The failure to recognize a correlation as spurious can lead people to adopt strategies to bring about a specific outcome that manipulate something other than a cause of the outcome. However, in a 2008 paper appearing in the journal Analysis, Bert Leuridan, Erik Weber and Maarten Van Dyck suggest that knowledge of spurious correlations can, at least sometimes, justify adopting a strategy aiming at bringing about some change. This claim is surprising and, if true, throws into question the claim of (...) Nancy Cartwright and others that knowledge of laws of association is insufficient for distinguishing effective and ineffective strategies. This paper examines the nature of spurious correlations and their value in crafting strategies for change. The conclusion of the paper is that while knowledge of a spurious correlation may have practical value, the value depends on either having knowledge of the causal structure underlying the correlation or it depends on the use of ‘causal criteria’. (shrink)

In a recent paper on realism and pragmatism published in this journal, Osmo Kivinen and Tero Piiroinen have been pleading for more methodological work in the philosophy of the social sciences—refining the conceptual tools of social scientists—and less philosophically ontological theories. Following this de-ontologizing approach, we scrutinize the debates on social explanation and contribute to the development of a pragmatic social science methodology. Analyzing four classic debates concerning explanation in the social sciences, we propose to shift the debate away from (...) (a) the ontologizing defenses of forms of social explanation, and (b) a winner-takes-all-approach. Instead, we advocate (c) a pragmatic approach towards social explanation, elaborating a rigorous framework for explanatory pluralism detached from the debates on social ontology. (shrink)

Human behavioral ecology (HBE) began as an attempt to explain human economic, reproductive, and social behavior using neodarwinian theory in concert with theory from ecology and economics, and ethnographic methods. HBE has addressed subsistence decision-making, cooperation, life history trade-offs, parental investment, mate choice, and marriage strategies among hunter-gatherers, herders, peasants, and wage earners in rural and urban settings throughout the world. Despite our rich insights into human behavior, HBE has very rarely been used as a tool to help the people (...) with whom we work. This article introduces a special issue of Human Nature which explores the application of HBE to significant world issues through the design and critique of public policy and international development projects. The articles by Tucker, Shenk, Leonetti et al., and Neil were presented at the 104th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in Washington, D.C., in December 2005, in the first organized session of the nascent Evolutionary Anthropology Section (EAS). We conclude this introduction by summarizing some theoretical challenges to applying HBE, and ways in which evolutionary anthropologists can contribute to solving tough world issues. (shrink)

In everyday discourse and in the context of social scientific research we often attribute intentional states to groups. Contemporary approaches to group intentionality have either dismissed these attributions as metaphorical or provided an analysis of our attributions in terms of the intentional states of individuals in the group.Insection1, the author argues that these approaches are problematic. In sections 2 and 3, the author defends the view that certain groups are literally intentional agents. In section 4, the author argues that there (...) are significant reasons for social scientists and philosophers of social science to acknowledge the adequacy of macro-level explanations that involve the attribution of intentional states to groups. In section 5, the author considers and responds to some criticisms of the thesis she defends. (shrink)

The examples and concepts that Shoemaker cites are rather heterogeneous. Some distinctions need to be drawn. An optimality thesis involves not just an ordering of options, but a value judgment about them. So let us begin by distinguishing minimality from optimality. And the concept of minimality can play a variety of roles, among which I distinguish between extremum descriptions, statements hypothesizing an optimizing process, and methodological recommendations. Finally, I consider how the three categories relate to Shoemaker’s question that “Who is (...) optimizing: the scientist or nature?” . (shrink)

The ArgumentAs the American economy became more complex and differentiated in the post-1850 decades, so too did the demand for manufactured products, creating wide markets for both mass-produced standard goods and batch-produced specialties among consumers and producers alike. These developments conditioned the emergence of distinctive work cultures within the two broad spheres of manufacturing, as well as distinct approaches to technological selection and use, labor, marketing, and management. As the mass production dynamic has been well documented, this essay focuses principally (...) on elaborating the practices of industrial specialists for comparison with those of “managerial capitalism.” Conditions and controversies in the textile, woodworking, and metalworking trades provide an in-depth example of larger patterns among batch-oriented sectors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including issues of the politics (i.e., power relations) in production and the recording of masculine identity and values. The role of public policies in facilitating the universalization of mass production rhetorics and practices is considered at the close. (shrink)

This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of one of science's most pervasive and flexible metaprinciples;optimalityis used to explain utility maximization in economics, least effort principles in physics, entropy in chemistry, and survival of the fittest in biology. Fermat's principle of least time involves both teleological and causal considerations, two distinct modes of explanation resting on poorly understood psychological primitives. The rationality heuristic in economics provides an example from social science of the potential biases arising from the extreme flexibility of (...) optimality considerations, including selective search for confirming vidence, ex post rationalization, and the confusion of prediction with explanation. Commentators are asked to reflect on the extent to which optimality is an organizing principle of nature, a set of relatively unconnected techniques of science, a normative principle for rational choice and social organization, a metaphysical way of looking at the world, or something else still. (shrink)

According to an influential epistemological tradition, science explains phenomena on the basis of laws, but the last two decades have witnessed a neo-mechanistic movement that emphasizes the fundamental role of mechanism-based explanations in science, which have the virtue of opening the “black box” of correlations and of providing a genuine understanding of the phenomena. Mechanisms enrich the empirical content of a theory by introducing a new set of variables, helping us to make causal inferences that are not possible on the (...) basis of macro-level correlations. However, the appeal to mechanisms has also a methodological price. They are vulnerable to interference effects; they also face underdetermination problems, because the available evidence often allows different interpretations of the underlying structure of a correlation; they are strongly context-dependent and their individuation as causal patterns can be controversial; they present specific testability problems; finally, mechanism-based extrapolations can be misleading due to the local character of mechanisms. At any rate, the study of mechanisms is an indispensable part of the human sciences, and the problems that they raise can be controlled by quantitative and qualitative methods, and an epistemologically informed exercise of critical thinking. (shrink)

Precautionary Principles are often said to be appropriate for decision-making in contexts of uncertainty such as climate policy. Contexts of uncertainty are contrasted to contexts of risk depending on whether we have probabilities or not. Against this view, I argue that the risk-uncertainty distinction is practically irrelevant. I start by noting that the history of the distinction between risk and uncertainty is more varied than is sometimes assumed. In order to examine the distinction, I unpack the idea of having probabilities, (...) in particular by distinguishing three interpretations of probability: objective, epistemic, and subjective probability. I then claim that if we are concerned with whether we have probabilities at all—regardless of how low their epistemic credentials are—then we almost always have probabilities for policy-making. The reason is that subjective and epistemic probability are the relevant interpretations of probability and we almost always have subjective and epistemic probabilities. In contrast, if we are only concerned with probabilities that have sufficiently high epistemic credentials, then we obviously do not always have probabilities. Climate policy, for example, would then be a case of decision-making under uncertainty. But, so I argue, we should not dismiss probabilities with low epistemic credentials. Rather, when they are the best available probabilities our decision principles should make use of them. And, since they are almost always available, the risk-uncertainty distinction remains irrelevant. (shrink)

There are many theories about organizations that are mutually inconsistent with each other, which explain phenomena to very similar extents. Most of them ignore the ethical dimension completely. In this paper I put forth the basic principles for a theory of decision-making in organizations, which integrates ethics in the core of the theory. It is based on the work of Juan Antonio Pérez López [1991, Teoría de la Acción humana en las organizaciones (Ediciones Rialp, Madrid), 1993, Fundamentos de la Dirección (...) de Empresas (Ediciones Rialp, Madrid)] and is essentially a humanistic view of the interrelationships between people and its implications for organizational decision-making. I will first show that in any relationship between two people, the learning of the two is crucial for such a relationship to last; and then I will expand on the different aspects of that learning. This analysis will then be applied to the organizational context as a basis for organizational decision-making, Second, it applies the previous analysis to the organizational context as a basis for organizational decision making, showing how any decision in an organization needs to be analyzed on the basis of three criteria (short-run effectiveness, development of distinctive competence, and unity and identification with the organization) and how ethics is included in the last two. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss the issue of context-dependence of mechanism-based explanation in the social sciences. The different ways in which the context-dependence and context-independence of mechanism-based explanation have been understood in the social sciences are often motivated by different and apparently incompatible understandings of what explanatory mechanisms are. Instead, we suggest that the different varieties of context-dependence are best seen as corresponding to different research goals. Rather than conflicting with one another, these goals are complementary to each other and (...) therefore pave the way to a methodologically more cooperative approach to mechanism-based explanation in the social sciences. (shrink)

University of Cologne, Germany Joint action and group agency have emerged as focuses of attention in recent social theory and philosophy but they have rarely been connected with one another. The argument of this article is that whereas joint action involves people acting together to achieve any sort of result, group agency requires them to act together for the achievement of one result in particular: the construction of a centre of attitude and agency that satisfies the usual constraints of consistency (...) and rationality in adequate measure. The main discovery in the recent theory of group agency is that this result is not easily achieved; no regular voting procedure will ensure, for example, that a group of individually consistent agents will display consistency in group judgments. Key Words: groups • group agents • collective agents • joint action • joint intention. (shrink)

On the surface, self-centred emotions like shame or pride are related to subtle understandings of one's own identity and relevant objects (Taylor 1985; Ben Ze'ev 2000). Changes of beliefs about these objects often result in changes in the related emotions.If I am very proud that, on the first of April, I won the Jacques Chirac Prize for moral philosophy and then realize that it was just an April Fool's joke, my pride will probably vanish. I will probably be ashamed that (...) I believed it. Cases like this support the idea that having beliefs is a necessary condition for feeling pride or shame.If this is true and if we endorse Jerry Fodor's views about modularity, it follows that shame can't be modular because, according to these views, no beliefs or other central mental processes are supposed to be involved in the operation of modules (Fodor 1983). Further, contempt, derision, or avoidance are supposed to be typical causes of shame, but they may trigger other emotions as well: hatred, anger, self-pity, or sadness, etc. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Highlights of Past Literature Current Work Future Work.

A comment on Paul Schoemaker's target article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14 (1991), p. 205-215, "The Quest for Optimality: A Positive Heuristic of Science?" (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00066140). This comment argues that the optimizing model of decision leads to an infinite regress, once internal costs of decision (i.e., information and computation costs) are duly taken into account.

RESUMO O propósito deste artigo é aproximar o significado do pensar calculador de Heidegger e a teoria sobre a sociedade do risco de Beck, considerando suas interpelações com o significado da técnica na modernidade. Porém, mais que tratar das aproximações entre ambos os pensadores, este estudo pretende também demonstrar a importância da filosofia da técnica de Heidegger para pensar o sentido do cálculo do risco e do risco do cálculo na sociedade do risco. Assim, argumenta-se que a teoria do risco (...) de Beck confirma e atualiza o pensamento de Heidegger sobre a técnica moderna, quando se observa que o pensar calculador, que dirige e controla o modo de ser na era do técnico, manifesta-se hoje com toda claridade na sociedade do risco global. ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to bring the meaning of Heidegger’s calculative thinking and Beck’s risk society theory closer, as well as their interpellations with the meaning of technique in modernity. Nevertheless, more than dealing with the convergences between both thinkers, this study also intends to demonstrate the importance of Heidegger’s technique philosophy in order to investigate the meaning of risk calculation and of calculation risk in risk society. Therefore, it argues that Beck’s risk theory confirms and updates Heidegger’s thinking on modern technique, as one observes that calculative thinking, which directs and controls the way of being in the age of technicality, clearly manifests itself nowadays, in the global risk society. (shrink)

In some of the papers in which she develops and defends the mental modelview of thought experiments in physics, Nersessian expresses the belief that her account has implications for thought experiments in other domains as well. In this paper, I argue, firstly, that counterfactual reasoning has a legitimate place in historical inquiry, and secondly, that the mental model view can account for such "alternative histories". I proceed as follows. Firstly, I review the main accounts of thought experiments in physics and (...) point at some explanatory advantages of the mental model view. Subsequently, I argue that historians cannot dispense with counterfactual reasoning altogether and qualify a number of principled objections against the explicit use of alternative histories for theoretical purposes. Finally, I show that the mental model view can account for such thought experiments in history. (shrink)

Cummins (1982) argues that etiological considerations are not onlyinsufficient butirrelevant for the determination offunction. I argue that his claim of irrelevance rests on a misrepresentation of the use of functions in evolutionary explanations. I go on to suggest how accepting anetiological constraint on functional analysis might help resolve some problems involving the use of functional explanations.

A particularly important topic for Marxist theory is that of popular politics: the ways in which the underclasses of society express their interests and values through collective action. Classical Marxism postulates a fundamental conflict of interest among classes. It holds that exploited classes will come to an accurate assessment of their class interests, and will engage in appropriate collective actions to secure those interests. The result is a predicted variety of forms of underclass collective action: boycotts, rent strikes, tax and (...) food riots, rebellion, and revolution. Underclass members of society instigate and support such protests because it is in their material class interest to do so. It will emerge, however, that this account is too schematic to provide a basis for explanation of popular politics. The microfoundations approach to Marxist theory will prove useful in this context because it directs us to some of the resources needed to provide a more adequate account of popular collective action. (shrink)

This article considers the dispute between moral economy and rational peasant theories of agrarian societies in application to problems of collective action. The moral-economy theory holds that traditional peasant society is organized cooperatively through shared moral values and communal institutions; while the rational-peasant theory maintains that peasant society shows the mark of rational individual calculation, leading to free-rider problems that undermine successful collective action. This article offers an abstract model of a traditional village and assesses the applicability of recent qualifications (...) of the collective action argument to this model. It will emerge that the social characteristics of the traditional village embody features that facilitate collective action by rational peasants. (shrink)