Many have felt that it is impossible to defend autonomous laws of social science: where the regularities upheld are law-like it is argued that they are not at base social scientific, and where the phenomena to be explained would seem to require social descriptions, it is argued that laws governing the phenomena are unavailable at that level. But is it possible to develop an ontology that supports the dependence of the social on the physical, while nonetheless supporting the explanatory power (...) of genuinely autonomous social scientific laws? The aim of this paper is to show that reductive explanation is not a requirement of a `naturalist' ontology, thereby defending an account of supervenience as a suitable framework within which to recognize a metaphysical relationship between the natural and the social that is consistent with the pursuit of autonomous nomological social scientific explanations. (shrink)

Are there laws in evolutionary biology? Stephen J. Gould has argued that there are factors unique to biological theorizing which prevent the formulation of laws in biology, in contradistinction to the case in physics and chemistry. Gould offers the problem of complexity as just such a fundamental barrier to biological laws in general, and to Dollos Law in particular. But I argue that Gould fails to demonstrate: (1) that Dollos Law is not law-like, (2) that the alleged failure of Dollos (...) Law demonstrates why there cannot be laws in biological science, and (3) that complexity is a fundamental barrier to nomologicality. (shrink)

Since the early days of economics, the rationality principle has been a core element of economic theorizing. It is part of almost any theoretical framework that economists use to generate knowledge. Despite its central role, the principle’s epistemic status and function continue to be debated between empiricists and rationalists, and a clear winner is yet to emerge. One point of contention is that we cannot explain the principle’s special status in light of clear evidence against its empirical validity and the (...) continuous conceptual changes it undergoes. In this paper, I argue that we should think of the rationality principle as a functional a priori principle along the lines of a pragmatic theory of constitutive elements recently put forward by David Stump. Such an approach would explain the principle’s persistence and changing status. More generally, the pragmatic theory of constitutive elements in science offers a viable alternative to rationalism and empiricism that allows for approaching the debate about the status and function of the rationality principle in economics. It provides a new framework and starting point to think about the usefulness of a central first principle in economics in a constructive way. (shrink)

Persons are not just mechanical systems of instinctual animalistic proclivities, but also language-producing, existentially aware creatures, whose experiences and actions are drenched in subjective meaning. To understand a human being as a person is to understand him or her as a rational system that wants, fears, hopes, believes, and in other ways imbues the world with meaning, rather than just a mechanical system that is subject to the same chains of cause and effect as other animals. But contemporary personality psychology (...) has, to a great extent, focused on the behavioral side of personality, while neglecting its meaning side, failing to realize that subjective meanings are part of the very constitution rather than just causes of personality. My overarching purpose with this dissertation is, consequently, to contribute to the establishment of a genuinely non-reductive science of personality that systematically studies the systems of meaning that comprise a person’s worldview in their own right, as sources of meaning in personality. I both establish conceptual and theoretical foundations for the psychology of worldviews and present empirical research on worldviews. The conceptual and theoretical issues are addressed in the introductory chapters and the first paper. I begin by explicating a non-reductive realist philosophy of personality that steers between reductionism and social constructionism, and by suggesting that we need a more coherent understanding of personality and a richer study of it, rather than a radically new methodology. I continue by discussing the limitations of, and conceptual issues with, previous approaches to personality, and by outlining the conceptual foundations for a psychology of worldviews to remediate their weaknesses, demarcating worldview constructs as referring to presuppositions, concepts, and narrative scripts that, by working as the substrata, or background, for intentional thought, feeling, and action, form the most central sources of meaning. I continue by discussing the structure and dynamics of worldviews in terms of the relationship between innate meaning-making mechanisms and the universal features of the existential condition that they address. I conclude the introductory chapters by describing the background of the empirical research and by discussing limitations with the present thesis and directions for future theory and research. I continue, in the first paper, to argue that the study of traits and the study of worldviews form mutually irreducible parts of personality psychology and that worldviews are not inherently less universal in terms of structure, or in other ways less basic, than traits. I conclude this paper by emphasizing the need to address coherence not just in behavior, but also within worldviews and between traits and worldviews, and to complement traditional individual differences research with personalistic methodology. The empirical research is presented in the second and third papers included in this thesis. This research addresses Humanism and Normativism, which are arguably the two broadest and potentially most important worldview constructs in the research literature today, representing whether human beings are thought of as intrinsically valuable and ontologically important or as acquiring value and reality only through the attainment of external norms and ideals . Although originally thought to be opposites, previous research has suggested that they are uncorrelated. In the first empirical paper, I introduce a hierarchical model of their structure, develop scales to measure their facets, and demonstrate through confirmatory factor analysis that they are, contrary to previous wisdom, negatively related in terms of view of human nature, attitude to affect, and interpersonal attitude, but unrelated in terms of epistemology and political values. I present evidence also of discriminant and predictive validity in relation to other worldview variables, life goals, educational field, political and religious orientation, and the Big Five aspects. In the second empirical paper, I use humanism and normativism to explain the broad systems of meaning that potentially underlie, and intersect with, variables from the most important models of the underpinnings of political ideology today, through path modeling. The results suggest that humanism is related to political ideology through preference for equality, as mediated by moral concern with fairness and the avoidance of harm, emotionality, and honesty-humility, and that normativism is related to political ideology through conservative attitudes in general, as mediated by system justification, moral concern with authority, loyalty, and purity, and low openness. Both of the empirical articles provide ample evidence of broad systems of meaning cutting across different aspects of the worldview and of their explanatory power with regards to other psychological phenomena. These studies thereby help to substantiate the viability of the psychology of worldviews. (shrink)

1.1 - Background - page 17 1.2 - The Style of Approach - page 18 1.3 - Motivation - page 19 1.4 - Style of Presentation - page 20 1.5 - Outline of the Thesis - page 21..