Nomadic Concepts, Variable Choice, and the Social Sciences

Philosophy of the Social Sciences 50 (1):3-22 (2020)
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Abstract

The observation that concepts used by social scientists are often problematic is not new; they have been described as Ballung concepts, cluster concepts, essentially contested, and reflexive; however, the need to work with these concepts remains. This article addresses the problem of variable choice in the social sciences by exploring and extending Woodward’s recommendations. This article demonstrates why Woodward’s criteria are difficult to apply in the social sciences and proposes an alternative, but complementary, framework for assessing variables.

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Catherine Greene
London School of Economics

References found in this work

A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being.Anna Alexandrova - 2017 - New York: Oxford University Press.
W. B. Gallie’s “Essentially Contested Concepts”.W. B. Gallie - 1994 - Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 14 (1):2-2.
The problem of variable choice.James Woodward - 2016 - Synthese 193 (4):1047-1072.
Eliminating ‘ life worth living’.Fumagalli Roberto - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (3):769-792.

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