Philosophy of the Social Sciences

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Guala
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Constitutive Rule ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Entities

Naturalism is still facing a strong opposition in the philosophy of social science from influential scholars who argue that philosophical analysis must be autonomous from scientific investigation. The opposition exploits philosophers’ traditional diffidence toward social science and fuels the ambition to provide new foundations for social research. A classic anti-naturalist strategy is to identify a feature of social reality that prevents scientific explanation and prediction. An all-time favorite is the dependence of social phenomena on human representation. This article examines two prominent versions of the dependence thesis and concludes that they both fail. Contemporary social science is capable of accounting for the causal dependence of social reality on representation, and there is no reason to believe that social entities are ontologically dependent on the collective acceptance of a constitutive rule.

“We Speak the Truth!”

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Sari Hanafi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Social Science ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Qualifications

This study investigates the preachers and their Friday sermons in Lebanon, raising the following questions: What are the profiles of preachers in Lebanon and their academic qualifications? What are the topics evoked in their sermons? In instances where they diagnosis and analyze the political and the social, what kind of arguments are used to persuade their audiences? What kind of contact do they have with the social sciences? It draws on forty-two semi-structured interviews with preachers and content analysis of 210 preachers’ Friday sermons, all conducted between 2012 and 2015 among Sunni and Shia mosques. Drawing from Max Weber’s typology, the analysis of Friday sermons shows that most of the preachers represent both the saint and the traditional, but rarely the scholar. While they are dealing extensively with political and social phenomena, rarely do they have knowledge of social science

The Edwards' Report and the International Relations profession

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Science Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science Community

The Economic and Social Research Council recently published a Report commissioned from a committee chaired by Professor Edwards, a psychiatrist, so that the Council, and the social science community in general, might know what was good and bad in British social sciences, and where the promising future research opportunities lie over the next decade. Boldly called ‘Horizons and Opportunities in the Social Sciences’, the Report condensed the wisdom of social scientists, both British and foreign, and concludes with a broadly but not uncritically favourable picture of the British scene.

Positivism in the social sciences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Kincaid
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Social Research ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Social Convention ◽  
The Social

Positivism originated from separate movements in nineteenth-century social science and early twentieth-century philosophy. Key positivist ideas were that philosophy should be scientific, that metaphysical speculations are meaningless, that there is a universal and a priori scientific method, that a main function of philosophy is to analyse that method, that this basic scientific method is the same in both the natural and social sciences, that the various sciences should be reducible to physics, and that the theoretical parts of good science must be translatable into statements about observations. In the social sciences and the philosophy of the social sciences, positivism has supported the emphasis on quantitative data and precisely formulated theories, the doctrines of behaviourism, operationalism and methodological individualism, the doubts among philosophers that meaning and interpretation can be scientifically adequate, and an approach to the philosophy of social science that focuses on conceptual analysis rather than on the actual practice of social research. Influential criticisms have denied that scientific method is a priori or universal, that theories can or must be translatable into observational terms, and that reduction to physics is the way to unify the sciences. These criticisms have undercut the motivations for behaviourism and methodological individualism in the social sciences. They have also led many to conclude, somewhat implausibly, that any standards of good social science are merely matters of rhetorical persuasion and social convention.

Optimism for Naturalized Social Metaphysics: A Reply to Hawley

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Epidemiology ◽  
Contextual Effects ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Entities ◽  
Social Metaphysics

Metaphysics has undergone two major innovations in recent decades. First, naturalistic metaphysicians have argued that our best science provides an important source of evidence for metaphysical theories. Second, social metaphysicians have begun to explore the nature of social entities such as groups, institutions, and social categories. Surprisingly, these projects have largely kept their distance from one another. Katherine Hawley has recently argued that, unlike the natural sciences, the social sciences are not sufficiently successful to provide evidence about the metaphysical nature of social entities. By contrast, I defend an optimistic view of naturalistic social metaphysics. Drawing on a case study of research into contextual effects in social epidemiology, I show that social science can provide a valuable evidence for social metaphysicians.

scholarly journals Doing things with description: practices, politics, and the art of attentiveness

2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412097597
Author(s):  
Nicole Vitellone ◽  
Michael Mair ◽  
Ciara Kierans
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
The Social

In a number of linked articles and monographs over the last decade (e.g. Love, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), literary scholar and critic Heather Love has called for a descriptive (re)turn in the humanities, repeatedly taking up examples of descriptive methods in the social sciences as exemplifying what that (re)turn might look like and achieve. Those of us working as sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars and researchers in allied social science fields thus find ourselves reflected back in Love’s work, encountering our own research practices in an unfamiliar light through it. In a period where our established methods and analytical priorities are subject to challenges on many fronts from within our own disciplines, it is hard not be struck by Love’s provocative invocation of the social sciences as interlocutors and see in it an invitation to contribute to the debate she has sought to initiate by revisiting our own approaches to the problem of description. Inspired by Love’s intervention, the eight papers that form this Special Issue demonstrate that by re-engaging with description we stand to learn a great deal. While the articles themselves are topically distinct and geographically varied, they are all based on empirical research and written to facilitate a reorientation to the role of description in our research practices. What exactly is going on when we describe an ancient papyrus as present or missing, a machine as intelligent, noise as music, a disease as undiagnosable, a death as good or bad, deserved or undeserved, care as appropriate or inappropriate, policies as failing or effective? As the papers show, these are important questions to ask. By asking them, we find ourselves in positions to better understand what goes into ‘indexing and making visible forms of material and social reality’ (Love, 2013: 412) as well as what is involved, more troublingly, in erasing, making invisible and dematerialising those realities or even, indeed, in uncovering those erasures and the means by which they were effected. As this special issue underlines, thinking with Love by thinking with descriptions is a rewarding exercise precisely because it opens these matters up to view. We hope others take up Love’s invitation to re-engage with description for that very reason.

scholarly journals Researcher-Led Development of E-Research in the Social Sciences: The Case of an E-Social Science Pilot Demonstrator Project

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridgette Wessels ◽  
Max Craglia
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Research Management ◽  
Geographical Variations ◽  
The Social

The introduction and use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the process of research is extending beyond research management into research practice itself. This extension of the use of ICT in research is being termed as e-research. The characteristics of e-research are seen as the combination of three interrelated strands, which are: the increased computerization of the research process; research organized more predominantly in the form of distributed networks of researchers, and a strong emphasis on visualization. E-research has become established in the natural sciences but the development of e-research in relation to social sciences is variable and less pervasive. The richness of the social sciences and their variety of practices and engagement in diverse fields of study mean that e-research as utilized in the natural sciences cannot be easily migrated into the social sciences. This paper explores the development of e-research for the social sciences. The paper is based on an ESRC funded e-social science demonstrator project in which social scientists sought to shape the use of Grid ICT technologies in the research process. The project is called: ‘Collaborative Analysis of Offenders’ Personal and Area-based Social Exclusion’: it addresses social exclusion in relation to how individual and neighbourhood effects account for geographical variations of crime patterns and explores the opportunities and challenges offered by e-research to address the research problem. The paper suggests that if e-research is driven from the needs of social research then it can enhance the practice of social science.

scholarly journals From methodology to methodography?

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 205979912097699
Author(s):  
Martyn Hammersley
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Qualitative Approaches ◽  
The Social

This article examines the character of a small but detailed observational study that focused on two teams of researchers, one engaged in qualitative sociological research, the other developing statistical models. The study was presented as investigating ‘the social life of methods’, an approach seen by some as displacing conventional research methodology. The study drew on ethnomethodology, and was offered as a direct parallel with ethnographic and ethnomethodological investigations of natural scientists’ work by Science and Technology Studies scholars. In the articles deriving from this study, the authors show how even the statisticians relied on background qualitative knowledge about the social phenomena to which their data related. The articles also document routine practices employed by each set of researchers, some ‘troubles’ they encountered and how they dealt with these. Another theme addressed is whether the distinction between quantitative and qualitative approaches accurately characterised differences between these researchers at the level of practical reasoning. While this research is presented as descriptive in orientation, concerned simply with documenting social science practices, it operates against a background of at least implicit critique. I examine its character and the closely associated criticism of social research methodology and conventional social science.

scholarly journals The theory of dynamic chaos in the socio-philosophical and social studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-47
Author(s):  
Anna Seliverstova
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Turbulent Flows ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Dynamic Chaos ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Non Linear ◽  
First Time

The article discusses the application of the theory of dynamic chaos to the study of social phenomena. Appeal to the origins of the creation of the theory of dynamic chaos in natural science (A. Poincaré, I. Prigogine, E. Lorenz, and others) revealed nonlinear dynamic systems in the natural environment (turbulent flows, atmosphere, biological populations, etc.). The category of “chaos” is now firmly established in the arsenal of the social sciences and humanities, although only recently it referred exclusively to natural science knowledge (the theory of chaos in mathematics, physics, biology, etc.). In synergetics, for the first time, the description of self-organization processes as a mutual transition of order and chaos was proposed by I.R. Prigogine.But in the social sciences such systems are society, its economic, political and other spheres, which have the properties of non-closure, instability and non-linear development. In Ukrainian philosophical thought, one of the first works in which the problem of the development of nonlinear self-developing systems was highlighted was the work of I.S. Dobronravova (1991). Scientific monograph I.V. Yershova-Babenko (1992) also had a significant impact on the development of studies of complex non-linear systems, since for the first time the system of the human psyche was considered as a non-linear self-organized system. The psycho-synergetic model of social reality is based on the fact that social reality is a psychomeric environment, i.e. a complex nonlinear system consisting of other complex nonlinear integrity, which are determined by phase transitions between different states of chaos and order. The application of chaos theory is also possible at the micro and macro levels of social research, which is presented by Ukrainian researchers in synergetics (I. S. Dobronravova, L. Finkel) and in psychosynergetics (I.V. Yershova-Babenko), L. Bevzenko and others.

scholarly journals Social Research an International Quarterly of the Social Science

1996 ◽  
Vol 41 (166) ◽  
Author(s):  
Judit Bokser Misses
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Research ◽  
New School ◽  
The Social

Revista Social Research, An International Quarterly of the Social Sciences, Arien Mach (ed.), Nueva York, New School for Social Research, vol. 62, núm. 4, invierno de 1995.

scholarly journals Opening up research in social sciences

Impact ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (9) ◽  
pp. 83-84
Author(s):  
Lucy Annette
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Eligibility Criteria ◽  
High Quality Research ◽  
The Social

The Open Research Area (ORA) for Social Sciences is an international initiative that provides social science research funding and support. It was founded in 2010 by members of the Bonn Group and based on agreement by European social science funding bodies The Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), France, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK, and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada, later joined, as well as the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) as an associate member. ORA facilitates collaborative social sciences research by bringing together researchers from participating countries. Researchers from the partner countries who fulfil the eligibility criteria of their national funding organisation apply to the ORA office handling the year's applications and Japanese researchers submit their applications to JSPS Tokyo. ORA accepts applications from all areas of the social sciences and there is a key focus on supporting young researchers at the beginning of their careers, helping them to extend the reach of their work and network on an international scale. Ultimately, ORA exists to drive forward high-quality research and strengthen international collaboration in social sciences research. So far, five rounds of ORA have been successfully completed, with more than 60 international collaborative proposals funded across diverse social sciences fields, including political science, economics, empirical social science, psychology, geography, urban planning and education science.

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