–32). Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter / Sciendo. DOI:10.2478/9783110686081-006 -/- Online ISBN: 9783110686081 © 2019 De Gruyter / Sciendo.

Spatially situated opinions that can be held with different degrees of conviction lead to spatiotemporal patterns such as clustering (homophily), polarization, and deadlock. Our goal is to understand how sensitive these patterns are to changes in the local nature of interactions. We introduce two different mixing mechanisms, spatial relocation and nonlocal interaction (“telephoning”), to an earlier fully spatial model (no mixing). Interestingly, the mechanisms that create deadlock in the fully spatial model have the opposite effect when there is a sufficient (...) amount of mixing. With telephoning, not only is polarization and deadlock broken up, but consensus is hastened. The effects of mixing by relocation are even more pronounced. Further insight into these dynamics is obtained for selected parameter regimes via comparison to the mean-field differential equations. (shrink)

Chrysostomos Mantzavinos (2016), Explanatory Pluralism. Cambridge University Press, xiv + 223 pp. £64.99 cloth.

This paper attempts to classify the beggars of modern Nepal according to their professional and their art of begging. By observing their principles of begging, we have classified them into 6 categories and each category has been explained in brief.

Pourquoi accorder un rôle essentiel à la délibération publique dans le choix des normes éthiques et politiques guidant les sciences? À partir d’un débat récent en économie du bien-être, cet article soutient que l’introduction de normes éthiques et politiques en sciences doit respecter le principe de neutralité procédurale, et qu’une délibération publique bien encadrée respecte ce principe. Je présenterai deux raisons de croire que les sciences doivent respecter la neutralité procédurale. Le premier argument est lié au rôle que devrait jouer (...) l’examen libre et critique dans le développement des sciences. Le second argument repose sur l’idée que les sciences devraient être sensibles aux procédures présentant le meilleur potentiel épistémique. Pour ces deux raisons, si elle prend position en faveur d’idéaux normatifs, l’économie du bien-être devrait se tourner vers une approche délibérative, rationnelle et impartiale pour y parvenir. (shrink)

Social change is slow and difficult. Social change for animals is formidably slow and difficult. Advocates and scholars alike have long tried to change attitudes and convince the public that eating animals is wrong. The topic of norms and social change for animals has been neglected, which explains in part the relative failure of the animal protection movement to secure robust support reflected in social and legal norms. Moreover, animal ethics has suffered from a disproportionate focus on individual attitudes and (...) behavior at the expense of collective behavior, social change, and empirical psychology. If what we want to change is behavior on a large scale, norms are important tools. This article reviews an account of social norms that provides insights into the possibility and limitations of social change for animals, approaching animal protection as a problem of reverse social engineering. It highlights avenues for future work from this neglected perspective. (shrink)

Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment NOW" is in many ways a terrific book, from which I have learnt much. But it is also deeply flawed. Science and reason are at the heart of the book, but the conceptions that Steven Pinker defends are damagingly irrational. And these defective conceptions of science and reason, as a result of being associated with the Enlightenment Programme for the past two or three centuries, have been responsible, in part, for the genesis of the global problems we (...) now suffer from, and our current inability to deal with them properly. There is not a glimmering of an awareness of any of this in Pinker’s book. This flaw in Enlightenment NOW is serious indeed. (shrink)

Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment NOW is in many ways a terrific book, from which I have learnt much. But it is also deeply flawed. Science and reason are at the heart of the book, but the conceptions that Steven Pinker defends are damagingly irrational. And these defective conceptions of science and reason, as a result of being associated with the Enlightenment Programme for the past two or three centuries, have been responsible, in part, for the genesis of the global problems (...) we now suffer from, and our current inability to deal with them properly. There is not a glimmering of an awareness of any of this in Pinker’s book. This flaw in Enlightenment NOW is serious indeed. (shrink)