Moral, social, political, and other “nonepistemic” values can lead to bias in science, from prioritizing certain topics over others to the rationalization of questionable research practices. Such values might seem particularly common or powerful in the social sciences, given their subject matter. However, I argue first that the well-documented phenomenon of motivated reasoning provides a useful framework for understanding when values guide scientific inquiry (in pernicious or productive ways). Second, this analysis reveals a parity thesis: values influence (...) the social and natural sciences about equally, particularly because both are so prominently affected by desires for social credit and status, including recognition and career advancement. Ultimately, bias in natural and social science is both natural and social— that is, a part of human nature and considerably motivated by a concern for social status (and its maintenance). Whether the pervasive influence of values is inimical to the sciences is a separate question. (shrink)

The application of statistical methods and models both in the natural and social sciences is nowadays a trivial fact which nobody would deny. Bold analogies even suggest the application of the same statistical models to fields as different as statistical mechanics and economics, among them the case of the young and controversial discipline of Econophysics . Less trivial, however, is the answer to the philosophical question, which has been raised ever since the possibility of “commuting” statistical thinking (...) and models between natural and social sciences emerged: whether such a methodological kinship would imply some kind of more profound unity of the natural and the social domain. Starting with Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) and ending with the Vienna Circle (from the late 1920s until the 1940s), this paper offers a brief historical and philosophical reconstruction of some important stages in the development of statistics as “commuting” between the natural and the social sciences. This reconstruction is meant to highlight (with respect to the authors under consideration): (1) the existence of a significant correlation between the readiness to “transfer” statistical thinking from natural to social sciences and vice versa, on the one hand, and the standpoints on the issue of the unity/disunity of science, on the other; (2) the historical roots and the fortunes of the analogy between statistical models of society and statistical models of gases. (shrink)

The normative phenomenon is ubiquitous in human interactions, emerging in a wide range of fields studied by social science and considered as one of the essential traits of human’s way of life. The modern subjectivist tradition of social science has been based on a model in which elements like self, freedom and reason play the most relevant roles in explaining normativity by connecting beliefs to behaviors by means of motives that are non-reducible to preferences, desires or impulses. In (...) this paper I will discuss normativity in general in order to turn into normativity as it is conceived in social science and then with a focus on normativity based on reasons. I will argue in favor of a naturalistic approach to normativity by means of a defense of a concept of will, which can provide a bridge between social and natural science, rather than giving further reason to sustain a dualistic approach to them. Moreover, I will claim that mental qualities usually alleged to be essential for assigning personality, agency, and moral responsibility, such as rationality, self-consciousness, and freedom, are neither sufficient nor necessary for a naturalistic characterization of moral agents, or for explaining normativity in human evaluative practices. (shrink)

After two centuries, the Diltheyan idea of the incommensurability of the natural and social sciences remains hegemonic. Alternative visions have since been overlooked; in this regard, the Baden neo-Kantian school showed that any divergence concerns implied method and not the phenomenal object of studies. W. Windelband coined the terms “nomological” and “idiographic” to underline how each discipline can be explained as a science of both law and events. To begin, I will show how complex thinking can expand (...) and institute a general integrative frame that overcomes the assumed incommensurability. By “complex,” I mean an anti-reductionist approach to understanding and a consequent ability to reveal the phenomenal world in terms of nested self-organized systems. Social and natural systems are persistent coalescences of individual entities showing series of interduality such as unicity and multiplicity, top-down conservation and bottom-up inno- vation, constraint of law and freedom of agencies. The two instances are maintained together by the rejection of abstracted and isolated concepts and the embrace of a general principle of indeterminacy resolving the apparent contradiction within the parallelization of the extremes as two different moments of analyses rooted in the social and natural classical methods. This paper considers both a) the Positivist attempt in the XIX century to approach the study of social phenomena in terms of law and b) the emergence of a general social science embracing the principle of acasuality, adapted from the study of the subatomic phenomenal world in quantum theory. Finally, this paper sketches how complex methodology can address historical and social studies with system theory in order to overcome classical dualities such as determinism vs. freedom, social vs. individual, and top down conservation vs. bottom up innovation in the form of an integrative parallelization. (shrink)

This paper will suggest that the work Alfred North Whitehead provides a fruitful resource for understanding the philosophical development and validity of scientific concepts through an analysis of their socio-historical location. The paper will address two key elements of Whitehead?s thought. One element is "The Bifurcation of Nature" and the paper traces the influence that this conceptual compromise has had on philosophy and science through its reinforcement of the division between the natural and the social sciences. The (...) second element is the status of abstraction in thought and existence. The article will outline Whitehead?s argument that it is necessary to pay attention to the social environment which both enables and inhibits thought if historical epistemology is to develop novel yet analytically strong concepts. (shrink)

The debate concerning the scientific or unscientific status of the social sciences and the question of the (in) applicability of the methods of research in the natural sciences to social investigations are still unsettled in Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Some of the questions which are often asked concerning these issues include: are the social sciences really scientific? Do they merit the name science? Can we apply the same methods used in (...) the natural research to social research? Are the objects of inquiry in both areas the same? Attempts to answer these questions and numerous related others, have polarized Philosophers of the social sciences into two different ideological camps. Those who answer the questions affirmatively are regarded as the naturalists while those who answer negatively are regarded as the anti-naturalists or humanists. However, using the methods of critical argumentation and conceptual clarification, we intend to argue in this paper for a complementary ground between the two. Consequently, we contend that though the methods of the natural and the social sciences are different due to the fact that their respective objects of investigations are not the same, methods of the two fields are imperative to inquiries that would promote human knowledge and aid their intellectual development. This is necessary in order to foster interdisciplinary research and de-compartmentalisation of disciplines. We also intend to argue that the view that the social sciences are not scientific arose from a narrow conception of the term “science.” Our submission, therefore, is that the social sciences, legitimately, are sciences in their own right. (shrink)

What is the nature of the social reality? How do the major social institutions like money or law exist? What are the limits of individualistically-oriented social theories?These and related problems are intensely discussed in philosophy, in legal theory and in the methodology of social sciences. This collection brings together the different traditions of the contemporary discussion. It includes thought-provoking articles by John Searle, Margaret Gilbert, Ota Weinberger, Raimo Tuomela, Eerik Lagerspetz, Michael Quante, Cristina Redondo and (...) Paolo Comanducci. -/- ”Wonderful selection of articles that contribute in important ways to the growing field of social ontology... A ’must-have’ for anyone working on issues of social ontology.” Deborah Tollefsen, University of Memphis. (shrink)

The modern concept of ideology was established by the liberal politician and philosopher Destutt de Tracy, with the objective of creating an all-embracing and general science of ideas, which followed the sensualist and empiricist trend initiated by Locke that culminated in the positivism of Comte. Natural selection and immunity are two key concepts in the history of biology that were strongly based on the Malthusian concept of struggle for existence. This concept wrongly assumed that population grew faster than the (...) means of existence. This “natural” law contained implicitly the idea that the poor and least gifted would not survive. This idea led to the progressive development of the concept of natural selection, whose definitive version was given by Darwin. Mechnikov took the concepts of struggle for existence and natural selection and conceived infectious diseases as a struggle between a host and its invader, the so-called phagocytosis theory. This theory created the necessity to possess mechanisms to discriminate between the own and the foreign, and led to the conception of the immune self. These concepts were not developed from ideas coming from perceptions or sensations, but from ideas coming from their values: individual interest, inevitable inequality, property, utility and profit. Values are ideals that constitute an ideological matrix which exerts a numinous activity and influence the development of our future actions. In consequence, science and its practice cannot avoid and ignore the values that drive them and impulse them towards certain directions. (shrink)

Peter Corning: The Fair Society: The science of human nature and the pursuit of social justice Content Type Journal Article Category Review Essay Pages 1-8 DOI 10.1007/s10539-011-9304-0 Authors Holly Lawford-Smith, Centre for Applied Ethics and Public Philosophy, Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia Journal Biology and Philosophy Online ISSN 1572-8404 Print ISSN 0169-3867.

One of the reasons why GMOs have met public resistance in the past is that they are perceived as “unnatural”. The basis for this claim has, in part, to do with crossing species boundaries, which is considered morally objectionable. The emergence of CRISPR is sometimes argued to be an ethical game-changer in this regard since it does not require the insertion of foreign genes. Based on an empirical bioethics study including individual interviews and focus groups with laypeople and other stakeholders, (...) this article analyses the normative role of appeals to naturalness in discussions about the moral acceptability of using CRISPR in salmon farming. It discusses two dimensions of naturalness found in the material– living by species-specific nature and being unaffected by humans– and argues that these dimensions put down criteria for the application of CRISPR that lead to a conflict between our moral duties towards the farmed salmon and those we hold towards the wild salmon as a threatened species. It also points to a paradox which is likely to gain traction with further climate change and biodiversity loss, namely that while nature, understood as that which is unaffected by humans, is presented as an ideal, conserving nature in its pristine state may rely on technology and human intervention. (shrink)

Debate about legal and policy reform has been haunted by a pernicious confusion about human nature, the idea that it is a set of rigid dispositions, today generally conceived as genetic, that is manifested the same way in all circumstances. Opponents of egalitarian alternatives argue that we cannot depart far from the status quo because human nature stands in the way. Advocates of such reforms too often deny the existence of human nature because, sharing this conception, they think it would (...) prevent changes they deem desirable. Both views rest on deep errors about what it is to have a nature and how genetics works. Human nature, like the nature of anything else, is a set of potentials to behave certain ways in given environments, not a nonsocial genetic something that inevitably produces the same result in any environment. To say that existing inequalities, are due to our genes, inalterable because heritable, ignores that genetic propensities may be differently manifested in different environments. Heritability has meaning only relative to an environment and a population and implies nothing about inevitability. A better sort of inegalitarian argument is that a proposed reform, given our nature, would be too costly even if possible. However, this sort of argument is too rarely supported by evidence and generally ignores the costs of existing inequalities. But egalitarians err in supposing that, if behavior is unconstrained by biology, the status quo is easily alterable. The environment may be extremely hard to change. Legal and policy debate should adopt a correct understanding of human nature as a set of propensities and ask of any proposed reform agreed to be otherwise desirable what and how alterable are its causes, genetic, environmental, or more accurately both. (shrink)

In recent years a growing number of philosophers in the analytic tradition have focused their attention on the significance of human sociality. An older point of departure of analysis, which actually precedes this current tide of accounts of sociality, has revolved around the debate between “holism” and “individualism” in the philosophy of the human or social sciences and social theory. The more recent point of departure for various accounts of sociality has centered on the nature of conventions, (...) social groups, shared intentions, or collective intentionality. Putting aside the disagreements among these accounts, they all take for granted an antecedently intelligible notion of individual agency as explanatorily primitive and seek to explain the possibility of plural or collective agency in terms of the former. By contrast, other philosophers who have worked at the intersection of analytic and "continental" philosophy have emphasized the primacy of practice as the proper starting point for philosophical reflections on the nature of human sociality. In the analytic tradition this emphasis is typically framed in terms of the possibility of rule-following, a topic put on the philosophical agenda by the later Wittgenstein. Peter Winch’s and Saul Kripke’s influential but controversial readings of Wittgenstein explicitly thematize the issue of rule-following, readings which have in turn generated critical reflection in various disciplines for which this issue is relevant. -/- I begin by briefly explicating the positions of Pettit and Brandom on the issue of rule-following (putting aside any specific differences between them for the moment). Next I connect Pettit’s and Brandom’s views on rule-following, and more generally on normativity and its necessarily social basis, with the views of Theodore Schatzki and Joseph Rouse, whose conceptions of the significance of practice and its inherent sociality are indebted as much to the early Heidegger as well as the later Wittgenstein. I suggest that Pettit’s and Brandom’s views of the necessarily social nature of rule-following (i.e., practice) ought to acknowledge and integrate the shared insight of Schatzki and Rouse that practices are not only modes of activity, but constitute more basically the concrete setting or world within which practices qua modes of activity are intelligible (verständlich) at all. I conclude the paper by suggesting how an integrated account of the significance of the necessarily social nature of practice undermines the assumptions of those philosophers who seek to analyze human sociality solely on the basis of modes of interactions among individual agents. (shrink)

Across the humanities and social sciences it has become commonplace for scholars to argue that categories once assumed to be “natural” are in fact “social” or, in the familiar lingo, “socially constructed”. Two common examples of such categories are race and gender, but there many others. One interpretation of this claim is that although it is typically thought that what unifies the instances of such categories is some set of natural or physical properties, instead their (...) unity rests on social features of the items in question. Social constructionists pursuing this strategy—and it is these social constructionists I will be focusing on in this paper—aim to “debunk” the ordinary assumption that the categories are natural, by revealing the more accurate social basis of the classification.2 To avoid confusion, and to resist some of the associations with the term ‘social construction’, I will sometimes use the term ‘socially founded’ for the categories that this sort of constructionist reveals as social rather than natural. (shrink)

This paper analyses how Vision Zero (VZ) efforts in New York City (NYC) account for equity and social justice implications of road safety work. VZ policy documents, research literature, popular science and opinion articles on road safety work in the city were studied with a prime focus on equity and social justice. Twelve semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in road safety and transport planning in the city and at national level were conducted to gain an in-depth understanding of (...) policy design, the adoption process, and the role of equity considerations in the city's road safety work. The results show that major equity and social justice issues arise in the adoption and implementation of VZ. These issues are primarily related to equity and fairness in the distribution of life saving interventions, the socio-economic impacts of road safety strategies, and the nature of community engagement in policy design and implementation. The findings point to a need for VZ practitioners to give due considerations to equity and social justice implications of VZ policies and strategies. Among others, it supports the need for understanding the nature of past equity and social justice problems in road safety and transport planning in the VZ policy design process. Moreover, the findings suggest the need for empirical studies on the socio-economic implications of VZ strategies and interventions. (shrink)

Since the beginning of humanity and up till now, education is a cornerstone in building human communities. No real social development will take place unless there are scientific and specific education principles. Pursuing the human march is the best example. During the Greek times, the philosophers focused their attention on education. Plato's Academy and Lyceum Aristotle's are educational institutes which produced designs for educational curricula delineated by Plato in his Republic and Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics. Within Islamic heritage, Prophet (...) Mohamed (Peace Be Upon Him) freed the prisoner of war when he taught ten Muslims literacy. Muslim thinkers focused on education .Al- Farabi was a cultural adviser for organizing educational affairs at the court of Sayf ad-Daulah Ibn Hamdan in Damascus, and during the rule of sultan Abo Yakub Youssef ,Ibn Tufail organized the educational affairs in Al Andalus. Dar Al Hekma in Baghdad is a model for the standard educational institute in Arab Muslim civilization. The curriculum is the practical translation of educational objectives, plans and orientations. Curricula makers seek to make better live in human societies. Most contemporary societies departed the traditional curriculum which based on students theoretical knowledge. Accordingly their perception is confirmed through tests. This transformation took place as a result of the industrial revolution which focused on vocational education in addition to what the two great philosophers Francis Beckon, Jean Jack Roseau and the fruits of the psychological though which connects between cognitive education and physical, mental and emotional preparation. For all these reasons as well as other reasons, the curriculum with its modern concept that contradicts with the classical concept, is the result of the interaction between the student, the teacher, the environment, and the culture of the society. The affecting factors are human, social, natural and intellectual . Countries differ in the design of curricula. Some develop them according to the needs of work market while other countries consider the opposite. It is not the market which controls science and culture. Rather, culture drives the market but slow reading affirms that curricula should be developed according to the needs of their societies. Thus, we witness variations taking place in our educational curricula from time to time. We always call upon the most progressive and tend to the most preferable. In this paper, I discussed a number of issues to answer the research main question: why do we develop curricula in human and social sciences? (shrink)

This paper introduces a new, expanded range of relevant cognitive psychological research on collaborative recall and social memory to the philosophical debate on extended and distributed cognition. We start by examining the case for extended cognition based on the complementarity of inner and outer resources, by which neural, bodily, social, and environmental resources with disparate but complementary properties are integrated into hybrid cognitive systems, transforming or augmenting the nature of remembering or decision-making. Adams and Aizawa, noting this distinctive (...) complementarity argument, say that they agree with it completely: but they describe it as “a non-revolutionary approach” which leaves “the cognitive psychology of memory as the study of processes that take place, essentially without exception, within nervous systems.” In response, we carve out, on distinct conceptual and empirical grounds, a rich middle ground between internalist forms of cognitivism and radical anti-cognitivism. Drawing both on extended cognition literature and on Sterelny’s account of the “scaffolded mind” (this issue), we develop a multidimensional framework for understanding varying relations between agents and external resources, both technological and social. On this basis we argue that, independent of any more “revolutionary” metaphysical claims about the partial constitution of cognitive processes by external resources, a thesis of scaffolded or distributed cognition can substantially influence or transform explanatory practice in cognitive science. Critics also cite various empirical results as evidence against the idea that remembering can extend beyond skull and skin. We respond with a more principled, representative survey of the scientific psychology of memory, focussing in particular on robust recent empirical traditions for the study of collaborative recall and transactive social memory. We describe our own empirical research on socially distributed remembering, aimed at identifying conditions for mnemonic emergence in collaborative groups. Philosophical debates about extended, embedded, and distributed cognition can thus make richer, mutually beneficial contact with independently motivated research programs in the cognitive psychology of memory. (shrink)

We present an epistemological schema of natural sciences inspired by Peirce's pragmaticist view, stressing the role of the \emph{phenomenological map}, that connects reality and our ideas about it. The schema has a recognisable mathematical/logical structure which allows to explore some of its consequences. We show that seemingly independent principles as the requirement of reproducibility of experiments and the Principle of Sufficient Reason are both implied by the schema, as well as Popper's concept of falsifiability. We show that the (...) schema has some power in demarcating science by first comparing with an alternative schema advanced during the first part of the 20th century which has its roots in Hertz and has been developed by Einstein and Popper. Further, the identified differences allow us to focus in the construction of Special Relativity, showing that it uses an intuited concept of velocity that does not satisfy the requirements of reality in Peirce. While the main mathematical observation connected with this issue has been known for more than a century, it has not been investigated from an epistemological point of view. A probable reason could be that the socially dominating epistemology in physics does not encourage such line of work. We briefly discuss the relation of the abduction process presented in this work with discussions regarding ``abduction'' in the literature and its relation with ``analogy''. (shrink)

The classical theory of computation does not represent an adequate model of reality for simulation in the social sciences. The aim of this paper is to construct a methodological perspective that is able to conciliate the formal and empirical logic of program verification in computer science, with the interpretative and multiparadigmatic logic of the social sciences. We attempt to evaluate whether social simulation implies an additional perspective about the way one can understand the concepts of (...) program and computation. We demonstrate that the logic of social simulation implies at least two distinct types of program verifications that reflect an epistemological distinction in the kind of knowledge one can have about programs. Computer programs seem to possess a causal capability (Fetzer, 1999) and an intentional capability that scientific theories seem not to possess. This distinction is associated with two types of program verification, which we call empirical and intentional verification. We demonstrate, by this means, that computational phenomena are also intentional phenomena, and that such is particularly manifest in agent-based social simulation. Ascertaining the credibility of results in social simulation requires a focus on the identification of a new category of knowledge we can have about computer programs. This knowledge should be considered an outcome of an experimental exercise, albeit not empirical, acquired within a context of limited consensus. The perspective of intentional computation seems to be the only one possible to reflect the multiparadigmatic character of social science in terms of agent-based computational social science. We contribute, additionally, to the clarification of several questions that are found in the methodological perspectives of the discipline, such as the computational nature, the logic of program scalability, and the multiparadigmatic character of agent-based simulation in the social sciences. (shrink)

The paper deals with two central issues in the philosophy of neuroscience and psychiatry, namely those of the nature and the major kinds and types of psychopathological mechanisms. Contrary to a widespread view, I argue that mechanisms are not kinds of systems but kinds of processes unfolding in systems or between systems. More precisely, I argue that psychopathological mechanisms are sets of actions and interactions between brain-systems or circuits as well as between the latter and other systems in one's body (...) and external environment, both physical and social, involved in human psychopathology. According to the kinds of properties of the interacting systems or their component-parts, psychopathological mechanisms may be physical, chemical, biological, psychological, social, or, typically, mixed ones. Furthermore, I focus on two main kinds of psychopathological mechanisms involved in the causation of mental disorders, namely the pathogenetic and pathophysiological ones, stressing the importance of their careful distinction for the integrative understanding of otherwise disparate and apparently incommensurable psychiatric research findings. I illustrate my analysis with an example drawn from contemporary research on the mechanisms of acute psychosis. Finally, I stress the relevance of psychopathological mechanisms to a more scientifi cally-grounded classifi cation of mental disorders. (shrink)

Academic social networks and social media have revolutionised the way individuals gather information and express themselves, particularly in academia, science, and research. Through the lens of academics, this study aims to investigate the epistemological and psychosocial aspects of these knowledge sources. The epistemological attitude model presented a framework to delve into and reflect upon the existence of knowledge sources, comprising subjective, interactional, and knowledge dimensions. One hundred and twenty-six university academics participated in this study, including lecturers and researchers (...) from different higher education institutions in Latvia. The study employed two methods: the Epistemological Attitudes towards Sources of Knowledge Questionnaire and the Epistemological Attitudes towards Sources of Knowledge Semantic Questionnaire. The data analysis involved several procedures, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and test statistics. By implementing these methods, the study gained valuable insights into the sources of knowledge, examining them from two perspectives. The first perspective brought attention to the differences in academics’ appraisals by discussing their understanding, approach, use, and valuations of these sources. By scrutinising the constructs of meanings, the second perspective sheds light on the anticipated knowledge which is deemed ideal, the concrete knowledge that is both social and objective, and the subjectively valuable nature of academic social networks and social media. The findings underscore the specialised knowledge and qualities that academics rely on for producing knowledge. In terms of epistemology, methodology, social science, and education, the study holds theoretical and practical implications, especially in comprehending knowledge and its sources. (shrink)

I argue that the human sciences (i.e. humanities, social- and behavioural sciences) should not try to imitate the methodology of the natural sciences. The human sciences study meaningful phenomena whose nature is decisively different from the merely physical phenomena studied by the natural sciences, and whose study therefore require different methods; meaningful phenomena do not obviously obey natural laws while the merely physical necessarily does. This is not to say that the (...) human sciences do not study an objective reality about which we cannot have genuine knowledge. The notion of objective reality is discussed, and it is suggested that social constructions can be understood as objectively real entities. (shrink)

In this new post-genomic age of medicine and biomedical technology, there will be novel approaches to understanding disease, and to finding drugs and cures for diseases. Hundreds of new “disease genes” thought to be the causative agents of various genetic maladies will be identified and added to the list of hundreds of such genes already identified. Based on this knowledge, many new genetic tests will be developed and used in genetic screening programs. Genetic screening is the foundation upon which reproductive (...) technologies such as pre-natal diagnosis (PND) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) are based. Genetic information arising from the human genome may also be used in attempts to redesign the human genetic inheritance by engineering the human germline (germline engineering). In each of these technologies—PND, PGD, and germline engineering—there are serious ethical and social concerns. Moreover, all three are eugenic in nature because they strive to control which genes are passed down to future generations. The goals of this article are threefold: 1) to introduce the science behind the three technologies; 2) to give a brief overview of eugenics in the past century and show how these genetic technologies are eugenic; and 3) to present a vision of social justice that rejects the genetic determinism upon which eugenics is based and embraces a holistic, ecological view of nature and humanity. (shrink)

The research on social science eventually comes through any meaning about the human and society. Its message is directed to the society and the principal object of research would be its components, generally research participants or samples in terms of research method. As for nature, it is per se obvious that humans or populace act on various factors to influence their decision. This complex nature of human strands generally prevail that the multivariate analysis is an usual challenge for the (...) social science researchers. For example, the researchers may like to know the relationship of special training on math and achievement of math score. He or she may apply a multivariate analysis from several variables, in which one may be controlled and pretest or post test will be administered. So he groups two classes in test and for a longitudinal study over one semester between the specially trained students and normal class. Then he adds one other variable of family income level that he supposes one important factor to affect the achievement of student in math subject. This would be quantitatively answered by applying a multivariate test, called specifically as factoral ANOVA. The simple ANOVA test may be dosed in several times to understand more a complex interaction or control among the variables. Nevertheless, it has the weakness that unnecessary time and effort would be consumed. Additionally, MANOVA or other multivariate analysis of data would lead us to the more intense and precise result when the variables in consideration all interact to affect the outcome variables. It can be made distinct from mere aggregation of each result from one way ANOVA or univariate and bivariate analysis. Like these, in various ways. the quantitative studies are used to find the scientific truth. Through the Quantitative Reasoning and Analysis (QRA), we could achieve much progress which would be helpful to accelerate the interest and skills in the empirical studies. Most of all, the studies in concern of quantitative method might be a leapfrog for one, who fears of the difficult quantitative skills of analysis. Many of researchers may be fragile since the math courses in the high school and one pass in the college days are all we may have experienced. It is challenging also because the days might be far gone of middle age. For this reason, it never is a puffery that we would fear of quantitative skills. I hope that this paper could be a small help to adapt with the quantitative paradigm. Additionally, it would be great to realize that the quantitative reasoning is fairly powerful and very persuasive to frame a scientific message not only for the peer professionals, but also for lay world. We don’t have to cite the belief of empiricists and its modern evolution backed up by the mathematicians and statisticians. The benefit from this research method is obvious from many realities. The SPSS program facilitates to save from the difficult hand-on works in the earlier quantitative research. The empirical studies, particularly in the sphere of quantitative studies, typically are related with a mass of survey experiment which flavors the kind of political engraft with the research circle. (shrink)

I propose an approach to naturalized philosophy of science that takes the social nature of scientific practice seriously. I criticize several prominent naturalistic approaches for adopting "cognitive individualism", which limits the study of science to an examination of the internal psychological mechanisms of scientists. I argue that this limits the explanatory capacity of these approaches. I then propose a three-level model of the social nature of scientific practice, and use the model to defend the claim that scientific knowledge (...) is socially produced. (shrink)

In recent years, “Information Ethics” (IE) has come to mean different things to different researchers working in a variety of disciplines, including computer ethics, business ethics, medical ethics, computer science, the philosophy of information, social epistemology and library and information science. Using an ontocentric approach, this paper seeks to define the parameters of IE and thereby increase our understanding of the moral challenges associated with Information Communication Technologies.

Over the years, mathematics and statistics have become increasingly important in the social sciences1 . A look at history quickly confirms this claim. At the beginning of the 20th century most theories in the social sciences were formulated in qualitative terms while quantitative methods did not play a substantial role in their formulation and establishment. Moreover, many practitioners considered mathematical methods to be inappropriate and simply unsuited to foster our understanding of the social domain. Notably, the (...) famous Methodenstreit also concerned the role of mathematics in the social sciences. Here, mathematics was considered to be the method of the natural sciences from which the social sciences had to be separated during the period of maturation of these disciplines. All this changed by the end of the century. By then, mathematical, and especially statistical, methods were standardly used, and their value in the social sciences became relatively uncontested. The use of mathematical and statistical methods is now ubiquitous: Almost all social sciences rely on statistical methods to analyze data and form hypotheses, and almost all of them use (to a greater or lesser extent) a range of mathematical methods to help us understand the social world. Additional indication for the increasing importance of mathematical and statistical methods in the social sciences is the formation of new subdisciplines, and the establishment of specialized journals and societies. Indeed, subdisciplines such as Mathematical Psychology and Mathematical Sociology emerged, and corresponding journals such as The Journal of Mathematical Psychology (since 1964), The Journal of Mathematical Sociology (since 1976), Mathematical Social Sciences (since 1980) as well as the online journals Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (since 1998) and Mathematical Anthropology and Cultural Theory (since 2000) were established. What is more, societies such as the Society for Mathematical Psychology (since 1976) and the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (since 1996) were founded. Similar developments can be observed in other countries. The mathematization of economics set in somewhat earlier (Vazquez 1995; Weintraub 2002). However, the use of mathematical methods in economics started booming only in the second half of the last century (Debreu 1991). Contemporary economics is dominated by the mathematical approach, although a certain style of doing economics became more and more under attack in the last decade or so. Recent developments in behavioral economics and experimental economics can also be understood as a reaction against the dominance (and limitations) of an overly mathematical approach to economics. There are similar debates in other social sciences. It is, however, important to stress that problems of one method (such as axiomatization or the use of set theory) can hardly be taken as a sign of bankruptcy of mathematical methods in the social sciences tout court. This chapter surveys mathematical and statistical methods used in the social sciences and discusses some of the philosophical questions they raise. It is divided into two parts. Sections 1 and 2 are devoted to mathematical methods, and Sections 3 to 7 to statistical methods. As several other chapters in this handbook provide detailed accounts of various mathematical methods, our remarks about the latter will be rather short and general. Statistical methods, on the other hand, will be discussed in-depth. (shrink)

Nowadays, protecting trust in social sciences also means engaging in open community dialogue, which helps to safeguard robustness and improve efficiency of research methods. The combination of open data, open review and open dialogue may sound simple but implementation in the real world will not be straightforward. However, in view of Begley and Ellis’s (2012) statement that, “the scientific process demands the highest standards of quality, ethics and rigour,” they are worth implementing. More importantly, they are feasible to (...) work on and likely will help to restore plausibility to social sciences research. Therefore, I feel it likely that the triplet of open data, open review and open dialogue will gradually emerge to become policy requirements regardless of the research funding source. (shrink)

Current methods of operationalizing concepts of misinformation in machine learning are often problematic given idiosyncrasies in their success conditions compared to other models employed in the natural and social sciences. The intrinsic value-ladenness of misinformation and the dynamic relationship between citizens' and social scientists' concepts of misinformation jointly suggest that both the construct legitimacy and the construct validity of these models needs to be assessed via more democratic criteria than has previously been recognized.

Contemporary issues involving knowledge and science examined from a constructivist-pragmatist perspective often labeled "relativism." Individual chapters include a review of the difference between constructivist-pragmatist epistemology and "social constructivism;" an examination of recent writings by Bruno Latour; a critique of computational methods in literary studies; a skeptical look at current efforts to "integrate" the humanities and the natural sciences; and reflections on the social dynamics of belief in relation to denials of climate change and to hopes expressed (...) by environmentalists. (shrink)

Information and its cognate concepts are frequently used in increasingly varied areas of scientific and scholarly investigations, from computing and engineering to philosophy and the social sciences. As a consequence, a great deal of interesting and exciting research is taking place in a wide range of fields, which do not always communicate with each other. So the second workshop1 of the IEG (the interdepartmental research group in philosophy of information at the University of Oxford2), took the shape of (...) a series of seminars, hosted in Oxford by the Department of Engineering Science, during the academic year 2008–2009. The project aimed to bring together leading experts in the broadly construed area of information research, with the goal of offering a stimulating series of talks and discussions on “the nature and scope of information”. (shrink)

In this chapter, we argue that in order to understand the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary dialectics in sustainability science, it is useful to see sustainability science as a kind of management science, and then to highlight the hard-soft distinction in systems thinking. First, we argue that the commonly made natural-social science dichotomy is relatively unimportant and unhelpful. We then outline the differences between soft and hard systems thinking as a more relevant and helpful distinction, mainly as a difference between (...) perspectives in systemic modeling toward models. We also illustrate that the distinction is methodologically useful to advance sustainability science by enabling us (i) to suggest novel ways of using existing theoretical, experimental, and computational resources of the sciences for renewable resource management, and (ii) to disentangle disciplinary disagreements in climate science. (shrink)

Three distinct turning points (“bottleneck breakings”) in universal evolution are discussed at some length in terms of “self-reference” and (corresponding) “Reality Principles.” The first (origin and evolution of animate Nature) and second (human consciousness) are shown to necessarily precede a third one, that of Marxist philosophy. It is pointed out that while the previous two could occupy a natural (so in a sense neutral) place as parts of human science, the self-reference of Marxism, as a _social_ human phenomenon, through (...) its direct bearings on the _practice_ of society, did have a stormy history. I conclude that the fall of Bolshevism was unavoidable, and still, we might uphold our hope for a truly free society of humankind, just on the very basis of what we have learned of the fate of Marxist philosophy as such, as a _recursively evolving_ social _practice_: the freedom of humankind of its own ideological burdens (constraints). (shrink)

If science fiction is a genre, then attempts to think about the nature of science fiction will be affected by one’s understanding of what genres are. I shall examine two approaches to genre, one dominant but inadequate, the other better, but only occasionally making itself seen. I shall then discuss several important, interrelated issues, focusing particularly on science fiction : what it is for a work to belong to a genre, the semantics of genre names, the validity of attempts to (...) define genres, and the connections between genre and normativity. One important but neglected clue to the nature of genres lies in the kinds of disagreements they generate over the assignment of works to genres. I conclude by explaining why these disagreements tell us something about the nature of genres, and discussing in some detail two famous cases of disagreement about whether some work or works are science fiction. (shrink)

The new phase of science evolution is characterized by totality of subject and object of cognition and technology (high-hume). As a result, forming of network structure in a disciplinary matrix modern are «human dimensional» natural sciences and two paradigmal «nuclei» (attraktors). As a result, the complication of structure of disciplinary matrix and forming a few paradigm nuclei in modern «human dimensional» natural sciences are observed.

The essays study from different perspectives, the much discussed and crucial topic of social discrimination, and particularly Dalit exploitation. The work is highly interdisciplinary in nature-relevant for several subjects and disciplines such as political science, sociology, Dalit studies, minority studies, women's studies, anthropology, law, economics This work specifically sets out to explore contemporary manifestations of discrimination that persist in our society through institutions and through norms and practices that define the terms on which certain social groups continue to (...) be excluded. The contributors bring in different critical perspectives from their different disciplines. (shrink)

The new phase of science evolution is characterized by totality of subject and object of cognition and technology (high-hume). As a result, forming of network structure in a disciplinary matrix modern are «human dimensional» natural sciences and two paradigmal «nuclei» (attraktors). As a result, the complication of structure of disciplinary matrix and forming a few paradigm nuclei in modern «human dimensional» natural sciences are observed. In the process of social verification integration of scientific theories into (...) the existent system of mental and valued options of spiritual culture takes place. The attribute of classical science – ethics neutrality of scientific knowledge becomes an unattainable ideal. One of the trends in the evolution of theoretical epistemology is the study of migration mechanisms of generation of scientific knowledge from the sphere of its own logic and methodology of science in the field of sociology - the consideration of this process, as the resulting system of interactions of social structures and institutions. Ensuing ideas and settings become the dominant worldview of philosophical and technological civilization. -/- . (shrink)

This thesis defends utilitarianism: the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being. Utilitarianism is widely rejected by philosophers today, largely because of a number of influential objections. In this thesis I deal with three of them. Each is found in Bernard Williams’s ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ (1973). The first is the Integrity Objection, an intervention that has been influential whilst being subject to a wide variety of (...) interpretations. In Chapter Two I give my interpretation of Williams’s Integrity objection; in Chapter Three I discuss one common response to it, and in Chapters Four and Five I give my own defence of utilitarianism against it. In Chapter Six I discuss a second objection: the problem of pre-emption. This problem is also found in Williams, but has received greater attention through the work of other authors in recent years. It suggests that utilitarianism is unable to deal with some of the modern world’s most pressing moral problems, and raises an internal tension between the twin utilitarian aims of making a difference and achieving the best outcomes. In Chapter Seven I discuss a third objection: that utilitarianism is insufficiently egalitarian. I find this claim to be unwarranted, in light of recent social science and philosophy. My responses to Williams’s objections draw upon resources from the socialist tradition – in particular, that tradition’s emphasis on the importance of social connections between individuals. Socialists have often been hostile to utilitarianism, in part for socialist-inflected versions of Williams’s objections. Thus, in responding to these objections I aim to demonstrate that socialist thought contains the means to defuse not only mainstream philosophy’s rejection of utilitarianism but also its own, and thus to re-open the possibilities for a productive engagement between the two traditions. (shrink)

On the basis of a revision of the real dynamics of Greek poiesis and autopoiesis as evolutionary processes of meaning and knowledge-of-the-World evaluative-construction, Cognitive Poetics proposes key philological, ontological and cultural adjustments to improve our understanding of thought, conceptual activity, and the origins and social nature of language. It searches for an integrated theory of social problems in general Cognitive Science: from Linguistics or Psychology, through Anthropology, Neurophilosophy or Literary Studies, to Neurobiology or Artificial Life Sciences. From (...) an essential turn to the real thing, cognition as (social) action, it provides new unforeseen accounts of the complex dynamics of human essentially creative understanding studying and analyzing all form of texts as active fossils as mentils (Guerra 2009). (shrink)

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

Natural experiments are an increasingly popular research design in political science. This popularity raises a number of questions. First, what are natural experiments and why are they appealing? Second, what makes a good natural experiment? And finally, are natural experiments able to provide resources for knowledge production that other methodologies cannot or do not provide? Using Mary Morgan’s and Thad Dunning’s recent work on natural experiments, I offer answers to the first two questions and use (...) the analysis to argue that natural experiments highlight features of knowledge production that support methodological pluralism and the multiple aims of research. (shrink)

The term ‘human nature’ can refer to different things in the world and fulfil different epistemic roles. Human nature can refer to a classificatory nature (classificatory criteria that determine the boundaries of, and membership in, a biological or social group called ‘human’), a descriptive nature (a bundle of properties describing the respective group’s life form), or an explanatory nature (a set of factors explaining that life form). This chapter will first introduce these three kinds of ‘human nature’, together with (...) seven reasons why we disagree about human nature. In the main, this chapter focuses on the explanatory concept of human nature, which is related to one of the seven reasons for disagreement, namely, the scientific authority inherent in the term ‘nature’. I will examine why, in a number of historical contexts, it was attractive to refer to ‘nature’ as an explanatory category, and why this usage has led to the continual contestation of the term within the sciences. The claim is that even if the contents of talk about ‘nature’ varied historically, the term’s pragmatic function of demarcation stayed the same. The term ‘nature’ conveys scientific authority over a territory; ‘human nature’ is a concept used to divide causes, as well as experts, and thereby conquer others who threaten to invade one’s epistemic territory. Analysing this demarcation, which has social as well as epistemic aspects, will help us to understand why the explanatory role has been important and why it is unlikely that people will ever agree on either the meaning or the importance of ‘human nature’ as an explanatory category. (shrink)

The central aim of this thesis is to confront the world-view of positivistic materialism with its nihilistic implications and to develop an alternative world-view based on process philosophy, showing how in terms of this, science and ethics can be reconciled. The thesis begins with an account of the rise of positivism and materialism, or ‘scientism’, to its dominant position in the culture of Western civilization and shows what effect this has had on the image of man and consequently on ethical (...) views. After having shown the basic weaknesses of this world-view, the positivist account of science is criticised and an alternative epistemology is developed in which the aim of disciplined inquiry is seen to be understanding. It is argued on the basis of this epistemology that science and metaphysics are indissociable, and that the materialist conception of being is open to challenge from a different ontology. Having reviewed the various conceptions of being which have been developed in the past, a version of process philosophy is outlined and it is argued that this promises to be far more effective than materialism as a foundation for the natural sciences. In particular it is shown how in terms of process philosophy it is possible to conceive of living, sentient organisms as having emerged from inanimate being. This provides the basis for the development of a conception of humanity as an emergent form of life. The human order is then seen as a process of becoming within nature with its own unique dynamics, irreducible to any other processes, involving both intentional and unintentional processes. It is shown how on the basis of this conception of humanity it is possible to develop an ethical theory and a critical social science, and in this way, to transcend the disjunction between science and ethics. -/- . (shrink)

The present paper focuses on the work of Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874), the Belgian author of the Social Physics who worked in the tradition of the French mathématique sociale, and of Otto Neurath (1882-1945), the Vienna Circle’s member who supported a “sociology within physicalism”. They shared some important philosophical and methodological positions: an empiricist approach to the social sciences, a unitary conception of the natural and the social sciences, and the appreciation of statistics as a (...) tool for investigating and also reforming society. My paper analyses these elements of continuity between the two authors, in order to highlight how an empirical-quantitative approach to society was (at least partially) inherited by Austrian sociology from an earlier French tradition. On the contrary, most German statisticians refused such an approach at the time in which social sciences were developing in Germany, and they strongly believed in an in-principle difference between natural and social sciences. From a systematic point of view, my paper devotes a special attention to the relationship between the application of statistics (praxis) and a unitary conception of the sciences (theory). Both in Quetelet’s and in Neurath’s work these two aspects support each other. Nevertheless Neurath can be said to have turned Quetelet’s reasoning upside-down: While Quetelet appealed to statistics to claim that the social sciences can reach the same objectivity and determinacy as the natural ones, Neurath referred to statistics to argue that the natural sciences – exactly like the social ones – are characterized by a certain degree of indeterminacy and underdetermination. (shrink)

The new phase of science evolution is characterized by totality of subject and object of cognition and technology (high-hume). As a result, forming of network structure in a disciplinary matrix modern are «human dimensional» natural sciences and two paradigmal «nuclei» (attraktors). As a result, the complication of structure of disciplinary matrix and forming a few paradigm nuclei in modern «human dimensional» natural sciences are observed. In the process of social verification integration of scientific theories into (...) the existent system of mental and valued options of spiritual culture takes place. The attribute of classical science – ethics neutrality of scientific knowledge becomes an unattainable ideal. One of the trends in the evolution of theoretical epistemology is the study of migration mechanisms of generation of scientific knowledge from the sphere of its own logic and methodology of science in the field of sociology - the consideration of this process, as the resulting system of interactions of social structures and institutions. Ensuing ideas and settings become the dominant worldview of philosophical and technological civilization. -/- . (shrink)

Traditional debate on the metaphysics of gender has been a contrast of essentialist and social-constructionist positions. The standard reaction to this opposition is that neither position alone has the theoretical resources required to satisfy an equitable politics. This has caused a number of theorists to suggest ways in which gender is unified on the basis of social rather than biological characteristics but is “real” or “objective” nonetheless – a position I term social objectivism. This essay begins by (...) making explicit the motivations for, and central assumptions of, social objectivism. I then propose that gender is better understood as a real kind with a historical essence, analogous to the biologist’s claim that species are historical entities. I argue that this proposal achieves a better solution to the problems that motivate social objectivism. Moreover, the account is consistent with a post-positivist understanding of the classificatory practices employed within the natural and social sciences. (shrink)

Karl Popper is famous for having proposed that science advances by a process of conjecture and refutation. He is also famous for defending the open society against what he saw as its arch enemies – Plato and Marx. Popper’s contributions to thought are of profound importance, but they are not the last word on the subject. They need to be improved. My concern in this book is to spell out what is of greatest importance in Popper’s work, what its failings (...) are, how it needs to be improved to overcome these failings, and what implications emerge as a result. The book consists of a collection of essays which dramatically develop Karl Popper’s views about natural and social science, and how we should go about trying to solve social problems. Criticism of Popper’s falsificationist philosophy of natural science leads to a conception of science that I call aim-oriented empiricism. This makes explicit metaphysical theses concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe that are an implicit part of scientific knowledge – implicit in the way science excludes all theories that are not explanatory, even those that are more successful empirically than accepted theories. Aim-oriented empiricism has major implications, not just for the academic discipline of philosophy of science, but for science itself. Popper generalized his philosophy of science of falsificationism to arrive at a new conception of rationality – critical rationalism – the key methodological idea of Popper’s profound critical exploration of political and social issues in his The Open Society and Its Enemies, and The Poverty of Historicism. This path of Popper, from scientific method to rationality and social and political issues is followed here, but the starting point is aim-oriented empiricism rather than falsificationism. Aim-oriented empiricism is generalized to form a conception of rationality I call aim-oriented rationalism. This has far-reaching implications for political and social issues, for the nature of social inquiry and the humanities, and indeed for academic inquiry as a whole. The strategies for tackling social problems that arise from aim-oriented rationalism improve on Popper’s recommended strategies of piecemeal social engineering and critical rationalism, associated with Popper’s conception of the open society. This book thus sets out to develop Popper’s philosophy in new and fruitful directions. The theme of the book, in short, is to discover what can be learned from scientific progress about how to achieve social progress towards a better world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Social sciences are sciences that explain the society and its components (individuals and social institutions).The objective of this is to examine social sciences by highlighting key justifications for their existence and making suggestions on how they can be made better in institutions like IUIU. The paper was a result of a review of secondary sources and writings on social sciences by famous scholars and scientists and also a compilation of experiences accumulated (...) over time as an instructor in social sciences, which all were put into the perspective of IUIU. The study showed that social sciences in institutions like IUIU can be made better to make them responsive to societal problems. The increasing reliance of social sciences in providing practical solutions to the too many problems the world today poses critical questions to the disciplines of social sciences and therefore demands pertinent answers on how these will be resolved. One can however note that Social Sciences in some of their disciplines, in the way they are practiced, in the topics of research tackled, and in the solutions put forward, are a direct result of the complex society. In conclusion therefore, Institutions should also borrow from such problems to trim their structures, disciplines and related programs in that same way. IUIU should not be exceptional. (shrink)

There is a plurality of theoretical approaches, methodological tools, and explanatory strategies in the social sciences. Different fields rely on different methods and explanatory tools even when they study the very same phenomena. We illustrate this plurality of the social sciences with the studies of crowds. We show how three different takes on crowd phenomena—psychology, rational choice theory, and network theory—can complement one another. We conclude that social scientists are better described as researchers endowed with (...) explanatory toolkits than specialists of some specific social domain. Social scientists’ toolkits are adapted for identifying and specifying the role of specific causal factors among the multiple factors that produce social phenomena. These factors can be, in a nonexclusive way, economic incentives, psychological processes, the ecology, or aspects of the social and cultural environment. The plurality of methods and theories in the social sciences flies in the face of the project to unify the sciences associated with the positivists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet, the compatibility and consilience of theories and practices still have epistemic value: they enable the development of more powerful and robust theories and they allow the advent of interdisciplinary studies. We present the integrative stance as the will to improve compatibility and consilience across fields, yet recognize that the plurality of causes of social phenomena invite a diversity of methodological and theoretical tools. We conclude by characterizing naturalism as an integrative stance applied to fields that belong to the social science and to the natural sciences. (shrink)