In this article, we discuss the issue of context-dependence of mechanism-based explanation in the social sciences. The different ways in which the context-dependence and context-independence of mechanism-based explanation have been understood in the social sciences are often motivated by different and apparently incompatible understandings of what explanatory mechanisms are. Instead, we suggest that the different varieties of context-dependence are best seen as corresponding to different research goals. Rather than conflicting with one another, these goals are complementary to each other and (...) therefore pave the way to a methodologically more cooperative approach to mechanism-based explanation in the social sciences. (shrink)

The past two decades have witnessed an increase in interest in social mechanisms and mechanistic explanations of social macro-phenomena. This paper addresses the question of what the components of social mechanisms in mechanistic explanations of social macro-phenomena must be. Analytical sociology’s initial position and the main new proposals by analytical sociologists are discussed. It is argued that all of them are faced with outstanding difficulties. Subsequently, a minimal requirement regarding the components of social mechanisms is introduced. It is held that (...) a component of a social mechanism in a mechanistic explanation of a social macro-phenomenon must not have the explanandum phenomenon as a part of it. (shrink)

Sociologists are increasingly attentive to the mechanisms responsible for cause-and-effect relationships in the social world. But an aspect of mechanistic causality has not been sufficiently considered. It is well recognized that most phenomena of interest to social science result from multiple mechanisms operating in sequence. However, causal chains—sequentially linked mechanisms and their enabling background conditions—vary not just substantively, by the kind of causal work they do, but also structurally, by their formal properties. In this article, the author examines the nature (...) of causal chains, identifies major structural dimensions along which they differ, and makes a case that a mechanism-based explanation would be enhanced if causal chains and their structures were brought to the analytical forefront. (shrink)

According to one large family of views, scientific explanations explain a phenomenon (such as an event or a regularity) by subsuming it under a general representation, model, prototype, or schema (see Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (2005). Explanation: A mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2), 421–441; Churchland, P. M. (1989). A neurocomputational perspective: The nature of mind and the structure of science. Cambridge: MIT Press; Darden (2006); Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific (...) explanation. In C. G. Hempel (Ed.), Aspects of scientific explanation (pp. 331–496). New York: Free Press; Kitcher (1989); Machamer, P., Darden, L., & Craver, C. F. (2000). Thinking about mechanisms. Philosophy of Science, 67(1), 1–25). My concern is with the minimal suggestion that an adequate philosophical theory of scientific explanation can limit its attention to the format or structure with which theories are represented. The representational subsumption view is a plausible hypothesis about the psychology of understanding. It is also a plausible claim about how scientists present their knowledge to the world. However, one cannot address the central questions for a philosophical theory of scientific explanation without turning one’s attention from the structure of representations to the basic commitments about the worldly structures that plausibly count as explanatory. A philosophical theory of scientific explanation should achieve two goals. The first is explanatory demarcation. It should show how explanation relates with other scientific achievements, such as control, description, measurement, prediction, and taxonomy. The second is explanatory normativity. It should say when putative explanations succeed and fail. One cannot achieve these goals without undertaking commitments about the kinds of ontic structures that plausibly count as explanatory. Representations convey explanatory information about a phenomenon when and only when they describe the ontic explanations for those phenomena. (shrink)

Le dysfonctionnement, la défectuosité et les erreurs sont des phénomènes qui peuvent aider à mieux comprendre les entités affectées par ces incidents. L’analyse approfondie du fonctionnement et du dysfonctionnement facilite en particulier la découverte, l’explication et la modélisation théorique des structures, fonctions et mécanismes propres à un système. Dans certains cas, les dysfonctionnements sont le seul moyen d’accéder aux processus internes d’un certain système. Le présent essai analyse les méthodes de diverses disciplines tenant compte de dysfonctionnements tels que les mutations, (...) les illusions optiques, les erreurs d’action ou les lapsus linguistiques et identifie les motifs communs aux stratégies de recherche basées sur le dysfonctionnement. Ces stratégies contribuent à la décomposition de systèmes, à la reconstruction de séquences d’événements, à la localisation de sous-systèmes, ainsi qu’au développement et au test d’hypothèses mécanistes. (shrink)

Science depends on judgments of the bearing of evidence on theory. Scientists must judge whether an observation or the result of an experiment supports, disconfirms, or is simply irrelevant to a given hypothesis. Similarly, scientists may judge that, given all the available evidence, a hypothesis ought to be accepted as correct or nearly so, rejected as false, or neither. Occasionally, these evidential judgments can be made on deductive grounds. If an experimental result strictly contradicts a hypothesis, then the truth of (...) the data deductively entails the falsity of the hypothesis. In the great majority of cases, however, the connection between evidence and hypothesis is non-demonstrative, or inductive. In particular, this is so whenever a general hypothesis is inferred to be correct on the basis of the available data, since the truth of the data will not deductively entail the truth of the hypothesis. It always remains possible that the hypothesis is false even though the data are correct. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that recent sociological theory has become increasingly bifurcated into two mutually incompatible styles of theorizing that I label formalist and behavioral-realist. Formalism favors mathematization and proposes an instrumentalist ontology of abstract processes while behavioral-realist theory takes at its basis the "real" physical individual endowed with concrete biological, cognitive and neurophysiological capacities and constraints and attempts to derive the proper conceptualization of social behavior from that basis. Formalism tends to lead toward a conceptually independent sociology that (...) in principle requires only minimal reference to the empirical and ontological storehouse of other disciplines, while behavioral-realist theory leads to an interdisciplinary sociology that can be located within a hierarchy of behavioral sciences, leading to questions regarding the relationship between sociology and other disciplines as well as issues of transdisciplinary unification and possible interdisciplinary reduction. I explore the consequences of this split for the project of explanatory sociological theory within the context of how it has manifested itself in sociological network theory and social psychology. I close with a critique and assessment of formalist tendencies in sociological theorizing. (shrink)

The concept of mechanism in biology has three distinct meanings. It may refer to a philosophical thesis about the nature of life and biology (‘mechanicism’), to the internal workings of a machine-like structure (‘machine mechanism’), or to the causal explanation of a particular phenomenon (‘causal mechanism’). In this paper I trace the conceptual evolution of ‘mechanism’ in the history of biology, and I examine how the three meanings of this term have come to be featured in the philosophy of biology, (...) situating the new ‘mechanismic program’ in this context. I argue that the leading advocates of the mechanismic program (i.e., Craver, Darden, Bechtel, etc.) inadvertently conflate the different senses of ‘mechanism’. Specifically, they all inappropriately endow causal mechanisms with the ontic status of machine mechanisms, and this invariably results in problematic accounts of the role played by mechanism-talk in scientific practice. I suggest that for effective analyses of the concept of mechanism, causal mechanisms need to be distinguished from machine mechanisms, and the new mechanismic program in the philosophy of biology needs to be demarcated from the traditional concerns of mechanistic biology. (shrink)

In recent years, realism?particularly critical realism?has become an important philosophical and methodological foundation for social science. A key feature is that of natural necessity, but this coexists alongside an acceptance of contingency in the social world. I argue in this paper that there cannot be any natural necessity in the social world, but rather the real nature of the social world is that it is contingent. This need not lead to an abandonment of realism, and indeed I argue that a (...) contingent form of realism allows us to bring ontological probability back into realism. (shrink)

We show how an epistemology informed by cognitive science promises to shed light on an ancient problem in the philosophy of mathematics: the problem of exactness. The problem of exactness arises because geometrical knowledge is thought to concern perfect geometrical forms, whereas the embodiment of such forms in the natural world may be imperfect. There thus arises an apparent mismatch between mathematical concepts and physical reality. We propose that the problem can be solved by emphasizing the ways in which the (...) brain can transform and organize its perceptual intake. It is not necessary for a geometrical form to be perfectly instantiated in order for perception of such a form to be the basis of a geometrical concept. (shrink)

Social boundaries separate us fromthem. Explaining the formation, transformation, activation, and suppression of social boundaries presents knotty problems. It helps to distinguish two sets of mechanisms: (1) those that precipitate boundary change and (2) those that constitute boundary change. Properly speaking, only the constitutive mechanisms produce the effects of boundary change as such. Precipitants of boundary change include encounter, imposition, borrowing, conversation, and incentive shift. Constitutive mechanisms include inscription–erasure, activation–deactivation, site transfer, and relocation. Effects of boundary change include attack–defense sequences. (...) These mechanisms operate over a wide range of social phenomena. Key Words: social boundary • mechanisms. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the following problems: How many concepts of function are there in biology, social science, and technology? Are they logically related and if so, how? Which of these function concepts effect a functional explanation as opposed to a mere functional account? What are the consequences of a pluralist view of functions for functionalism? We submit that there are five concepts of function in biology, which are logically related in a particular way, and six function concepts in (...) social science and technology. Only two of them may help effect a genuine functional explanation. Finally, our synthetic approach allows us to distinguish four different varieties of functionalism in biology, psychology, social science, and technology: formalist, black boxist, adaptationist, and teleological. And only one of them is explanatory in the strong sense defended here. (shrink)

Článek podává systematický kritický přehled o pojetí mechanismu v tzv. nové mechanistické filosofii. Nejdříve je popsán vznik a hlavní principy NMF. Je ukázáno, že NMF vznikla do značné míry jako kritická reakce na, do té doby převažující, logický empirismus. Dále jsou představeny hlavní definiční znaky mechanismu, které jsou po té jednotlivě rozebrány. Na závěr jsou diskutovány přednosti a omezení NMF. Je argumentováno, že NMF nabídla novou a realističtější perspektivu na způsob, jakým se věda dělá a jak se dochází k vědeckým (...) objevům. Má i konstruktivní preskriptivní charakter, neboť povzbuzuje vědce k přemýšlení o vysvětlení jevů prostřednictvím mechanismů. Na straně druhé, pro vysvětlení komplexních jevů jsou heuristiky dekompozice a lokalizace, které tvoří jádro „tradičního" mechanistického přístupu, pouze prvotními aproximacemi a je potřeba je doplňovat dalšími, dynamičtějšími přístupy. (shrink)

This article focuses on emergence in social systems. The author begins by proposing a new tool to explore the mechanisms of social emergence: multi agent–based computer simulation. He then draws on philosophy of mind to develop an account of social emergence that raises potential problems for the methodological individualism of both social mechanism and of multi agent simulation. He then draws on various complexity concepts to propose a set of criteria whereby one can determine whether a given social mechanism generates (...) emergent properties, in the sense that their explanation cannot be reduced to a mechanistic account of individuals and their interactions. This combined account helps to resolve the competing claims of methodological individualists and social realists. The author’s conclusion is that the scope of mechanistic explanation may be limited due to the extreme complexity of many social systems. Key Words: emergence • mechanism • computer simulation • methodological individualism • social realism. (shrink)

There are currently serious concerns that published scientific findings often fail to be reproducible, and that some solutions may be gleaned by attending the several methodological and sociological recommendations that could be found in the literature. However, researchers would also arrive at some answers by considering the advice of the philosophy of science, particularly semantics, about theses on truth related to scientific realism. Sometimes scientists understand the correspondence thesis of truth as asserting that the next unique empirical confirmation of a (...) hypothesis suffices to attribute truth to it provisionally. Such empiricist bias is not necessarily at the core of CTT, but Mario Bunge proposed the synthetic thesis of truth, based on CTT, to explicitly avoid the bias. STT requires considering a hypothesis corroborated, both by purely empirical confirmation and external consistency or compatibility with the bulk of existing background knowledge. While a capricious understanding of CTT could be rigged to recommend the “one shot game” in hypothesis testing, STT clearly demands the use of multiple approaches, empirical as well as theoretical, and it asserts that a scientific test is effective to the extent to which it is neither purely empirical, nor viewed in isolation. Pattern consistency together with an understanding of causal relations make confirmed hypotheses robust and more reliable. The militancy of the double mechanism of hypothesis control of STT can help mitigate the reproducibility crisis. Earl Werner’s research program in community ecology is an example of the use of STT criteria, which leads to the development of reliable, cross-checked, ecological results, with high predictive capacity. (shrink)

This paper's purpose is to set forth the conditions of explanation in the domain of formal modelling of social action. Explanation is defined as an adequate account of the underlying factors bringing about a phenomenon. The modelling of a social phenomenon can claim explanatory value in this sense if the following two conditions are fulfilled. (1) The generative mechanisms involved translate the effects of real factors abstracted from their phenomenal context, not those of purely ideal ones. (2) The explanatory hypotheses, (...) which account for the effects of explanatory factors, and the purely descriptive hypotheses, which introduce conceptual simplifications and summarise complex secondary mechanisms, are relatively independent from each other with regard to the phenomenon represented. This condition subjects the model to testing by alternatives through the development of purely descriptive hypotheses in the sense of explanatory or analytical realism. (shrink)

The leitmotif of Mario Bunge’s work was that the philosophy of science should be informed by a comprehensive scientific philosophy, and vice versa; with both firmly rooted in realism and materialism. Now Bunge left such a big oeuvre, comprising more than 70 books and hundreds of articles, that it is impossible to review it in its entirety. In addition to biographical remarks, this obituary will therefore restrict itself to some select issues of his philosophy: his scientific metaphysics, his philosophy of (...) physics, his concept of mechanismic explanation, his philosophy of social science and technology, and his approach to the demarcation problem. The final section will explore why Bunge, despite the extent and depth of his work, has not achieved a more prominent status in the philosophical community. (shrink)

Advances in neuroscience are changing how mental health issues such as addiction are understood and addressed as a brain disease. Although a brain disease model legitimizes addiction as a medical condition, it promotes neuro-essentialist thinking and categorical ideas of responsibility and free choice, and undermines the complexity involved in its emergence. We propose a “biopsychosocial systems” model where psychosocial factors complement and interact with neurogenetics. A systems approach addresses the complexity of addiction and approaches free choice and moral responsibility within (...) the biological, lived experience and sociohistorical context of the individual. We examine heroin-assisted treatment as an applied case example within our framework. We conclude with a discussion of the model and its implications for drug policy, research, addiction health care systems and delivery, and treatment of substance use problems. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the notion of social mechanisms by comparison with the notions of evolutionary and physical mechanisms. It is argued that social mechanisms are based on trends, and not lawlike regularities, so that social mechanisms are different from mechanisms in the natural sciences. Taking as an example of social causation the abolition of the slave trade, the paper argues that social mechanisms should be incorporated in Weber’s wider notion of adequate causation in order to (...) achieve their explanatory purpose. (shrink)

Rational choice modeling originating in economics is sweeping across many areas of social science. This paper examines a popular methodological proposal for integrating formal models from game theory with more traditional narrative explanations of historical phenomena, known as “analytic narratives”. Under what conditions are we justified in thinking that an analytic narrative provides a good explanation? In this paper I criticize the existing criteria and provide a set of my own. Along the way, I address the critique of analytic narratives (...) by Jon Elster. (shrink)

This article addresses the following problems: What is a mechanism, how can it be discovered, and what is the role of the knowledge of mechanisms in scientific explanation and technological control? The proposed answers are these. A mechanism is one of the processes in a concrete system that makes it what it is — for example, metabolism in cells, interneuronal connections in brains, work in factories and offices, research in laboratories, and litigation in courts of law. Because mechanisms are largely (...) or totally imperceptible, they must be conjectured. Once hypothesized they help explain, because a deep scientific explanation is an answer to a question of the form, "How does it work, that is, what makes it tick—what are its mechanisms?" Thus, by contrast with the subsumption of particulars under a generalization, an explanation proper consists in unveiling some lawful mechanism, as when political stability is explained by either coercion, public opinion manipulation, or democratic participation. Finding mechanisms satisfies not only the yearning for understanding, but also the need for control. Key Words: explanation • function • mechanism • process • system • systemism. (shrink)

Invasion ecology addresses the spread of species outside of their native ranges. A central aim of this field is to find mechanistic explanations for why species are able to establish and spread in an area in which they did not evolve. Usually it remains unclear, however, what exactly is meant by ‘mechanistic explanation’ or ‘mechanism’. The paper argues that the field can benefit from the philosophical discussion of what a mechanism is. Based on conceptions of mechanisms as processes in concrete (...) systems, causal mechanisms can be defined as one type of mechanism, representing recurring networks of causal relationships. With the example of a well-known hypothesized mechanism in invasion ecology, namely enemy release, the paper demonstrates how such causal mechanisms can be depicted as causal network diagrams. This approach could facilitate the development of step-by-step explanations, enhance clear argumentation and allow for more precise linkage of empirical tests to theory. Challenges to assessing the empirical relevance of hypothesized mechanisms are discussed, and suggestions are made concerning how the proposed approach could help in overcoming some of them. (shrink)

There are currently serious concerns that published scientific findings often fail to be reproducible, and that some solutions may be gleaned by attending the several methodological and sociological recommendations that could be found in the literature. However, researchers would also arrive at some answers by considering the advice of the philosophy of science, particularly semantics, about theses on truth related to scientific realism. Sometimes scientists understand the correspondence thesis of truth as asserting that the next unique empirical confirmation of a (...) hypothesis suffices to attribute truth to it provisionally. Such empiricist bias is not necessarily at the core of CTT, but Mario Bunge proposed the synthetic thesis of truth, based on CTT, to explicitly avoid the bias. STT requires considering a hypothesis corroborated, both by purely empirical confirmation and external consistency or compatibility with the bulk of existing background knowledge. While a capricious understanding of CTT could be rigged to recommend the “one shot game” in hypothesis testing, STT clearly demands the use of multiple approaches, empirical as well as theoretical, and it asserts that a scientific test is effective to the extent to which it is neither purely empirical, nor viewed in isolation. Pattern consistency together with an understanding of causal relations make confirmed hypotheses robust and more reliable. The militancy of the double mechanism of hypothesis control of STT can help mitigate the reproducibility crisis. Earl Werner’s research program in community ecology is an example of the use of STT criteria, which leads to the development of reliable, cross-checked, ecological results, with high predictive capacity. (shrink)

Bridging two traditions of social ontology, this paper examines the possibility that the concept of collective intentionality can help to explain the mechanisms underpinning the causal powers of some social entities. In particular, I argue that a minimal form of collective intentionality is part of the mechanism underpinning the causal power of norm circles: the social entities causally responsible for social norms. There are, however, many different forms of social entity with causal power, and the relationship of collective intentionality to (...) these causal powers varies, depending on the form of the mechanism underpinning the power concerned. Some powers depend on collective intentionality, and others do not. (shrink)

This article focuses on emergence in social systems. The author begins by proposing a new tool to explore the mechanisms of social emergence: multi agent–based computer simulation. He then draws on philosophy of mind to develop an account of social emergence that raises potential problems for the methodological individualism of both social mechanism and of multi agent simulation. He then draws on various complexity concepts to propose a set of criteria whereby one can determine whether a given social mechanism generates (...) emergent properties, in the sense that their explanation cannot be reduced to a mechanistic account of individuals and their interactions. This combined account helps to resolve the competing claims of methodological individualists and social realists. The author’s conclusion is that the scope of mechanistic explanation may be limited due to the extreme complexity of many social systems. (shrink)

PARLOUR R and MCCORMACK B. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 308–321 Blending critical realist and emancipatory practice development methodologies: making critical realism work in nursing researchThis paper examines the efficacy of facilitation as a practice development intervention in changing practice within an Older Person setting and in implementing evidence into practice. It outlines the influences exerted by the critical realist paradigm in guiding emancipatory practice development activities and, in particular, how the former may be employed within an emancipatory practice development study (...) to elucidate and increase understanding pertinent to causation and outcomes. The methodology is based upon an emancipatory practice development approach set within a realistic evaluation framework. This allows for systematic analysis of the social and contextual elements that influence the explication of outcomes associated with facilitation. The study is concentrated upon five practice development cycles, within which a sequence of iterative processes is integrated. The authors assert that combining critical realist and emancipatory processes offers a robust and practical method for translating evidence and implementing changes in practice, as the former affirms or falsifies the influence that emancipatory processes exert on attaining culture shift, and enabling transformation towards effective clinical practice. A new framework for practice development is proposed that establishes methodological coherency between emancipatory practice development and realistic evaluation. This augments the existing theoretical bases for both these approaches by contributing new theoretical and methodological understandings of causation. (shrink)

Ernest Mandel theorised the capitalist world economy as an articulated system of capitalist, semi-capitalist and precapitalist relations of production, linked to each other by capitalist relations of exchange and domination by the capitalist world market. This seems to be an interesting starting point for an historically well-founded theory, building on and going beyond Marx's work, of the worldwide expansion of the capitalist mode of production from its origins to the present. In his attempt to formulate his theory, Mandel did not (...) succeed in resolving all difficulties, however. His main works – Marxist Economic Theory and Late Capitalism – show a number of dangling loose ends. The central question is whether these loose ends are merely technical difficulties or whether they reveal fatal flaws in the theory as a whole. In order to come a step closer to answering this question, a conference was organised in Amsterdam, November 2003. This introduction formulates the five, closely interrelated issues that were highlighted at this conference. (shrink)

In this piece the author takes issue with Mario Bunge’s claims that conceptual and semiotic systems have "compositions, environments and structures, but no mechanisms." Structures, according to Bunge, can never be mechanisms in conceptual and semiotic systems. Contra this the author argues that in social systems, social structures (which are concept-dependent and reproduced and/or transformed, at least in part, semiotically), can be mechanisms in the sense that such structures are one of the processes in a concrete system that makes itwhat (...) it is. As such, not only may conceptual and semiotic systems have mechanisms, but they may also themselves be considered some of the mechanisms that make the social what it is. As such, they can be said to possess powers and liabilities that neither reside at lower levels nor are explainable in terms of the lower level. To hold out the prospect of social explanation by conceptual and/or semiotic mechanisms does not represent an attempt to decouple these systems from material factors. What it does mean is that conceptual and/or semiotic systems can, potentially at least, play a role in social explanation; and themselves be subject to explanation. Key Words: mechanisms • social • structures • cause • explanation • realism • emergence • reductionism. (shrink)

This analysis examines fundamental questions at the intersection of social science and social technology as well as problems of disciplinary divisions and the challenge of cross-disciplinary cooperation. Its theoretical-empirical context is provided by post-communist transformations, a set of profound societal changes in which institutional design plays a central role. The article critically reappraises the contribution of Karl Popper's philosophy to this problem context, examines neoliberalism as social science and social technology, and examines the role of experts and disciplinary divisions in (...) the reform process. Building on Mario Bunge's social philosophy, it sketches basic elements of a cross-disciplinary approach to "social change by design." Key Words: post-communist transformation • social change • institutional design • Karl Popper • Mario Bunge. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline a general framework for cultural analysis consistent with an “analytic” approach to explanation in social science. The proposed approach provides coherent solutions to thorny problems in cultural theory. These include providing a coherent definition of culture (and the “cultural”), specifying the nature of cultural units (both simple and complex), and outlining the processes making possible episodes of cultural genesis, transformation, and reproduction within bounded units characterized as cultural causal systems.

This article discusses the theories of social emergence developed by Roy Bhaskar and Mario Bunge. Bhaskar's concept of emergent causal power is shown to be ambiguous, and some of the difficulties of his depth-relational concept of social emergence are examined. It is argued that Bunge's systemic concept of emergent property is not only different, but also clearer and more consistent than Bhaskar's concept of emergent causal power. Despite its clarity and consistency, Bunge's definition of the concept of emergent property is (...) shown to be too broad and analytically imprecise for the purposes of an emergentist social ontology. It is argued that Bunge's systemic account of social emergence can be developed further by using William Wimsatt's gradual approach to emergent phenomena and his four conditions of aggregativity of a systemic property. It is shown that these conditions provide useful conceptual tools for clarifying and investigating different kinds of mechanisms of social emergence and developing stronger varieties of the concept of emergent social property than that indicated in Bunge's definition of this concept. (shrink)

Rethinking the “Epistemological Break” : Reading Marx with and against Althusser The article critically reconsiders Althusser’s thesis that there is an “epistemological break” in the work of Marx taking place in 1845/46. It is argued that there can indeed be found an important break in Marx at this time, but that it cannot be conceptualised as an “epistemological” passage from ideology to science. Instead, this break should be considered as a purely philosophical one, as a transition from a young-Hegelian to (...) a realist social philosophy. The first part of the article offers a critical re-reading of the young Marx. The second part analyses the entanglements of social philosophy, the philosophy of history and social science haunting Marx after 1845/46. The intention is not to dismiss out of hand Althusser’s interpretation of Marx’s work. The aim is rather to clarify it from the perspective of current debates within the philosophy of science, ethics and social theory. (shrink)

In 1747, James Lind carried out an experiment which proved the usefulness of citrus fruit as a cure for scurvy. Nonetheless, he rejected the earlier hypothesis of Bachstrom that the absence of fresh fruit and vegetables was the only cause of the disease. I explain why it was rational for James Lind not to accept Bachstrom’s explanation. I argue that it was the urge for scientific understanding that guided Lind in his rejection and in the development of his alternative theory (...) that humidity was the primary cause of the disease. Central in this process was the search for causal mechanisms which could provide understanding of how the disease developed and which fitted in with the knowledge of the time. Given that the relevant background knowledge and statistical methods were not yet available to Lind, he was right to prefer his own explanation to that of Bachstrom. Although his explanation turned out to be wrong, and Bachstrom’s right, from a historical point of view it offered deeper causal understanding of both the development of the disease and the preventive and curative effects of fresh vegetable food. This case study illustrates how the search for causal mechanisms can not only be enlightening, but also very misleading. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the analysis of contemporary theories of culture and cognition in cultural sociology. It identifies two major research traditions within cognitivist cultural sociology, based on micro-individualist and collectivist modes of sociological explanation respectively. Two prominent theoretical frameworks within the "micro-individualist" tradition are then critically examined: Stephen Vaisey's dual-process models of culture in action and Omar Lizardo's typology of cultural kinds. It is argued that both frameworks, although well-defined and theoretically insightful, are prone to unwarranted microfoundationalist reductionism. The (...) paper then proceeds to evaluate the presuppositions of the explicitly "collectivist" Zeru-bavelian paradigm of cultural sociology, as well as a series of recent contributions to the field by scholars representing the neo-Durkheimian "strong program". Both are argued to contain problematic assumptions about the location and means of transmission of cultural content. It is concluded that neither "micro-individualist" nor "collectivist" theories of culture and cognition can provide an adequate account of how culture and cognition interrelate since both frameworks are based on explicitly reductionist social ontologies. The article then calls for the adoption of Tuukka Kaidesoja's "naturalized critical realist" social ontology that seeks to overcome these philosophical biases. The paper examines two major sources of Kaidesoja's ontological doctrine, namely Mario Bunge's systemic materialist ontology and the "distributed cognition" perspective. The article then seeks to outline a preliminary sketch of an alternative account of culture that involves the generation, transmission, and transformation of representational states across different media within distributed cognitive systems. (shrink)

Major paradigms in immigration research, including assimilation theory, multiculturalism, and ethnic studies, take it for granted that dividing society into ethnic groups is analytically and empirically meaningful because each of these groups is characterized by a specific culture, dense networks of solidarity, and shared identity. Three major revisions of this perspective have been proposed in the comparative ethnicity literature over the past decades, leading to a renewed concern with the emergence and transformation of ethnic boundaries. In immigration research, "assimilation" and (...) u integration" have been reconceived as potentially reversible, powerdriven processes of boundary shifting. After a synthetic summary of the major theoretical propositions of this emerging paradigm, I offer suggestions on how to bring it to fruition in future empirical research. First, major mechanisms and factors influencing the dynamics of ethnic boundary -making are specified, emphasizing the need to disentangle them from other dynamics unrelated to ethnicity. I then discuss a series of promising research designs, most based on nonethnic units of observation and analysis, that allow for a better understanding of these mechanisms and factors. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAlthough a growing stream of research investigates the role of government in corporate social responsibility, little is known about how governmental CSR interventions interact in financial markets. This article addresses this gap through a longitudinal study of the socially responsible investment market in France. Building on the “CSR and government” and “regulative capitalism” literatures, we identify three modes of governmental CSR intervention—regulatory steering, delegated rowing, and microsteering—and show how they interact through the two mechanisms of layering and catalyzing. Our findings: (...) 1) challenge the notion that, in the neoliberal order, governments are confined to steering market actors—leading and guiding their behavior—while private actors are in charge of rowing—providing products and services; 2) show how governmental CSR interventions interact and are orchestrated; and 3) provide evidence that governments can mobilize financial markets to promote CSR. (shrink)

In his book “Medical Philosophy: Conceptual issues in Medicine”, Mario Bunge provides a unique account of medical philosophy that is deeply rooted in a realist ontology he calls “systemism”. According to systemism, the world consists of systems and their parts, and systems possess emergent properties that their parts lack. Events within systems may form causes and effects that are constantly conjoined via particular mechanisms. Bunge supports the views of the evidence-based medicine movement that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide the best (...) evidence to establish the truth of causal hypothesis; in fact, he argues that _only_ RCTs have this ability. Here, we argue that Bunge neglects the important feature of patients being open systems which are in steady interaction with their environment. We show that accepting this feature leads to counter-intuitive consequences for his account of medical hypothesis testing. In particular, we point out that (i) the confirmation of hypotheses is inherently stochastic and affords a probabilistic account of both confirmation and evidence which we provide here; (ii) RCTs are neither necessary nor sufficient to establish the truth of a causal claim; (iii) testing of causal hypotheses requires taking into account background knowledge and the context within which an intervention is applied. We conclude that there is no “best” research methodology in medicine, but that different methodologies should coexist in a complementary fashion. (shrink)

La filosofía estándar de la economía presupone que en el dominio de los fenómenos económicos subyacen regularidades estables, las cuales pueden explicarse mediante el funcionamiento de mecanismos o de máquinas socioeconómicas. Asimismo, se considera que una vez puestos en funcionamiento, su comportamiento no necesita de subsecuentes intervenciones. Esto implica asumir que los procesos socioeconómicos tienen una naturaleza semejante a los de las ciencias naturales. No obstante, dichas regularidades son por lo general examinadas a la luz de algún modelo económico, por (...) lo cual pierden muchas veces contacto con el mundo real. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo poner en el centro del análisis otro objeto de estudio: los procesos económicos basados en expectativas. Se trata de procesos en los cuales la acción humana funciona como nexo causal entre las variables económicas y en los que dicha acción es producto de una formación previa de expectativas, las cuales son sensibles a la información del contexto. Se mostrará que en esta clase de procesos la intervención sistemática sobre las condiciones de fondo y sobre las expectativas es fundamental si lo que se busca es alcanzar un objetivo deseado o lograr un proceso estable. Esta intervención requerirá no solo del conocimiento proporcionado por los modelos, sino también de un conocimiento extrateorético o interdisciplinario. Mainstream philosophy of economics assumes that steady regularities underlie the domain of economic phenomena which can be explained by the operation of mechanisms or socioeconomic machines. It is also considered that once operating those mechanisms don't need further interventions. This implies the assumption that the nature of socioeconomic processes is similar to the one of the natural sciences. Nevertheless, such regularities are usually examined in the light of some economic model, which often ends up losing contact with the real world. The present paper aims at putting in the center of the analysis another object of study: the economic processes based on expectations. In these processes the human action operates as a causal link between economic variables; such an action being the result of a previous building of expectations which are sensitive to the information of the context. It will be shown that the systematic intervention on the background conditions and expectations is fundamental in this kind of processes if what is sought is fulfilling a desired goal or managing a stable process. That intervention will not only require the knowledge provided by models but also an extra-theoretical or interdisciplinary knowledge. (shrink)

The paper starts by distinguishing between two kinds of economic practice: theoretical economic practice (TEP) (model and theory building) and direct economic practice (DEP) (the practical operation upon real economies). Most of the epistemological and philosophical considerations have been directed to the first type of practice, one of whose main goals is the discovery of particular sorts of economic laws, mechanisms and other regularities which throw light on relevant economic patterns. We do not deny that in some restricted domains these (...) kinds of regularities may be found. Rather, we claim that the realm of economics is best understood as consisting of processes whose regular structure (if they have one at all) is not guaranteed beforehand but may be crucially influenced and successfully enforced by what we call DEP. We claim that (a) some economic processes are a particular type of social process that will be referred to as Expectations-Based Processes (EBP). Characteristically, an EBP shows a connection between the information that individuals receive from the relevant economic context, the expectations they form, and the actions they perform; (b) in those cases in which EBP exhibit a regular behaviour, they depend on agents' expectations and, crucially, we argue, on interventions upon them. Authorities as well as other economic actors may intervene to change agents' expectations (and therefore, their decisions), contributing to shape EBP and helping to produce the patterns that lead to some targeted economic phenomena. These features of EBP show that they are not shielded from external influences and they do not run autonomously once triggered. Therefore they cannot be conceived as mechanisms or as economic machines. Rather they are open-ended processes that require continuous prodding on the part of policy makers to keep them running in the intended way. (shrink)

The article argues that individualist accounts cannot adequately explain the social dynamics ofterrorist behavior as they turn analyses ofterrorism into analyses of terrorists. A relational approach that concentrates on the social relations between terrorist organizations and their members would be able to do this, however. Therefore, the article presents a fonnal analysis that makes the "secret society" of terrorists the lynchpin of an explanation of how terrorist organizations shape the behavioral conditions of volunteers and suicide terrorists in a manner that (...) triggers a type ofbehavior we might call terrorism. (shrink)

The ‘value-free ideal’ has been called into question for several reasons. It does not include “epistemic values”—viewed as characteristic of ‘good science’—and rejects the so-called ‘contextual’, ‘non-cognitive’ or ‘non-epistemic’ values—all of them personal, moral, or political values. This paper analyzes a possible complementary argument about the dubitable validity of the value-free ideal, specifically focusing on social sciences, with a two-fold strategy. First, it will consider that values are natural facts in a broad or ‘liberal naturalist’ sense and, thus, a legitimate (...) part of those sciences. Second, the paper will not reject the value-free ideal; rather, it will construe this ideal in a special way, not casting values aside in sciences, but bringing them to the table and rationally discussing them. Today’s predominant naturalistic view has tended to ‘naturalize’ values by looking for physicalist explanations for them—a move resisted by defenders of normativism in social sciences. At the same time, a contending ‘liberal naturalist’ stream has emerged, claiming that not all natural entities can be explained by the methods and concepts of physical sciences, and favors a non-materialist naturalism which includes mind, consciousness, meaning and value as fundamental parts of nature that cannot be reduced to matter. Hence, it may be posited that non-epistemic values could be ‘naturally’ included in the field of human sciences. (shrink)

The explanatory power of structures in analytical sociologists’ agent-based models brings into question methodological individualism. We defend that from an explanatory point of view, the syntactic properties of models require semantic conditions of interpretation drawn from a conceptual research framework; in such a framework, social/relational structures have only partial, explanatory power ; and taking the explanation further through generative mechanism modeling necessitates calling upon methodological individualism’s generic framework of interpretation that relies on social actors’ rational capacity. According to this interpretive (...) framework, forces in action in society are governed by the subjective meaning of/the reasons for individual actions. (shrink)

The mechanism-realist paradigm in the philosophy of science, championed by Mario Bunge and Roy Bhaskar, sets certain expectations for the substantive social-scientific application of the paradigm. To evaluate the application of the paradigm in accomplished substantive research, as well as the potential for future research, I examine the work of Charles Tilly, the exemplary substantive work in the mechanism-realist tradition. Based on this examination, I argue for the usefulness of explanatory mechanisms, provided that they are couched in terms of a (...) heuristic. Such a position is the most reasonable one to adopt given the expectations set by the paradigm in relation to complexity stemming from mechanism interaction and to a notion of causality that is deeper than that acknowledged by empiricism and positivism. (shrink)

This article makes six points, using evidence from the Iranian Revolution of 1979: (1) Causal mechanisms, indeed all explanations, imply certain inner states on the part of individuals. (2) The experience of revolution is dominated by confusion. (3) People involved in revolutions act largely in response to their best guesses about how others are going to act. (4) These guesses and responses can shift swiftly and dramatically, in ways that participants and observers cannot predict. (5) Explanation involves retroactive prediction: it (...) implies that if we had recognized causal factors A, B, or C at the time, we would have expected some ensuing development. (6) To the extent that revolutionary experience is characterized by confusion, then understanding this experience may disconfirm all explanation. Key Words: understanding • Verstehen • explanation • revolution. (shrink)

RESUMEN El conocimiento utilizado para armar e implementar políticas socioeconómicas refiere por lo general a aseveraciones causales que pueden ser conceptuadas de diferentes maneras; sin embargo, estas suelen omitir un tema central: las consecuencias alternativas o los desvíos que emergen en caso de fracasar, lo que puede acarrear consecuencias negativas. Se argumenta que, para una buena implementación, es fundamental tener en cuenta dichas consecuencias alternativas, lo cual implica un cambio sustancial en el modo de tomar decisiones, donde la asimetría de (...) resultados es relevante. ABSTRACT The knowledge used to structure and implement socioeconomic policies generally refers to causal assertions that can be conceptualized differently; however, they tend to disregard the central issue of alternative consequences or deviations that arise in case of failure, which can cause negative effects. The paper argues that a successful implementation entails taking these alternative consequences into account. This implies a substantial change in the way decisions are made, in which the asymmetry of results becomes relevant. (shrink)