Pluralism, indeterminacy and the social sciences: Reply to Ingram and Meehan [Book Review]

Human Studies 20 (4):441-458 (1997)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This article defends methodological and theoretical pluralism in the social sciences. While pluralistic, such a philosophy of social science is both pragmatic and normative. Only by facing the problems of such pluralism, including how to resolve the potential conflicts between various methods and theories, is it possible to discover appropriate criteria of adequacy for social scientific explanations and interpretations. So conceived, the social sciences do not give us fixed and universal features of the social world, but rather contribute to the task of improving upon our practical knowledge of on-going social life. After arguing for such a thorough-going pluralism based on the indeterminacy of social action, I defend it from the post-modern and hermeneutic objections by suggesting the possibility of an epistemology of interpretive social science as a form of practical knowledge.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
50 (#282,559)

6 months
3 (#445,838)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

James Bohman
PhD: Boston University; Last affiliation: Saint Louis University

Citations of this work

Education(al) Research, Educational Policy-Making and Practice.Charles Clark - 2011 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 45 (1):37-57.
Education(al) Research, Educational Policy-Making and Practice.Charles Clark - 2011 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 45 (1):37-57.

Add more citations