When stripped to the bare bone, there are only 11 foundational paradigms in social sciences. These foundational paradigms are like flashlights that can be utilized to shed light on different aspects of human society, but each of them can only shed light on a limited area of human society. Different schools in social science result from different but often incomplete combinations of these foundational paradigms. To adequately understand human society and its history, we need to deploy all 11 foundational paradigms, (...) although more limited combinations of them may be adequate for understanding more specific social facts. (shrink)

Sally Haslanger has recently argued that philosophical focus on implicit bias is overly individualist, since social inequalities are best explained in terms of social structures rather than the actions and attitudes of individuals. I argue that questions of individual responsibility and implicit bias, properly understood, do constitute an important part of addressing structural injustice, and I propose an alternative conception of social structure according to which implicit biases are themselves best understood as a special type of structure.

This paper reviews the contemporary discussion on the epistemological and ontological effects of Big Data within social science, observing an increased focus on relationality and complexity, and a tendency to naturalize social phenomena. The epistemic limits of this emerging computational paradigm are outlined through a comparison with the discussions in the early days of digitalization, when digital technology was primarily seen through the lens of dematerialization, and as part of the larger processes of “postmodernity”. Since then, the online landscape has (...) become increasingly centralized, and the “liquidity” of dematerialized technology has come to empower online platforms in shaping the conditions for human behavior. This contrast between the contemporary epistemological currents and the previous philosophical discussions brings to the fore contradictions within the study of digital social life: While qualitative change has become increasingly dominant, the focus has gone towards quantitative methods; while the platforms have become empowered to shape social behavior, the focus has gone from social context to naturalizing social patterns; while meaning is increasingly contested and fragmented, the role of hermeneutics has diminished; while platforms have become power hubs pursuing their interests through sophisticated data manipulation, the data they provide is increasingly trusted to hold the keys to understanding social life. These contradictions, we argue, are partially the result of a lack of philosophical discussion on the nature of social reality in the digital era; only from a firm metatheoretical perspective can we avoid forgetting the reality of the system under study as we are affected by the powerful social life of Big Data. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn this paper I challenge the “uncertainty reduction” argument — the dominant explanation for the rise of bureaucratic firms in the late nineteenth century. In contradiction to the agrument that “uncertainty” was a barrier to rational economic order and therefore needed to be reduced, I argue that “uncertainty” was manufactured, objectified, and reified in the course of developing industrial bureacracies. Using an alternative historical narrative I demonstrate that “uncertainty” was used to increase the “rationality” — i.e., control — of (...) hierarchies and to enhance the legitimacy of “rational planning.” In other words, strategies to “reduce uncertainty” increased the “certainty” — i.e., control and centrality — of rational planners but increased the “uncertainty” of their subordinates. I point to the fact that the “uncertainty reduction” argument became a central element in the professional idelogy of management and a focal point in management education programs. Furthermore, the canonical organization theory in the social sciences adopted the rhetoric, logic, and epistemlogy produced by the agents under its study and disseminated their ideology. Through their interrelationship in organization theory, “uncertainty” and “rationality” were enacted as two binary opposites that reproduce each other and construct one “coherent” scheme. (shrink)

I am grateful to Josiane Boulad-Ayoub and Wesley Cooper for their generous treatment of my Equality and Liberty and for their probing criticisms. They make me keenly aware that I have often not expressed myself clearly enough and they have set in motion a process of self-questioning that will extend well beyond this discussion. They drive home to me, once again, the realization of how difficult it is to get anything right in philosophy.Since they, for the most part, raise different (...) sorts of issues, I shall discuss their criticisms separately starting with Cooper's account. (shrink)

Philosophical anthropology is a broad-gauged study of man drawing on the findings of empirical sciences and the humanities. The paper is intended as a tribute to one of the pioneers in this field. The first part outlines central features of Plessner's conception, focusing on man's instinctual deficiency and his 'eccentric position' in the world; man from this perspective is an 'embodied' creature in the dual sense of experiencing the world through his bodily organs and of 'having' a body and being (...) able to reflect on his mundane situation. In social terms the perspective implies that man can find himself only through embodiment in institutional settings and role patterns - settings which, however, remain open to reinterpretation and revision. Subsequently Plessner's outlook is compared and contrasted with alternative views of the human condition. According to Gehlen, man's instinctual deficiency an openness need to be corrected through institutional stability and the standardization of role structures. Reviewing leading writings of the 'counter-culture', a final section explores contemporary anti-institutional trends which see man as a fugitive from social constraints and his search for self-fulfilment as antithetical to role patterns. (shrink)

This paper investigates the potential contribution of sociological perspectives for business ethics teaching. After a brief and selective literature review, the paper suggests starting with sociological thinking and three aspects of it: sociological concepts, sociological imagination, and postponed judgment. After presenting two short case teaching stories and three sociological concepts or frameworks, the potential inspiration value of a sociological checklist for analysing or diagnosing business ethics cases is tried out. As an open ending, some short final suggestions are made for (...) further use of sociological perspectives in both business ethics teaching and research. (shrink)

Our aim in this chapter is to draw lessons from current theory on the evolution of human cooperation for the management of contemporary commons. Evolutionary theorists have long been interested in cooperation but social scientists have documented patterns of cooperation in humans that present unusual problems for conventional evolutionary theory (and for rational choice explanations as well). Humans often cooperate with nonrelatives and are prone to cooperate in one-shot games. Cooperation is quite dependent on social institutions. We believe that this (...) last fact is the critical clue to understanding human cooperation. Models of cultural evolution suggest that group selection is a more potent force on culture than on genes. Evolutionary theory is in essence a theory of preferences in terms of rational actor theory and is thus complementary to the bounded rational choice models that underpin so much theorizing in the social sciences. Thus, the theory suggests a source for prosocial impulses, and leads to predictions about the limits of human altruism and constraints likely to be imposed upon the evolution of social institutions. We also consider the dynamics of genes as they coevolved with increasingly sophisticated cultural institutions over the long course of human evolution in the Pleistocene. We hypothesize that the long exposure of human populations to group selected cultural norms and preferences is likely to have resulted in an innate psychology adapted to living in egalitarian, cooperative societies of a few hundred to a few thousand people. We call this the tribal social instincts hypothesis. The evolution of complex societies in the past few thousand years constitutes a series of natural experiments that test this hypothesis. If it is correct, the institutions of complex societies must somehow take advantage of the prosocial elements of the tribal instincts while finessing the problem that the tribal social instincts are ill adapted to life in large, hierarchical, inegalitarian societies with extensive dominance of subordinates by elites.. (shrink)

Summary: The evolution of complex societies began when agricultural subsistence systems raised human population densities to levels that would support large scale cooperation, and division of labor. All agricultural origins sequences postdate 11,500 years ago probably because late Pleistocene climates we extremely variable, dry, and the atmosphere was low in carbon dioxide. Under such conditions, agriculture was likely impossible. However, the tribal scale societies of the Pleistocene did acquire, by geneculture coevolution, tribal social instincts that simultaneously enable and constrain the (...) evolution of complex societies. Once agriculture became possible, a competitive ratchet drove further improvements in subsistence and in scale of social organization . Those societies that grew and became better organized were advantaged in individual wealth and economic and military power, and tended to conquer, absorb, or be imitated by smaller and less well organized societies. Internal competitors for power espousing useful social innovations could deliver improved returns when their quest was successful. Notwithstanding the ratchet, social complexity increased only slowly in the first half of the Holocene and even afterwards few periods except the past two centuries saw changes that were dramatic on the scale of individual lifetimes. We attempt a taxonomy of the processes that regulate rates of institutional evolution, cause reversals of complexity against the ratchet, and impose historical contingency on institutional evolution. (shrink)