The article develops and justifies, on the basis of the epistemological argumentation theory, two central pieces of the theory of evaluative argumentation interpretation: 1. criteria for recognizing argument types and 2. rules for adding reasons to create ideal arguments. Ad 1: The criteria for identifying argument types are a selection of essential elements from the definitions of the respective argument types. Ad 2: After presenting the general principles for adding reasons (benevolence, authenticity, immanence, optimization), heuristics are proposed for finding missing (...) reasons, for deductive arguments, e.g., semantic tableaux are suggested. (shrink)

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, EarlyView.

Human behavior is not always independent of the ways in which humans are scientifically classified. That there are looping effects of human kinds has been used as an argument for the methodological separation of the natural and the human sciences and to justify social constructionist claims. We suggest that these arguments rely on false presuppositions and present a mechanisms-based account of looping that provides a better way to understand the phenomenon and its theoretical and philosophical implications.

In this paper, we argue that several recent ‘wide’ perspectives on cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and distributed) are only partially relevant to the study of cognition. While these wide accounts override traditional methodological individualism, the study of cognition has already progressed beyond these proposed perspectives towards building integrated explanations of the mechanisms involved, including not only internal submechanisms but also interactions with others, groups, cognitive artifacts, and their environment. The claim is substantiated with reference to recent developments in the (...) study of “mindreading” and debates on emotions. We claim that the current practice in cognitive (neuro)science has undergone, in effect, a silent mechanistic revolution, and has turned from initial binary oppositions and abstract proposals towards the integration of wide perspectives with the rest of the cognitive (neuro)sciences. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook provides an extensive and innovative review of developments in Analytical Sociology which is a theory program which seeks to develop ‘thin explanations’ of social phenomena by understanding their micro-foundations through explicitly developed models and then tracing through the broader consequences of these actions and interactions for aggregate social patterns. The volume covers the key characteristics of this approach in terms of ontology and epistemology and then assays recent developments across over two dozen areas of application: each a (...) particular social mechanism. Methodological approaches particularly pertinent to AS are also covered. However, some of the criticisms of the AS programme are also noted, especially its lack of attention thus far to meso-level and macro-level mechanisms. (shrink)

This volume argues for a new image of science that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, casting the work of science as an effort to understand those mechanisms. Glennan offers an account of the nature of mechanisms and of the models used to represent them in physical, life, and social sciences.

In this article, I will discuss two prominent views on the relevance and irrelevance of ontological investigations for the social sciences, namely, ontological foundationalism and anti-ontological pragmatism. I will argue that both views are unsatisfactory. The subsequent part of the article will introduce an alternative role for ontological projects in the philosophy of the social sciences that fares better in this respect by paying attention to the ontological assumptions of actual social scientific theories, models, and related explanatory practices. I will (...) illustrate and support this alternative through discussion of three concrete cases. (shrink)

Economists reason causally. Like many other scientists, they aim at formulating justified causal claims about their object of study. This thesis contributes to our understanding of how causal reasoning proceeds in economics. By using the research on the causes of unemployment as a case study, three questions are adressed. What are the meanings of causal claims? How can a causal claim be adequately supported by evidence? How are causal beliefs affected by incoming facts? In the process of answering these semantic, (...) epistemic and dynamical questions, the richness of causal reasoning in economics is brought to the foreground. In the part on semantics, it is argued that the meaning of causal generalizations in policy-oriented economics is best captured by using the concept of ‘inferential relation’ rather than the one of ‘referential relation’. This part contributes to develop an inferentialist semantics by distinguishing among types of inferential relations. In the part on epistemology, it is argued that justification in sciences like economics often relies, and ought to rely, on evidential variety―i.e. the combination of evidence from multiple sources. An interpretation of independence among evidential sources is offered: two evidential sources are fully independent if and only if the reasons why they would be unreliable do not overlap. It is then shown that the variety-of-evidence thesis does not hold under extreme circumstances. The part on dynamics focuses on deviant-case study. A storyline is provided for what deviant-case study aims at and how it proceeds in what is characterized as an ‘eclectic science’. (shrink)

Glennan appeals to interventions to solve the ontological and explanatory regresses that threaten his mechanistic account of causality . I argue that Glennan’s manoeuvre fails. The appeal to interventions is not able to address the ontological regress, and it blocks the explanatory regress only at the cost of making the account inapplicable to non-modular mechanisms. I offer a solution to the explanatory regress that makes use of dynamic Bayesian networks. My argument is illustrated by a case study from systems biology, (...) namely, the mechanism for the irreversibility of apoptosis. I conclude by pointing out the implications of my argument for Glennan’s mechanistic account of causality and, more generally, for accounts of mechanistic explanation based on interventions. 1 Introduction2 Glennan’s Account of Causality3 Objections to Glennan’s Account4 Glennan’s Replies5 Ontological Symmetry?6 Explanatory Symmetry?7 A Solution to the Explanatory Regress8 The Prospects of Glennan’s Account. (shrink)

How can we explain the intentional nature of an expert’s actions, performed without immediate and conscious control, relying instead on automatic cognitive processes? How can we account for the differences and similarities with a novice’s performance of the same actions? Can a naturalist explanation of intentional expert action be in line with a philosophical concept of intentional action? Answering these and related questions in a positive sense, this dissertation develops a three-step argument. Part I considers different methods of explanations in (...) cognitive neuroscience (Bennett & Hacker’s philosophical, conceptual analysis; Marr’s three levels of explanation; Neural Correlates of Consciousness research; mechanistic explanation), defending ‘mechanistic explanation’ as a method that provides the necessary tools for integrating interdisciplinary insights into human action. Furthermore, a dynamic, explanatory mechanism allows the assessment of the impact of learning and development on expert action in a valuable way that other methods don’t. Part II continues by scrutinizing several cognitive neuroscientific theories of learning and development (neuroconstructivism; dual-processing theories; simulation theory; extended mind/cognition hypothesis), arguing for the complex interactions between different types of processing and different action representations involved in expert action performances. Moreover, according to our discussion of a particular ‘simulation theory’ these interactions can be influenced in several ways with the use of language, allowing an agent to configure a specific action representation for performance at a later stage. The results of Parts I and II are then applied in Part III to a parallel discussion of philosophical analyses of intentional action (discussing i.a. Frankfurt, Bratman, Pacherie and Ricoeur) and cognitive neuroscientific insights in it. Both approaches are found to converge in emphasizing the importance for an expert to develop stable patterns of actions that comply maximally not only with his intentions, but also with his motor expertise and with situational conditions. Consequently, his actions – automatic, or not – rely on this ‘sculpted space of actions’. (shrink)

Political science is divided between methodological individualists, who seek to explain political phenomena by reference to individuals and their interactions, and holists (or nonreductionists), who consider some higher-level social entities or properties such as states, institutions, or cultures ontologically or causally significant. We propose a reconciliation between these two perspectives, building on related work in philosophy. After laying out a taxonomy of different variants of each view, we observe that (i) although political phenomena result from underlying individual attitudes and behavior, (...) individual-level descriptions do not always capture all explanatorily salient properties, and (ii) nonreductionistic explanations are mandated when social regularities are robust to changes in their individual-level realization. We characterize the dividing line between phenomena requiring nonreductionistic explanation and phenomena permitting individualistic explanation and give examples from the study of ethnic conflicts, social-network theory, and international-relations theory. (shrink)

In the last decades philosophers of science and social scientists promoted the view that knowledge of mechanisms might help causal inference considerably in the social sciences. Mechanisms, however, can only assist causal inference effectively if scientists have a means to identify them correctly. Some scholars suggested that process-tracing might be a helpful strategy in this respect. Shared criteria to assess its performance, however, are not available yet; furthermore, the criteria proposed so far tie the validity of process-tracing findings to the (...) specific kind of evidence it uses. In this paper I shall propose a criterion to assess process-tracing performance in cases in which favorable epistemic circumstances do not occur and the existing criteria thus fail to apply. The criterion I propose does not double as a condition for validity. Rather, it aims to assess whether the mechanism process-tracing outlines constitutes admissible evidence for the hypothesis at hand. It will be argued that only if this requirement is fulfilled process-tracing can be used as an effective complement for causal inference. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to the study of the philosophical notions of mechanisms and causality in biology and economics. This chapter sets the stage for this volume, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics, in three ways. First, it gives a broad review of the recent changes and current state of the study of mechanisms and causality in the philosophy of science. Second, consistent with a recent trend in the philosophy of science to focus on scientific practices, it in (...) turn implies the importance of studying the scientific methods employed by researchers. Finally, by way of providing an overview of each chapter in the volume, this chapter demonstrates that biology and economics are two fertile fields for the philosophy of science and shows how biological and economic mechanisms and causality can be synthesized. (shrink)

This article compares causal and constitutive explanation. While scientific inquiry usually addresses both causal and constitutive questions, making the distinction is crucial for a detailed understanding of scientific questions and their interrelations. These explanations have different kinds of explananda and they track different sorts of dependencies. Constitutive explanations do not address events or behaviors, but causal capacities. While there are some interesting relations between building and causal manipulation, causation and constitution are not to be confused. Constitution is a synchronous and (...) asymmetric relation between relata that cannot be conceived as independent existences. However, despite their metaphysical differences, the same key ideas about explanation largely apply to both. Causal and constitutive explanations face similar challenges (such as the problems of relevance and explanatory regress) and both are in the business of mapping networks of counterfactual dependence—i.e. mechanisms—although the relevant counterfactuals are of a different sort. In the final section the issue of developmental explanation is discussed. It is argued that developmental explanations deserve their own place in taxonomy of explanations, although ultimately developmental dependencies can be analyzed as combinations of causal and constitutive dependencies. Hence, causal and constitutive explanation are distinct, but not always completely separate forms of explanation. (shrink)

The article makes four interrelated claims: (1) The mechanism approach to social explanation does not presuppose a commitment to the individual-level microfoundationalism. (2) The microfoundationalist requirement that explanatory social mechanisms should always consists of interacting individuals has given rise to problematic methodological biases in social research. (3) It is possible to specify a number of plausible candidates for social macro-mechanisms where interacting collective agents (e.g. formal organizations) form the core actors. (4) The distributed cognition perspective combined with organization studies could (...) provide us with explanatory understanding of the emergent cognitive capacities of collective agents. (shrink)

Computational sociology models social phenomena using the concepts of emergence and downward causation. However, the theoretical status of these concepts is ambiguous; they suppose too much ontology and are invoked by two opposed sociological interpretations of social reality: the individualistic and the holistic. This paper aims to clarify those concepts and argue in favour of their heuristic value for social simulation. It does so by proposing a link between the concept of emergence and Luhmann's theory of communication. For Luhmann, society (...) emerges from the bottom-up as communication and he describes the process by which society limits the possible selections of individuals as downward causation. It is argued that this theory is well positioned to overcome some epistemological drawbacks in computational sociology. (shrink)

A crucial socio-political challenge for our age is how to rede!ne or extend group membership in such a way that it adequately responds to phenomena related to globalization like the prevalence of migration, the transformation of family and social networks, and changes in the position of the nation state. Two centuries ago Immanuel Kant assumed that international connectedness between humans would inevitably lead to the realization of world citizen rights. Nonetheless, globalization does not just foster cosmopolitanism but simultaneously yields the (...) development of new group boundaries. Group membership is indeed a fundamental issue in political processes, for: “the primary good that we distribute to one another is membership in some human community” – it is within the political community that power is being shared and, if possible, held back from non-members. In sum, it is appropriate to consider group membership a fundamental ingredient of politics and political theory. How group boundaries are drawn is then of only secondary importance. Indeed, Schmitt famously declared that “[e]very religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is suffciently strong to group human beings e#ectively according to friend and enemy”. Even though Schmitt’s idea of politics as being constituted by such antithetical groupings is debatable, it is plausible to consider politics among other things as a way of handling intergroup di#erences. Obviously, some of the group-constituting factors are more easily discernable from one’s appearance than others, like race, ethnicity, or gender. As a result, factors like skin color or sexual orientation sometimes carry much political weight even though individuals would rather con!ne these to their private lives and individual identity. Given the potential tension between the political reality of particular groupmembership defnitions and the – individual and political – struggles against those definitions and corresponding attitudes, citizenship and civic behavior becomes a complex issue. As Kymlicka points out, it implies for citizens an additional obligation to non-discrimination regarding those groups: “[t]his extension of non-discrimination from government to civil society is not just a shift in the scale of liberal norms, it also involves a radical extension in the obligations of liberal citizenship”. Unfortunately, empirical research suggests that political intolerance towards other groups “may be the more natural and ‘easy’ position to hold”. Indeed, since development of a virtue of civility or decency regarding other groups is not easy, as it often runs against deeply engrained stereotypes and prejudices, political care for matters like education is justified. Separate schools, for example, may erode children’s motivation to act as citizens, erode their capacity for it and!nally diminish their opportunities to experience transcending their particular group membership and behave as decent citizens. This chapter outlines a possible explanation for such consequences. That explanation will be found to be interdisciplinary in nature, combining insights from political theory and cognitive neuroscience. In doing so, it does not focus on collective action, even though that is a usual focus for political studies. For example, results pertaining to collective political action have demonstrated that the relation between attitudes and overt voting behavior or political participation is not as direct and strong as was hoped for. Several conditions, including the individual’s experiences, self-interest, and relevant social norms, turned out to interfere in the link between his or her attitude and behavior. Important as collective action is, this chapter is concerned with direct interaction between agents and the in$uence of group membership on such interaction – in particular joint action. Although politics does include many forms of action that require no such physical interaction, such physical interaction between individuals remains fundamental to politics – this is the reason why separate schooling may eventually undermine the citizenship of its isolated pupils. This chapter will focus on joint action, de!ned as: “any form of social interaction whereby two or more individuals coordinate their actions in space and time to bring about a change in the environment”. Cognitive neuroscienti!c evidence demonstrates that for such joint action to succeed, the agents have to integrate the actions and expected actions of the other person in their own action plans at several levels of speci!city. Although neuroscienti!c research is necessarily limited to simple forms of action, this concurs with a philosophical analysis of joint action, which I will discuss below. (shrink)

The presence of parents or other guardians (commonly termed ‘supervision’) and parental knowledge are factors that are both robustly negatively associated with a range of anti-social and risky behavioural outcomes such as adolescent crime. However, parental presence/supervision and parental knowledge are both (i) regularly used inaccurately as proxies for parental monitoring, (ii) poorly defined and operationalised, and (iii) rarely linked to negative behavioural outcomes with plausible mechanisms that adequately explain their association. These problematic aspects of the parental monitoring literature are (...) a barrier to research into adolescent outcomes and the varied role of parents. This theoretical paper facilitates solutions these problems by clarifying the concepts of parental presence, supervision and knowledge. This discussion delineates presence from supervision and knowledge from monitoring. It specifies how presence and knowledge are not parenting actions, and neither constitute parental monitoring. These concepts are clarified within the parameters of a recent framework of goal-directed parental action and parental monitoring. Doing so constitutes under-labouring that facilitates future discovery of their distinct and yet inter-related mechanisms of influence on adolescent action and development. These structured conceptual developments are also of benefit for our better future understanding of parenting and parental monitoring by providing a framework within which to re-situate existing empirical research findings. (shrink)

Evidence-Based Medicine has little consideration for mechanisms and philosophers of science and medicine have recently made pleas to increase the place of mechanisms in the medical evidence hierarchy. However, in this debate the notions of mechanisms seem to be limited to 'mechanistic processes' and 'complex-systems mechanisms,' understood as 'componential causal systems'. I believe that this will not do full justice to how mechanisms are used in biological, psychological and social sciences and, consequently, in a more biopsychosocial approach to medicine. Here, (...) I propose, following (Kuorikoski, 2009), to pay more attention to 'abstract forms of interaction' mechanisms. The present work scrutinized review articles on depression and medically unexplained pain, which are considered to be of multifactorial pathogenesis, for their use of mechanisms. In review articles on these disorders there seemed to be a range of uses between more 'abstract forms of interaction' and 'componential causal system' mechanisms. I therefore propose to expand the notions of mechanisms considered in medicine to include that of more 'abstract forms of interaction' to better explain and manage biopsychosocial disorders. (shrink)

Machine learning (ML) models recently led to major breakthroughs in predictive tasks in the natural sciences. Yet their benefits for the social sciences are less evident, as even high-profile studies on the prediction of life trajectories have shown to be largely unsuccessful – at least when measured in traditional criteria of scientific success. This paper tries to shed light on this remarkable performance gap. Comparing two social science case studies to a paradigm example from the natural sciences, we argue that, (...) in addition to explanation, prediction is an important goal of social science – and we identify constraints that impede pure ML prediction from being successful in that field. As a remedy, we outline elements of an integrative modelling approach that combines explanatory models and predictive ML models. (shrink)

In light of recent criticisms by Woodward (2017) and Rescorla (2018), we examine the relationship between mechanistic explanation and phenomenological laws. We disambiguate several uses of the phrase “phenomenological law” and show how a mechanistic theory of explanation sorts them into those that are and are not explanatory. We also distinguish the problem of phenomenological laws from arguments about the explanatory power of purely phenomenal models, showing that Woodward and Rescorla conflate these problems. Finally, we argue that the temptation to (...) pit mechanistic and interventionist theories of explanation against one another occludes important and scientifically relevant research questions. (shrink)

Most philosophical work on social ontology continues to be done without much connection to social scientific concerns. This special issue, however, calls for attention to a naturalized metaphysics, one based on the best science we have. It follows that a naturalized social metaphysics should begin with the best social science available. In contrast with the physical sciences, however, the best social science is not so clear. Thus, this paper acquaints professional philosophers with some of the prominent metaphysical views extant in (...) the social sciences; the ways that more philosophically oriented social scientists engage them; and how professional philosophers might contribute.In particular, the paper covers several arguments especially relevant to a naturalized social metaphysics. One argument suggests that folk intuitions cannot be excluded from consideration. In fact, in the social sphere, it may be that scientific concepts not only cannot always trump folk conceptions but actually must be constrained by them. The paper further introduces arguments defending not only metaphysically real levels of being but also the metaphysical reality of the categories of social science. Finally, the paper will introduce an argument that beyond culture and individual agency, social being also includes structure as a distinct category. (shrink)

Evidential Pluralism maintains that in order to establish a causal claim one normally needs to establish the existence of an appropriate conditional correlation and the existence of an appropriate mechanism complex, so when assessing a causal claim one ought to consider both association studies and mechanistic studies. Hitherto, Evidential Pluralism has been applied to medicine, leading to the EBM+ programme, which recommends that evidence-based medicine should systematically evaluate mechanistic studies alongside clinical studies. This paper argues that Evidential Pluralism can also (...) be fruitfully applied to the social sciences. In particular, Evidential Pluralism provides (i) a new approach to evidence-based policy; (ii) an account of the evidential relationships in more theoretical research; and (iii) new philosophical motivation for mixed methods research. The application of Evidential Pluralism to the social sciences is also defended against two objections. (shrink)

Social machines are a prominent focus of attention for those who work in the field of Web and Internet science. Although a number of online systems have been described as social machines, there is, as yet, little consensus as to the precise meaning of the term “social machine.” This presents a problem for the scientific study of social machines, especially when it comes to the provision of a theoretical framework that directs, informs, and explicates the scientific and engineering activities of (...) the social machine community. The present paper outlines an approach to understanding social machines that draws on recent work in the philosophy of science, especially work in so-called mechanical philosophy. This is what might be called a mechanistic view of social machines. According to this view, social machines are systems whose phenomena are explained via an appeal to socio-technical mechanisms. We show how this account is able to accommodate a number of existing attempts to define the social machine concept, thereby yielding an important opportunity for theoretical integration. (shrink)

This chapter describes a philosophical approach to theorizing justice, mapping out some main strands of the tradition leading up to contemporary political philosophy. We first briefly discuss what distinguishes a philosophical approach to justice from other possible approaches to justice, by explaining the normative focus of philosophical theories of justice – that is, a focus on questions not about how things actually are, but about how things ought to be. Next, we explain what sorts of methods philosophers use to justify (...) theories of justice. Following this, in the longest section, we highlight major questions about justice that have drawn the attention of philosophers, and indicate how competing conceptions of justice have arisen from differing answers to these questions. The goal here is not to answer but to elucidate some of the larger questions about justice, as well as to establish a framework for understanding and distinguishing different kinds of claims about justice and some of the relations between them. (shrink)

This paper makes the case for a revision of contemporary forms of political realism in political theory. I argue that contemporary realists have gone awry in increasingly centring their approach around a metaethical claim: that political theory should be rooted in a political form of normativity that is distinct from moral normativity. Several critics of realism have argued that this claim is unconvincing. But I suggest that it is also a counterintuitive starting point for realism, and one unnecessary to avoid (...) the ‘applied morality’ approach to political theory that realists oppose. Instead, realism should be methodologically orientated around what I term ‘empirically constitutive political realities’ - enduring features of real political contexts that are systematically consequential in their normative implications. Realists can persuasively argue that such empirically constitutive political realities must be attended to in political theory-building, and not merely treated as a context in which independently formulated moral theories are simply applied. This framing of realism accords real politics a genuinely foundational theoretical role, but without requiring any contentious metaethical stance about a non-moral political normativity. I explain some methodological implications that follow for realism – in particular the need to prioritise empirically grounded theorisation of real political contexts over abstract and rather essentialist claims about ‘the political’. I also argue that such a framing of realism helps engender a more accurate, less divisive, and more pluralist conception of methodological debates within political theory. (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)

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)

The emergence of large-scale social media systems, such as Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter, has given rise to a new multi-disciplinary effort based around the concept of social machines. For the most part, this research effort has limited its attention to the study of Web-based systems. It has also, perhaps unsurprisingly, tended to highlight the social scientific relevance of such systems. The present paper seeks to expand the scope of the social machine research effort to encompass the Internet of Things. One (...) advantage of this expansion is that it helps to reveal some of the links between the science of social machines and the sciences of the mind. A second advantage is that it furthers our conceptual understanding of social machines and supports the quest to derive a philosophically-robust definition of the term “social machine.” The results of the present analysis suggest that social machines are best conceived as systems in which a combination of social and technological elements play a role in the mechanistic realization of system-level phenomena. The analysis also highlights the relevance of cognitive science and the philosophy of mind to our general understanding of systems that transcend the cyber, physical, and social domains. (shrink)

Drawing general inferences on the basis of single-case and small- n studies is often seen as problematic. This article suggests a logic of generalization based on thinly rationalistic social mechanisms. Ideal-type mechanisms can be derived from empirical observations in one case and, based on the assumption of thin rationality, used as a generalizing bridge to other contexts with similar actor constellations. Thus, the “portability” builds on expectations about similar mechanisms operating in similar contexts. We present the general logic behind such (...) “rationalistic generalization” and relate it to other ideas about generalization from single-case studies. (shrink)

Purpose The role of entrepreneurship as a major engine for innovation, economic growth and job creation has made policymakers argue for infusing entrepreneurship into all levels of education. It is argued that citizens must develop their entrepreneurial skills in order to cope with our increasingly globalized, fast-paced and uncertain world. Making the leap of faith from entrepreneurship into education is however rife with challenges and failures. Most attempts have resulted in isolated initiatives impacting only a small number of interested students (...) on higher levels of education. Common challenges to wider adoption are lack of definitional clarity around what exactly signifies “entrepreneurial” education, impeding organizational structures, lack of resources, assessment difficulties and fear of capitalism. To address these challenges, the purpose of this thesis is to articulate and qualify a tentatively new educational philosophy grounded in entrepreneurship, allowing teachers to use value creation as a stepping stone between entrepreneurship and education when attempting to infuse entrepreneurship into education. Result An educational philosophy grounded in entrepreneurship has been defined in this thesis as letting students learn through creating value for others, giving teachers prescriptive advice on what, how and why issues in education. This is inherently entrepreneurial in its reliance on a widespread view of entrepreneurship as being about new value creation for others and constituted by a set of teachable entrepreneurial methods. The resulting process is rich with interaction between people and triggers a multitude of emotional learning events, allowing for more engaged students and deeper learning of entrepreneurial as well as subject specific knowledge, skills and attitudes. Method The tentatively new educational philosophy proposed here was developed through an abductive five-year action research process of constant iterations between theory and practice. A total of nine empirical studies on all levels of education were drawn from, involving a few hundred primary, secondary, tertiary and continuing education teachers, around 2000 students and around 100 different educational institutions in three European countries. Two main action research cycles were conducted, each spanning 3-4 years in time. Theory from entrepreneurship and education guided the research, as well as theory from fields such as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, economics and methodology. A number of methodological developments were made in the research process, such as a new “proxy” theory of assessing entrepreneurial education, a mobile app based experience sampling informed interview technique and analytical frameworks for key emotional events and entrepreneurial competencies. Novelty This is the first attempt that has been made to propose an educational philosophy grounded in entrepreneurship. Questions explored in order to qualify it included why educational philosophy is important when infusing entrepreneurship into education and what is new with an educational philosophy grounded in entrepreneurship. Compared to existing educational philosophies such as traditional, progressive and experiential education, it can contribute with a purposeful movement between often unconnected and opposing philosophical positions rather than being yet another flag on the philosophical playing field of education. Whether this makes it an entirely new educational philosophy or merely a novel combination of established ones remains to be determined. Limitations Some important challenges and limitations with the proposed educational philosophy have emerged. It could be viewed as too excluding to view entrepreneurial education as being solely about education that includes value creation attempts. Asking students to focus on knowledge that can be useful for others could also be viewed as an overly utilitarian emphasis. The interdisciplinary challenge of bridging the two very different scholarly fields of education and entrepreneurship was also shown to be significant. It remains to be seen whether value creation as a stepping stone will allow scholars and practitioners to keep their feet dry when attempting to infuse entrepreneurship into education. (shrink)

This paper discusses the epistemic import of highly abstract and simplified theoretical models using Thomas Schelling’s checkerboard model as an example. We argue that the epistemic contribution of theoretical models can be better understood in the context of a cluster of models relevant to the explanatory task at hand. The central claim of the paper is that theoretical models make better sense in the context of a menu of possible explanations. In order to justify this claim, we introduce a distinction (...) between causal scenarios and causal mechanism schemes. These conceptual tools help us to articulate the basis for modelers’ intuitive confidence that their models make an important epistemic contribution. By focusing on the role of the menu of possible explanations in the evaluation of explanatory hypotheses, it is possible to understand how a causal mechanism scheme can improve our explanatory understanding even in cases where it does not describe the actual cause of a particular phenomenon. (shrink)

A major problem with the emerging sociological literature on cosmopolitanism is that it has not adequately theorized mechanisms that mediate the presumed causal relationship between globalization and the development of cosmopolitan orientations. To solve this problem, I draw on Bruno Latour's actor- network theory to theorize the development of three key elements of cosmopolitanism: cultural omnivorousness, ethnic tolerance, and cosmopolitics. ANT illuminates how humans and nonhumans of multiple nationalities develop attachments with one another to create network structures that sustain cosmopolitanism. (...) ANT also helps the sociology of cosmopolitanism become more reflexive and critical of its implicit normative claims. (shrink)

This article examines two theses formulated by Russo and Williamson in their study of causal inference in the health sciences. The two theses are assessed against evidence from a specific case in the social sciences, i.e., research on the institutional determinants of the aggregate unemployment rate. The first Russo–Williamson Thesis is that a causal claim can only be established when it is jointly supported by difference-making and mechanistic evidence. This thesis is shown not to hold. While researchers in my case (...) study draw extensively on both types of evidence, one causal claim out of the three analyzed is established even though it is exclusively supported by mechanistic evidence. The second Russo–Williamson Thesis is that standard accounts of causality fail to handle the dualist epistemology highlighted in the first Thesis. I argue that a counterfactual-manipulationist account of causality—which is endorsed by many philosophers as well as many social scientists—can perfectly make sense of the typical strategy in my case study to draw on both difference-making and mechanistic evidence; it is just an instance of the common strategy of increasing evidential variety. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy started out as an ideal for mass democracy. Lately, however, its large-scale ambitions have mostly been shelved. This article revivifies the ideal of mass deliberative democracy by offering a clear mechanism by which everyone in the community can be included in the same conversation. The trick is to make use of people’s overlapping social communicative networks through which informal deliberative exchanges already occur on an everyday basis. Far from being derailed by threats of polarization, echo chambers, and motivated (...) reasoning, informal networked deliberation can indeed put everyone in touch, directly or indirectly, with everyone else. (shrink)

A widespread need to explain the behavior and outcomes of AI-based systems has emerged, due to their ubiquitous presence. Thus, providing renewed momentum to the relatively new research area of eXplainable AI (XAI). Nowadays, the importance of XAI lies in the fact that the increasing control transference to this kind of system for decision making -or, at least, its use for assisting executive stakeholders- already affects many sensitive realms (as in Politics, Social Sciences, or Law). The decision-making power handover to (...) opaque AI systems makes mandatory explaining those, primarily in application scenarios where the stakeholders are unaware of both the high technology applied and the basic principles governing the technological solutions. The issue should not be reduced to a merely technical problem; the explainer would be compelled to transmit richer knowledge about the system (including its role within the informational ecosystem where he/she works). To achieve such an aim, the explainer could exploit, if necessary, practices from other scientific and humanistic areas. The first aim of the paper is to emphasize and justify the need for a multidisciplinary approach that is beneficiated from part of the scientific and philosophical corpus on Explaining, underscoring the particular nuances of the issue within the field of Data Science. The second objective is to develop some arguments justifying the authors’ bet by a more relevant role of ideas inspired by, on the one hand, formal techniques from Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and on the other hand, the modeling of human reasoning when facing the explanation. This way, explaining modeling practices would seek a sound balance between the pure technical justification and the explainer-explainee agreement. (shrink)

Epidemiological models have played a central role in the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly when urgent decisions were required and available evidence was sparse. They have been used to predict the evolution of the disease and to inform policy-making. In this paper, we address two kinds of epidemiological models widely used in the pandemic, namely, compartmental models and agent-based models. After describing their essentials—some real examples are invoked—we discuss their main strengths and weaknesses. Then, on the basis of this analysis, we make (...) a comparison between their respective merits concerning three different goals: prediction, explanation, and intervention. We argue that there are general considerations which could favour any of those sorts of models for obtaining the aforementioned goals. We conclude, however, that preference for particular models must be grounded case-by-case since additional contextual factors, as the peculiarities of the target population and the aims and expectations of policy-makers, cannot be overlooked. (shrink)

Even though the philosophy of simulation is intended as a comprehensive reflection about the practice of computer simulation in contemporary science, its output has been disproportionately shaped by research on equation-based simulation in the physical and climate sciences. Hence, the particularities of alternative practices of computer simulation in other scientific domains are not sufficiently accounted for in the current philosophy of simulation literature. This article centres on agent-based social simulation, a relatively established type of simulation in the social sciences, to (...) exemplify this claim. The analysis advanced has a twofold goal. First, it shows that the philosophy of agent-based social simulation, mostly developed by practitioners themselves, is, on one hand, heavily influenced by the methodological features of agent-based modelling and by the loose and fragmented character of social theory and, on the other hand, distinctively shaped by contrasting views of what it implies to do social research with virtual or artificial societies. Second, it suggests ways in which cross-fertilisation could enrich the philosophical understanding of computer simulation both in agent-based social simulation and in the philosophy of simulation. (shrink)

The “return of the state” as an economic actor has left scholars at a lack of theoretical tools to capture the characteristics of state-dominated business systems. This is reflected in the fact that any type of state intervention in the economy is too easily qualified as a sign of “authoritarian capitalism,” which has led scholars to lump together countries as diverse as China, Singapore, and Norway under that heading. Rather than considering any type of state intervention in the economy as (...) authoritarian, we propose a more sophisticated conceptualization, which distinguishes two boundaries between the public and the private domains and conceives of the “return of the state” as the erosion of one or both of them. This conceptualization allows us to clearly distinguish a shift from an ideal-typical market-based “regulatory capitalism” to “state capitalism” or “authoritarian capitalism,” respectively. We use interview data with business leaders in an extreme case of the return of the state to identify the nature of the mechanisms by which an authoritarian government erodes these private-public divides. We argue that a focus on these constitutive mechanisms of the erosion of private-public divides allows us to define “authoritarian capitalism” in a way that makes it a useful tool to understand contexts beyond the Chinese case in which it first emerged. (shrink)

This chapter describes how philosophical theorizing about justice can be connected with empirical research in the social sciences. We begin by drawing on some received distinctions between ideal and non-ideal approaches to theorizing justice along several different dimensions, showing how non-ideal approaches are needed to address normative aspects of real-world problems and to provide practical guidance. We argue that there are advantages to a transitional approach to justice focusing on manifest injustices, including the fact that it enables us to set (...) aside some reasonable disagreements about justice. The ‘bottom-up’ approach we advocate, for which we borrow Wolff’s term ‘real-world political philosophy’, is an empirically-informed normative analysis that attends to specific, identifiable injustices, and thus is partial, though not isolationist. We illustrate our approach by considering how different models of the nature of disability suggest different kinds of remedy for injustices faced by persons living with disabilities. We reflect on the nature and significance of vulnerabilities, and we assess the role of public opinion in normative theorizing, suggesting a particular significance for the opinions and experiences of marginalized groups. We finally reflect on the relevance of European legal and institutional frameworks for theorizing justice in Europe. (shrink)

Justice and Vulnerability in Europe contributes to the understanding of justice in Europe from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. It shows that Europe is falling short of its ideals and justice-related ambitions by repeatedly failing its most vulnerable populations. Interdisciplinary and expert contributors search for the explanations behind these failing ambitions, through analysis of institutional discourse, legal debate and practice and the daily experiences of vulnerable populations, such as those dependent on social care and welfare. By setting tentative criteria (...) for justice as 'participatory parity', in line with the insights of the political philosopher Nancy Fraser, the book challenges European policy makers to re-define redistributive, recognitive and representative justice. (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)

Many existing defenses of group rights seem to rely on the notion of group freedom. To date, however, no adequate analysis of this notion has been offered. Group freedom is best understood in terms of processes of social categorization that are embedded in social mechanisms. Such processes often give rise to group-specific constraints and enablements. On the proposed social mechanism account, group rights are demands for group freedom. Even so, group rights often serve to eradicate individual unfreedom. Furthermore, generic measures (...) sometimes provide the most appropriate solution to a problem of group unfreedom. (shrink)