More on continental philosophy of social science

I encourage interested readers to take a look at the very thoughtful and extensive comment provided by Nick from accursedshare on my earlier posting on continental philosophy of social science. Nick highlights a number of very important lines of thought that are making progress in contemporary discussions of these issues within continental philosophy of science. I am particularly intrigued at his description of "assemblages" -- quoting Nick, "assemblages look at the play of micro-level tools, intentions, habits, techniques, etc. They take these and look at how they spread throughout society (using Gabriel Tarde's work on imitation, for example)." This is a very interesting approach, and one that emphasizes the themes of contingency and heterogeneity in social processes that I find particularly...

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Posted in: assemblages,CAT_epistemology,contingency,philosophy

Arguments for social holism

The topic of methodological individualism (MI) came up in a recent posting, and I underlined the connection between MI and some version of reductionism. Here I'd like to take a different approach and ask the question, what considerations can be offered in support of some version of social holism?Here are a couple of arguments that avoid the accusation of "spooky holism". (By spooky I mean "disembodied.")First is a very reasonable point deriving from pragmatic objections to reductionism. If we know on ontological grounds that the behavior of the whole depends upon the features and behavior of the constituent parts and nothing else -- the heart of the theory of supervenience -- but also know that it is entirely hopeless to attempt to calculate...

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Posted in: CAT_ontology,holism,methodological individualism,microfoundations,social practice

Continental philosophy of social science

Making sense of the human world has always been a part of the continental tradition in philosophy. History, justice, and meaning are subjects that have played central roles in continental writings relevant to "understanding society" for three centuries, and dozens of philosophers have focused on these and related topics in deeply fertile ways -- Kant, Rousseau, Hegel, Montesquieu, Vico, Herder, Schleiermacher, Fichte, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and Dilthey, to name an important dozen. I don't think it is wrong to say that history and society have been foundational questions in this tradition in ways they have not been in the Anglo-American tradition. So continental philosophy of social science (CPS) has much to draw upon.Several strands of...

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Posted in: CAT_epistemology,CAT_foundations,history,narrative,philosophy

Higher education and social mobility

There is an appalling level of inequality in American society; and even more troubling, the multiple dimensions of inequality seem to reinforce each other, with the result that disadvantaged groups remain disadvantaged across multiple generations. We can ask two different kinds of sociological questions about these facts: What factors cause the reproduction of disadvantage over multiple generations? And what policy interventions have some effect on enhancing upward social mobility within disadvantaged groups? How can we change this cycle of disadvantage?Several earlier postings have addressed some aspects of the causal question (post, post). Here I'd like to consider the policy question -- and the question of how we can use empirical evidence...

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Posted in: CAT_institutions,education,inequality

Explaining rodeos

Suppose we have visited quite a few rodeos in Arizona and Texas and have observed a couple of things: there are more injuries in rodeos than in stock car racing or football, the stakes for the winners are lower than in golf, the rodeo riders score higher than average on the "introverted" component of the Myers-Briggs personality profile, some rodeos are almost silent places, and the parking lots are filled with a higher percentage of beat-up F150s than a typical baseball park. What would count as "giving an explanation" of these features of this particular type of social activity? And what kinds of mechanisms might serve as a basis for explanations?Rodeos are an instance of a broader category of social activity that we migh describe along...

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Posted in: CAT_ontology,contingency,explanation,plasticity

Methodological individualism

Methodological individualism (MI) is a doctrine in the philosophy of the social sciences about the relationship between "society" and individuals. The idea can be formulated in several related but somewhat different ways: social facts are constituted by facts about individuals; social entities are composed of individuals and their properties and relations; social structures and entities are "nothing but" ensembles of individuals and their behaviors; social explanations must be derivable from facts about individuals; scientific statements about "society" must be reducible to statements about individuals and their properties and relations; social laws or generalizations must be derivable from general facts about individuals. And there are probably...

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Posted in: CAT_ontology,methodological individualism,microfoundations,rational choice theory

What causes college success?

This sounds like a simple question. It sounds as if it is asking for us to discover a set of factors that influence the level of performance of individuals within a population when they get to colleges and universities. And we might speculate that there is a small group of potentially relevant factors: antecedent cognitive ability, attitudes, and values; location within a set of social relations that enhance or impede successful educational performance; quality of educational resources provided in K-12. We might reason that a given individual's performance is affected by his/her ability and motivation; enhancing or inhibiting circumstances; quality of educational "treatment"; and chance events or circumstances (a lucky break, an inspiring...

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Posted in: CAT_mechanisms,causal reasoning,education,explanation

Tributaries of the philosophy of the social sciences

The philosophy of the social sciences is largely focused on questions about the nature of our knowledge, representation, and explanation of social phenomena. There is an ontological side to some of the questions in this field -- for example, what is the nature of social phenomena? But many of the questions are epistemological, having to do with the conditions of knowledge and representation that obtain when it comes to social facts. I think it is useful to sketch out a map that indicates the topography of some of the fundamental questions and approaches that have contributed to a better understanding of social science. And this effort will demonstrate that there is no single, coherent field that is the "philosophy of social science"; instead,...

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Posted in: CAT_epistemology,CAT_foundations,methodological individualism,philosophy of science,positivism,rational choice theory,realism