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  1. Explanation and invariance in the special sciences.James Woodward - 2000 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51 (2):197-254.
    This paper describes an alternative to the common view that explanation in the special sciences involves subsumption under laws. According to this alternative, whether or not a generalization can be used to explain has to do with whether it is invariant rather than with whether it is lawful. A generalization is invariant if it is stable or robust in the sense that it would continue to hold under a relevant if it is stable or robust in the sense that it (...)
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  • Methodological individualism and social explanation.Richard W. Miller - 1978 - Philosophy of Science 45 (3):387-414.
    Past criticisms to the contrary, methodological individualism in the social sciences is neither trivial nor obviously false. In the style of Weber's sociology, it restricts the ultimate explanatory repertoire of social science to agents' reasons for action. Although this restriction is not obviously false, it ought not to be accepted, at present, as a regulative principle. It excludes, as too far-fetched to merit investigation, certain hypotheses concerning the influence of objective interests on large-scale social phenomena. And these hypotheses, in fact, (...)
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  • Explanatory unification.Philip Kitcher - 1981 - Philosophy of Science 48 (4):507-531.
    The official model of explanation proposed by the logical empiricists, the covering law model, is subject to familiar objections. The goal of the present paper is to explore an unofficial view of explanation which logical empiricists have sometimes suggested, the view of explanation as unification. I try to show that this view can be developed so as to provide insight into major episodes in the history of science, and that it can overcome some of the most serious difficulties besetting the (...)
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  • Explanation and scientific understanding.Michael Friedman - 1974 - Journal of Philosophy 71 (1):5-19.
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  • The Social System.Talcott Parsons - 1951 - Routledge.
    This book brings together, in systematic and generalized form, the main outlines of a conceptual scheme for the analysis of the structure and processes of social systems. It carries out Pareto's intention by using the "structural-functional" level of analysis.
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  • (2 other versions)Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Foundations of Language 13 (1):145-151.
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  • The Principles of Scientific Thinking.R. Harré - 1972 - Synthese 25 (1):248-253.
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  • (3 other versions)Scientific Explanation.P. Kitcher & W. C. Salmon - 1992 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (1):85-98.
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  • A Realist Theory of Science.Caroline Whitbeck - 1977 - Philosophical Review 86 (1):114.
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  • Powers and Capacities in Philosophy: The New Aristotelianism.John Greco & Ruth Groff (eds.) - 2013 - New York: Routledge.
    "Powers and Capacities in Philosophy" is designed to stake out an emerging, discipline-spanning neo-Aristotelian framework grounded in realism about causal powers. The volume brings together for the first time original essays by leading philosophers working on powers in relation to metaphysics, philosophy of natural and social science, philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, ethics and social and political philosophy. In each area, the concern is to show how a commitment to real causal powers affects discussion at the level in question. (...)
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  • The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and Their Manifestations.Anna Marmodoro (ed.) - 2010 - New York: Routledge.
    This volume is a collection of papers that advance our understanding of the metaphysics of powers — properties such as fragility and electric charge. The metaphysics of powers is a fast developing research field with fundamental questions at the forefront of current research, such as Can there be a world of only powers? What is the manifestation of a power? Are powers and their manifestations related by necessity? What are the prospects for dispositional accounts of causation? The papers focus on (...)
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  • On Sociology: Numbers, Narratives, and the Integration of Research and Theory.John H. Goldthorpe - 2000 - Oxford University Press USA.
    This book is intended for scholars and students of sociology, social science methodology, business, economics, and social researchers.
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  • The causal mechanical model of explanation.James Woodward - 1989 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13:359-83.
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  • Causal Powers and Capacities.Stephen Mumford - 2009 - In Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Peter Menzies (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation. Oxford University Press UK.
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  • In Defense of a Causal Requirement on Explanation.Garrett Pendergraft - 2011 - In Phyllis McKay Illari Federica Russo (ed.), Causality in the Sciences. Oxford University Press. pp. 470.
    Causalists about explanation claim that to explain an event is to provide information about the causal history of that event. Some causalists also endorse a proportionality claim, namely that one explanation is better than another insofar as it provides a greater amount of causal information. In this chapter I consider various challenges to these causalist claims. There is a common and influential formulation of the causalist requirement – the ‘Causal Process Requirement’ – that does appear vulnerable to these anti-causalist challenges, (...)
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  • The Evolution of Cooperation.Robert M. Axelrod - 1984 - Basic Books.
    The 'Evolution of Cooperation' addresses a simple yet age-old question; If living things evolve through competition, how can cooperation ever emerge? Despite the abundant evidence of cooperation all around us, there existed no purely naturalistic answer to this question until 1979, when Robert Axelrod famously ran a computer tournament featuring a standard game-theory exercise called The Prisoner's Dilemma. To everyone's surprise, the program that won the tournament, named Tit for Tat, was not only the simplest but the most "cooperative" entrant. (...)
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  • Under What Conditions Can Formal Models of Social Action Claim Explanatory Power?Nathalie Bulle - 2009 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 23 (1):47-64.
    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, (...)
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  • (1 other version)Do powers need powers to make them powerful? From pandispositionalism to Aristotle.Anna Marmodoro - 2010 - In The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and Their Manifestations. New York: Routledge. pp. 337 - 352.
    Do powers have powers? More urgently, do powers need further powers to do what powers do? Stathis Psillos says they do. He finds this a fatal flaw in the nature of pure powers: pure powers have a regressive nature. Their nature is incoherent to us, and they should not be admitted into the ontology. I argue that pure powers do not need further powers; rather, they do what they do because they are powers. I show that at the heart of (...)
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  • The nature of physical reality: a philosophy of modern physics.Henry Margenau - 1950 - Woodbridge, Conn.: Ox Bow Press.
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  • Mechanism and explanation.Mario Bunge - 1997 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 27 (4):410-465.
    The aim of this article is to elucidate the notions of explanation and mechanism, in particular of the social kind. A mechanism is defined as what makes a concrete system tick, and it is argued that to propose an explanation proper is to exhibit a lawful mechanism. The so-called covering law model is shown to exhibit only the logical aspect of explanation: it just subsumes particulars under universals. A full or mechanismic explanation involves mechanismic law statements, not purely descriptive ones (...)
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  • Human action.Ludwig von Mises - unknown
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  • When scientific models represent.Daniela M. Bailer-Jones - 2003 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 17 (1):59 – 74.
    Scientific models represent aspects of the empirical world. I explore to what extent this representational relationship, given the specific properties of models, can be analysed in terms of propositions to which truth or falsity can be attributed. For example, models frequently entail false propositions despite the fact that they are intended to say something "truthful" about phenomena. I argue that the representational relationship is constituted by model users "agreeing" on the function of a model, on the fit with data and (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Philosophy of Science 42 (3):341-344.
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  • Reductionism.Alan Garfinkel - 1991 - In Richard Boyd, Philip Gasper & J. D. Trout (eds.), The Philosophy of Science. MIT Press.
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  • (1 other version)Agent-Based Models and Simulations in Economics and Social Sciences: from conceptual exploration to distinct ways of experimenting.Denis Phan & Franck Varenne - 2010 - Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 13 (1).
    Now that complex Agent-Based Models and computer simulations spread over economics and social sciences - as in most sciences of complex systems -, epistemological puzzles (re)emerge. We introduce new epistemological concepts so as to show to what extent authors are right when they focus on some empirical, instrumental or conceptual significance of their model or simulation. By distinguishing between models and simulations, between types of models, between types of computer simulations and between types of empiricity obtained through a simulation, section (...)
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  • Natural Powers and Powerful Natures.R. Harré & E. H. Madden - 1973 - Philosophy 48 (185):209 - 230.
    The justification of a wholly non-Humean conceptual scheme, based upon the idea of enduring individuals with powers, rests in part on the success of such a scheme in resolving the problems bequeathed to us by the Humean tradition and in part must be achieved by a careful construction of the metaphysics of the new scheme itself. By this we mean a thorough exposition of the meaning and interrelations of the concepts of the new scheme. It is to the latter task (...)
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  • Explanatory unification and the causal structure of the world.Philip Kitcher - 1962 - In Philip Kitcher & Wesley C. Salmon (eds.), Scientific Explanation. Univ of Minnesota Pr. pp. 410-505.
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  • The conditions of fruitfulness of theorizing about mechanisms in social science.Arthur L. Stinchcombe - 1991 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 21 (3):367-388.
    Mechanisms in a theory are defined here as bits of theory about entities at a different level (e.g., individuals) than the main entities being theorized about (e.g., groups), which serve to make the higher-level theory more supple, more accurate, or more general. The criterion for whether it is worthwhile to theorize at lower levels is whether it makes the theory at the higher levels better, not whether lower-level theorizing is philosophically necessary. The higher-level theory can be made better by mechanisms (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Thin Explanations: A Review of The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology. [REVIEW]Charles Crothers - 2013 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43 (2):257-267.
    The Oxford Handbook provides an extensive and innovative review of developments in Analytical Sociology (AS) 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 (...)
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  • A Realist Theory of Science.Roy Bhaskar - 1976 - Mind 85 (340):627-630.
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  • Concepts and Society.I. C. Jarvie - 1974 - Mind 83 (331):468-471.
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  • Essais sur la théorie générale de la rationalité: action sociale et sens commun.Raymond Boudon - 2007 - Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
    Le magicien qui croit à l'efficacité des rituels de pluie n'obéit pas à une autre logique que l'homme de science, explique Durkheim. Les croyances religieuses doivent s'analyser comme le produit de raisons, expliquent Tocqueville et Weber. Les percées scientifiques les plus spectaculaires des sciences sociales sont celles qui ont réussi à déplacer les frontières du rationnel : à démontrer que la croyance ou le comportement qu'un regard superficiel juge spontanément irrationnel s'explique comme l'effet de raisons subjectivement fortes et objectivement fondées. (...)
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  • Concepts and society.Ian Charles Jarvie - 1972 - London,: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
    1 The logic of the situation1 What do the social sciences explain? It is a mistake, to which careless expressions by social scientists often give ...
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  • (1 other version)Aristotelian powers: without them, what would modern science do?John Greco & Ruth Groff - 2013 - In John Greco & Ruth Groff (eds.), Powers and Capacities in Philosophy: The New Aristotelianism. New York: Routledge. pp. 93-112.
    The volume brings together for the first time original essays by leading philosophers working on powers in relation to metaphysics, philosophy of natural and social science, philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, ethics and social and political philosophy. In each area, the concern is to show how a commitment to real causal powers affects discussion at the level in question. In metaphysics, for example, realism about powers is now recognized as providing an alternative to orthodox accounts of causation, modality, properties (...)
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  • Ontology, a mediator for Agent Based Modeling in Social Science.Pierre Livet, Jean-Pierre Müller, Denis Phan & Lena Sanders - 2010 - Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 13 (1).
    Agent-Based Models are useful to describe and understand social, economic and spatial systems' dynamics. But, beside the facilities which this methodology offers, evaluation and comparison of simulation models are sometimes problematic. A rigorous conceptual frame needs to be developed. This is in order to ensure the coherence in the chain linking at the one extreme the scientist's hypotheses about the modeled phenomenon and at the other the structure of rules in the computer program. This also systematizes the model design from (...)
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  • (1 other version)Identité et réalité.Em Meyerson - 1908 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 16 (4):4-5.
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  • (1 other version)Identité et Réalité.Émile Meyerson - 1912 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 74:624-626.
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  • (1 other version)The logic of the sciences and the humanities.Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop - 1959 - Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
    The author discusses the application of logic to the diverse scientific methods of the several natural and social sciences and to the humanities.
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  • Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling.Joshua M. Epstein - 2006 - Princeton University Press.
    This book argues that this powerful technique permits the social sciences to meet an explanation, in which one 'grows' the phenomenon of interest in an artificial society of interacting agents: heterogeneous, boundedly rational actors.
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  • Equilibrium explanation.Elliott Sober - 1983 - Philosophical Studies 43 (2):201 - 210.
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  • Causal powers and categorical properties.Brian Ellis - 2010 - In Anna Marmodoro (ed.), The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and Their Manifestations. New York: Routledge.
    The aim of this paper is to argue that there are categorical properties as well as causal powers, and that the world would not exist as we know it without them. For categorical properties are needed to define the powers—to locate them, and to specify their laws of action. These categorical properties, I shall argue, are not dispositional. For their identities do not depend on what they dispose their bearers to do. They are, as Alexander Bird would say, ’quiddities’. But (...)
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  • Generative Explanation and Individualism in Agent-Based Simulation.Caterina Marchionni & Petri Ylikoski - 2013 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43 (3):323-340.
    Social scientists associate agent-based simulation (ABS) models with three ideas about explanation: they provide generative explanations, they are models of mechanisms, and they implement methodological individualism. In light of a philosophical account of explanation, we show that these ideas are not necessarily related and offer an account of the explanatory import of ABS models. We also argue that their bottom-up research strategy should be distinguished from methodological individualism.
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  • Analytical Sociology and Social Mechanisms.Pierre Demeulenaere (ed.) - 2011 - Cambridge University Press.
    Discusses the importance and development of analytical sociology, emphasizing the centrality of mechanisms in explaining social life.
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  • Methodological individualism, explanation, and invariance.Daniel Steel - 2006 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (4):440-463.
    This article examines methodological individualism in terms of the theory that invariance under intervention is the signal feature of generalizations that serve as a basis for causal explanation. This theory supports the holist contention that macro-level generalizations can explain, but it also suggests a defense of methodological individualism on the grounds that greater range of invariance under intervention entails deeper explanation. Although this individualist position is not threatened by multiple-realizability, an argument for it based on rational choice theory is called (...)
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  • Mechanisms in the analysis of social macro-phenomena.Renate Mayntz - 2004 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (2):237-259.
    mechanism" is frequently encountered in the social science literature, but there is considerable confusion about the exact meaning of the term. The article begins by addressing the main conceptual issues. Use of this term is the hallmark of an approach that is critical of the explanatory deficits of correlational analysis and of the covering-law model, advocating instead the causal reconstruction of the processes that account for given macro-phenomena. The term "social mechanisms" should be used to refer to recurrent processes generating (...)
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  • Meaning and scientific status of causality.Henry Margenau - 1934 - Philosophy of Science 1 (2):133-148.
    The disagreement with regard to the validity of the principle of causality, existing to-day among scientists, has its roots in the diversity of definitions of the principle itself rather than in a problematic scientific situation. As far as the formulation of quantum theory is complete its bearing upon philosophical questions can be fixed with precision provided the questions are phrased intelligibly. But a question is intelligible from a scientific point of view only if it satisfies two conditions: the meaning of (...)
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  • The principles of scientific thinking.Rom Harré - 1970 - London,: Macmillan.
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  • The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities.A. Cornelius Benjamin - 1948 - Philosophical Review 57 (5):512.
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  • Identité et Réalité. E. Meyerson - 1908 - Société Française de Philosophie, Bulletin 9:75.
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  • (2 other versions)The Nature of Physical Reality. A Philosophy of Modern Physics.John G. Kemeny - 1953 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 18 (3):271-271.
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