The Philosophy of SocialScience: A Contemporary Introduction examines the perennial questions of philosophy by engaging with the empirical study of society. The book offers a comprehensive overview of debates in the field, with special attention to questions arising from new research programs in the social sciences. The text uses detailed examples of social scientific research to motivate and illustrate the philosophical discussion. Topics include the relationship of social policy to social (...) class='Hi'>science, interpretive research, action explanation, game theory, social scientific accounts of norms, joint intentionality, reductionism, causal modeling, case study research, and experimentation. (shrink)
This is a much-needed new introduction to a field that has been transformed in recent years by exciting new subjects, ideas, and methods. It is designed for students in both philosophy and the social sciences. Topics include ontology, objectivity, method, measurement, and causal inference, and such issues as well-being and climate change.
This is an expanded and thoroughly revised edition of the widely adopted introduction to the philosophical foundations of the human sciences. Ranging from cultural anthropology to mathematical economics, Alexander Rosenberg leads the reader through behaviorism, naturalism, interpretativism about human action, and macrosocial scientific perspectives, illuminating the motivation and strategy of each.Rewritten throughout to increase accessibility, this new edition retains the remarkable achievement of revealing the social sciences’ enduring relation to the fundamental problems of philosophy. It includes new discussions (...) of positivism, European philosophy of history, causation, statistical laws, quantitative models, and postempiricist socialscience, along with a completely updated literature guide that keys chapters to widely anthologized papers. (shrink)
This textbook by Martin Hollis offers an exceptionally clear and concise introduction to the philosophy of socialscience. It examines questions which give rise to fundamental philosophical issues. Are social structures better conceived of as systems of laws and forces, or as webs of meanings and practices? Is social action better viewed as rational behaviour, or as self-expression? By exploring such questions, the reader is led to reflect upon the nature of scientific method in (...) class='Hi'>socialscience. Is the aim to explain the social world after a manner worked out for the natural world, or to understand the social world from within? (shrink)
This book is a critical introduction to the philosophy of socialscience. While most social scientists maintain that the social sciences should stand free of politics, this book argues that they should be politically partisan. Root offers a clear description and provocative criticism of many of the methods and ideals that guide research and teaching in the social sciences.
This article defends methodological and theoretical pluralism in the social sciences. While pluralistic, such a philosophy of socialscience 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 (...) class='Hi'>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 socialscience as a form of practical knowledge. (shrink)
This is the first book in the new series, is a comprehensive introduction to philosophical problems in the social sciences, encompassing traditional and contemporary perspectives. It is readily accessible, with a firm emphasis on communicating difficult philosophical ideas clearly and effectively to those from outside this discipline. Ted Benton and Ian Craib move systematically through major topic areas, from positivism to post-structuralism, using a wide variety of examples and cases to illustrate key themes.
This introduction to the philosophy of socialscience provides an original conception of the task and nature of social inquiry. Peter Manicas discusses the role of causality seen in the physical sciences and offers a reassessment of the problem of explanation from a realist perspective. He argues that the fundamental goal of theory in both the natural and social sciences is not, contrary to widespread opinion, prediction and control, or the explanation of events. Instead, theory (...) aims to provide an understanding of the processes which, together, produce the contingent outcomes of experience. Offering a host of concrete illustrations and examples of critical ideas and issues, this accessible book will be of interest to students of the philosophy of socialscience, and social scientists from a range of disciplines. (shrink)
Continental Philosophy of SocialScience demonstrates the unique and autonomous nature of the continental approach to socialscience and contrasts it with the Anglo-American tradition. Yvonne Sherratt argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the Continental tradition in order to appreciate its individual, humanist character. Examining the key traditions of hermeneutic, genealogy, and critical theory, and the texts of major thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, the Early Frankfurt School and Habermas, (...) she also contextualizes contemporary developments within strands of thought stemming back to Ancient Greece and Rome. Sherratt shows how these modes of thinking developed through medieval Christian thought into the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, before becoming mainstays of twentieth-century disciplines. Continental Philosophy of SocialScience will serve as the essential textbook for courses in philosophy or social sciences. (shrink)
This ambitious critical history of the variety of disciplines we group together as the social sciences argues that the defining characteristic of socialscience, both historically and in the present, is ideology. Based originally on a flawed ideal of science, the 'social sciences' have incorporated and refined a set of assumptions about the nature of state and society, assumptions which have been institutionalized with the growth of modern universities. The book is in three main parts. (...) It deals firstly with the history of certain key ides from the early modern period, before exploring the institutional and social features which have shaped the emergence of modern socialscience. Manicas goes on to reveal the ideological component of mainstream socialscience, concluding by suggesting and alternative realist philosophy for the future. Rigorous in scholarship and engaging in presentation, the book offers a brilliant combination of wide-ranging historical scholarship and a firm location in the current theoretical dilemmas of the social sciences. (shrink)
This 1979 text addresses the ways in which the dominant theories in large areas of Western socialscience have been subject to strong criticisms, particularly ...
Continental Philosophy of SocialScience demonstrates the unique and autonomous nature of the continental approach to socialscience and contrasts it with the Anglo-American tradition. Yvonne Sherratt argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the Continental tradition in order to appreciate its individual, humanist character. Examining the key traditions of hermeneutic, genealogy, and critical theory, and the texts of major thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, the Early Frankfurt School and Habermas, (...) she also contextualizes contemporary developments within strands of thought stemming back to Ancient Greece and Rome. Sherratt shows how these modes of thinking developed through medieval Christian thought into the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, before becoming mainstays of twentieth-century disciplines. Continental Philosophy of SocialScience will serve as the essential textbook for courses in philosophy or social sciences. (shrink)
_The Philosophy of SocialScience Reader_ is an outstanding, comprehensive and up-to-date collection of key readings in the philosophy of socialscience, covering the essential issues, problems and debates in this important interdisciplinary area. Each section is carefully introduced by the editors, and the readings placed in context. The anthology is organized into seven clear parts: Values and SocialScience Causal Inference and Explanation Interpretation Rationality and Choice Individualism Norms Cultural Evolution. Featuring (...) the work of influential philosophers and social scientists such as Ernest Nagel, Ian Hacking, John Searle, Clifford Geertz, Daniel Kahneman, Steven Lukes and Richard Dawkins, _The Philosophy of SocialScience Reader_ is the ideal text for philosophy of socialscience courses, and for students in related disciplines interested in the differences between the social and natural sciences. (shrink)
“This book will certainly prove to be a useful resource and reference point … a good addition to anyone’s bookshelf.” Network "This is a superb collection, expertly presented. The overall conception seems splendid, giving an excellent sense of the issues... The selection and length of the readings is admirably judged, with both the classic texts and the few unpublished pieces making just the right points." William Outhwaite, Professor of Sociology, University of Sussex "... an indispensable book for all of us (...) in philosophy and the social sciences who teach and care about the shape of social knowledge in the future." Steven Seidman, Professor of Sociology, State University of New York Albany "For a comprehensive account of the ways in which world transformations affect claims to social scientific knowledge, one need look no further than Gerard Delanty and Piet Strydom's Philosophies of SocialScience . ...this collection captures nicely the increasingly engaged political nature of the philosophy of socialscience. Debates about pragmatism, feminism and postmodernism are particularly well represented" The Australian What is socialscience? How does it differ from the other sciences? What is the meaning of method in socialscience? What is the nature and limits of scientific knowledge? This collection of over sixty extracts from classic works on the philosophy of socialscience provides an essential textbook and a landmark reference in the field. It highlights the work of some of the most influential authors who have shaped socialscience. The texts explore the question of truth, the meaning of scientific knowledge, the nature of methodology and the relation of science to society, including edited extracts from both classic and contemporary works by authors such as Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, Alfred Schutz, Max Horkheimer, Jurgen Habermas, Alvin Gouldner, Karl-Otto Apel, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, Dorothy Smith, Donna Haraway, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Derrida and Claude Levi-Strauss. The readings are representative of the major schools of thought, including European and American trends in particular as well as approaches that are often excluded from mainstream traditions. From a teaching and learning perspective the volume is strengthened by extensive introductions to each of the six sections, as well as a general introduction to the reader as a whole. These introductions contextualise the readings and offer succinct summaries of them. This volume is the definitive companion to the study of the philosophy of socialscience, taught within undergraduate or postgraduate courses in sociology and the social sciences. (shrink)
Professor Little presents an introduction to the philosophy of socialscience with an emphasis on the central forms of explanation in socialscience: rational-intentional, causal, functional, structural, materialist, statistical and interpretive. The book is very strong on recent developments, particularly in its treatment of rational choice theory, microfoundations for social explanation, the idea of supervenience, functionalism, and current discussions of relativism.Of special interest is Professor Little’s insight that, like the philosophy of natural (...) class='Hi'>science, the philosophy of socialscience can profit from examining actual scientific examples. Throughout the book, philosophical theory is integrated with recent empirical work on both agrarian and industrial society drawn from political science, sociology, geography, anthropology, and economics.Clearly written and well structured, this text provides the logical and conceptual tools necessary for dealing with the debates at the cutting edge of contemporary philosophy of socialscience. It will prove indispensible for philosophers, social scientists and their students. (shrink)
Hermeneutic philosophies of socialscience offer an approach to the philosophy of socialscience foregrounding the human subject and including attention to history as well as a methodological reflection on the notion of reflection, including the intrusions of distortions and prejudice. Hermeneutic philosophies of socialscience offer an explicit orientation to and concern with the subject of the human and social sciences. Hermeneutic philosophies of the socialscience represented in the (...) present collection of essays draw inspiration from Gadamer’s work as well as from Paul Ricoeur in addition to Michel de Certeau and Michel Foucault among others. Special attention is given to Wilhelm Dilthey in addition to the broader phenomenological traditions of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger as well as the history of philosophy in Plato and Descartes. The volume is indispensible reading for students and scholars interested in epistemology, philosophy of science, socialsocial studies of knowledge as well as social studies of technology. (shrink)
The text shows how the perspectives of earlier traditions persist in modified form, covering poststructuralism, postmodernism, critical theory, feminist ...
In this exciting Handbook, Ian Jarvie and Jesús Zamora-Bonilla have put together a wide-ranging and authoritative overview of the main philosophical currents and traditions at work in the social sciences today. Starting with the history of social scientific thought, this Handbook sets out to explore that core fundamentals of socialscience practice, from issues of ontology and epistemology to issues of practical method. Along the way it investigates such notions as paradigm, empiricism, postmodernism, naturalism, language, agency, (...) power, culture, and causality. (shrink)
A traditional social scientific divide concerns the centrality of the interpretation of local understandings as opposed to attending to relatively general factors in understanding human individual and group differences. We consider one of the most common social scientific variables, race, and ask how to conceive of its causal power. We suggest that any plausible attempt to model the causal effects of such constructed social roles will involve close interplay between interpretationist and more general elements. Thus, we offer (...) a case study that one cannot offer a comprehensive model of the causal power of racial categories as social constructions without careful attention both to local meanings and more general mechanisms. (shrink)
In this time of increasingly critical scrutiny of the very point of the social sciences, those negatively inclined on the issue will find an unwitting ally in Brian Fay—unless, that is, one thinks that socialscience is best regarded as part of a postmodern wonderland in which science, now relativized to social and political setting, is regarded as being just one means among many of gaining knowledge. If that is how science should be regarded, (...) Fay is on the cutting edge. (shrink)
Professor Rudner’s work is a welcome addition to philosophy of science literature, especially since so little is written with respect to the social sciences. The book leans heavily upon the thought of Braithwaite, Hempel, Meyerson, Popper and Wittgenstein. Its three main parts deal respectively with theoretical formulations, the application of such formulations and how the social scientist is to handle goal-oriented human activity.
After distinguishing "socialphilosophy" from "philosophy of socialscience" on the basis of the former's "more overtly normative" concerns and the latter's primary concern with methodological and confirmation issues in the social sciences, Rudner argues in support of the fully-formalized, axiomatic model of scientific theories and the deductive-nomological model of explanation as paradigms to guide the process of social scientific understanding; though, as Rudner willingly acknowledges, these paradigms hardly characterize the present product of (...) the social sciences. Rudner's primary motivation is the desire to leave open the ideal of the "unity of science." Thus, he argues against such "separatist" approaches as the classical, verstehen theory of Weber, against the more recent wedding of this type of position to ordinary language philosophy in, especially, the work of Winch, and, finally, in the last chapter, against positions which employ teleological and functional analyses. This last chapter fails, mainly because Rudner uses "teleological" in an indiscriminate way, which is not at all characteristic of some of the more recent defenses of teleological explanation. In addition, Rudner ignores the question of the extent to which methodological commitments may reflect underlying ontological commitments, a level of analysis and justification which cannot be bypassed in any consideration of the type of unity envisioned for science.—E. A. R. (shrink)
Scott Gordon provides a magisterial review of the historical development of the social sciences from their beginnings in renaissance Italy to the present day.
This article defends methodological and theoretical pluralism in the social sciences. While pluralistic, such a philosophy of socialscience 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 (...) class='Hi'>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 socialscience as a form of practical knowledge. (shrink)
Only a few writers have attempted to construct a comprehensive philosophy of socialscience, and of these Weber is the most relevant to the present. The structure of his conception places him in a close relationship to Donald Davidson. The basic reasoning of Davidson on action explanation, anomalous monism, and the impossibility of a “serious science” of psychology is paralleled in Weber. There are apparent differences with respect to their treatment of the status of the model (...) of rational action and the problem of other cultures, as well as the problem of the objectivity of values, but on examination, these turn out to be less dramatic. Weber’s use of the notion of ideal-types, though it is not paralleled as directly in Davidson, allows him to make parallel conclusions about the relation of truth and interpretation: both make the problem of intelligibility rather than correspondence with some sort of external reality central, and each addresses, though in different ways, the dependence of considerations of intelligibility on normativity and the impossibility of a theory of meaning without idealization. (shrink)
