Evolutionary Modeling and Critical Realism

2009 ◽  
pp. 101-118
Author(s):  
S. Kuntsel
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Evolutionary Economics ◽  
Evolutionary Modeling ◽  
Mainstream Economics ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Economic Reality ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Methodological Principles

The paper shows that the major methodological problems of modern economics are rooted in internal contradictions and inconsistencies of positivism as applied to social sciences. Evolutionary economics is considered as an alternative approach to mainstream economics, capable of overcoming internal deficiencies that mainstream economics faces. But within evolutionary economics one can find different methodological grounds leading to multiple views on how to analyze complex economic reality, build models and evaluate them properly. It is argued that unifying methodological principles of evolutionary economics are to be found in the philosophy of critical realism. The most appropriate scientific method is that of computer simulations.

scholarly journals THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES FOR ASSESSMENT THE READINESS OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC SYSTEMS FOR CHANGES

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Anatolii Mazaraki ◽  
Yuliya Drozdova ◽  
Sergey Bay
Keyword(s):  
Functional Analysis ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Evolutionary Economics ◽  
Evaluation Process ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Scientific Substantiation ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Methodological Principles

The article is devoted to theoretical and methodological problems of assessing the readiness of socioeconomic systems for changes. The theories of factors that are the mainstay of this study are the interesting section in this study. To complete the study of changes in complex socio-economic systems, along with the approaches of evolutionary universalism, a set of scientific methods was applied, namely: structural-functional analysis, comparative-typological analysis, historical method, methods of induction and deduction. The aim of the article. The main purpose of the study is to develop further theoretical and methodological approaches to scientific substantiation of changes in socio-economic systems in different concepts of evolutionary economics. Methodology. The methodological and theoretical foundations of the research are the theories of factors that are the mainstay of this study. To complete the study of changes in complex socio-economic systems, along with the approaches of evolutionary universalism, a set of scientific methods was applied, namely: structural-functional analysis, comparative-typological analysis, historical method, methods of induction and deduction. Value/ originality. In particular, we defined methodological requirements for the evaluation process and systematized the formalized methods of different levels of socio-economic systems assessment implementation complexity. We proved scientifically that the trajectory of system movement is determined by achievement a critical point that changes the quality of socio-economic system. At the same time, the value capitalization of the enterprise should be ensured concerning consumers and other stakeholders, participants of the enterprise activity. The levels of socio-economic system readiness for changes are highlighted.

Poverty and Penia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Previous Scholarship

This chapter lays out the theoretical approach for the book and discusses the methodological problems of writing about poverty and the poor in the ancient world. Whilst studying the lives of the poor in the ancient world is to some extent elusive, it argues that historians can do more than simply imagine this group of people back into the gaps left by other evidence. As well as reviewing previous scholarship on poverty in the ancient world, it suggests a way forward which is more in line with contemporary poverty research within the social sciences.

Islamic International Relations Towards a Theoretical Framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gubara Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The World

The Western originators of the multi-disciplinary social sciences and their successors, including most major Western social intellectuals, excluded religion as an explanation for the world and its affairs. They held that religion had no role to play in modern society or in rational elucidations for the way world politics or/and relations work. Expectedly, they also focused most of their studies on the West, where religion’s effect was least apparent and argued that its influence in the non-West was a primitive residue that would vanish with its modernization, the Muslim world in particular. Paradoxically, modernity has caused a resurgence or a revival of religion, including Islam. As an alternative approach to this Western-centric stance and while focusing on Islam, the paper argues that religion is not a thing of the past and that Islam has its visions of international relations between Muslim and non-Muslim states or abodes: peace, war, truce or treaty, and preaching (da’wah).

Cognitive Bias in Intelligence Analysis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Whitesmith
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cognitive Bias ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Risk Mitigation ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Intelligence Analysis ◽  
Experimental Setting ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Underlying Causes

Belief, Bias and Intelligence outlines an approach for reducing the risk of cognitive biases impacting intelligence analysis that draws from experimental research in the social sciences. It critiques the reliance of Western intelligence agencies on the use of a method for intelligence analysis developed by the CIA in the 1990’s, the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH). The book shows that the theoretical basis of the ACH method is significantly flawed, and that there is no empirical basis for the use of ACH in mitigating cognitive biases. It puts ACH to the test in an experimental setting against two key cognitive biases with unique empirical research facilitated by UK’s Professional Heads of Intelligence Analysis unit at the Cabinet Office, includes meta-analysis into which analytical factors increase and reduce the risk of cognitive bias and recommends an alternative approach to risk mitigation for intelligence communities. Finally, it proposes alternative models for explaining the underlying causes of cognitive biases, challenging current leading theories in the social sciences.

Agency, Structure and Causality in Political Science: A Comment on Sibeon

Politics ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Recent Contribution ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ontological Turn

Researchers in political science are devoting increasing attention to the ontological commitments of their theories – that is, to what those theories presuppose about the nature of the political world. This article focuses on a recent contribution to this ‘ontological turn’ in political science ( Sibeon, 1999 ). Tensions are identified in Sibeon's account of the causal interplay between agency and social structure. It is argued that these tensions can be resolved by reflecting explicitly on ontological issues, in particular the causal efficacy of social structure, using a particular approach to the philosophy of the social sciences known as critical realism. The value of such reflection for the explanatory power of political analysis is highlighted.

scholarly journals Peirce’s Classification of the Sciences

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-278
Author(s):  
Torjus Midtgarden
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Physical Nature ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Principles ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism

Charles Peirce’s classification of the sciences was designed shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. The classification has two main sources of inspiration: Comte’s science classification and Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Peirce’s classification, like that of Comte, is hierarchically organised in that the more general and abstract sciences provide principles for the less general and more concrete sciences. However, Peirce includes and assigns a superordinate role to philosophical disciplines which analyse and provide logical, methodological and ontological principles for the specialised sciences, and which are based on everyday life experience. Moreover, Peirce recognises two main branches of specialised empirical science: the natural sciences, on the one hand, and the social sciences, the humanities and psychology on the other. While both branches share logical and methodological principles, they are based on different ontological principles in studying physical nature and the human mind and its products, respectively. Peirce’s most basic philosophical discipline, phenomenology, transforms his early engagement with Kant. Peirce’s classification of aesthetics, ethics and logic as normative sub-disciplines of philosophy relate to his philosophical pragmatism. Yet his more overarching division between theoretical (philosophical and specialised) sciences and practical sciences may be seen as problematic. Taking Peirce’s historical account of scientific developments into consideration, however, I argue that his science classification and its emphasis on the interdependencies between the sciences could be seen as sustaining and supporting interdisciplinarity and interaction across fields of research, even across the divide between theoretical and practical sciences.

scholarly journals M. Mandelbaum and Historiography of Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-244
Author(s):  
Marina N. Volf
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Holistic Approaches ◽  
History Of

The views of M. Mandelbaum on the historiography of philosophy have undergone a certain evolution. The paper shows the epistemological foundations of Mandelbaum’s historical and philosophical position. From the standpoint of critical realism and its application to social sciences Mandelbaum shows the advantages and disadvantages of the monistic or holistic approaches, partial monisms and pluralism. He considers A. O. Lovejoy's history of ideas to be the most reasonable pluralistic conception, although its use as a historical and philosophical methodology is limited. Intellectual history, which replaced it, should be called a partial monism, however, according to Mandelbaum, it gets a number of advantages if it begins to use a pluralistic methodology. In this version of methodology, the history of philosophy and intellectual history can be identified. The paper also presents some objections of analytic philosophers against this identification.

scholarly journals Hayek, las ciencias y la praxeología

2017 ◽  
pp. 129-152
Author(s):  
Luis Luque Santoro
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Formal Theory ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Principles ◽  
Science Methodology ◽  
Complex Phenomena

This paper includes the main conclusions driven from a thorough com-pilation and interpretation of F.A. Hayek’s most relevant views on the subjects of philosophy of science, epistemology and methodology regarding social scien-ces. The dialogue that Hayek seems to establish between sciences and methods is particularly highlighted. This dialogue might be summarized in two ways: a «bottom-up» connection, by offering an alternative justification for methodologi-cal dualism and the proper methodological principles for the social sciences, from the perspetive of the natural sciences methodological paradigm in which Hayek frames his human mind theory in his work The Sensory Order; and a «top-down» connection, by concluding with respect to the complex phenomena theo-ries of natural sciences that there exist common methodological challenges with the social sciences, which require in both cases to take into account methodolo-gical differences not covered under the orthodox mainstream methodological paradigm. In this sense an interpretation of Hayek’s methodological approxima-tion to economics as an applied or empirical social science is proposed; which intends to offer explanations about concrete reality, as a necessary complement of Mises praxeology which instead only focuses on pure and formal theory. Keywords: Hayek; Philosophy of Science; Methodology; Praxeology; Pure Logic of Choice. JEL Classification: A12, A14, B41, B53. Resumen: En este trabajo se presentan las principales conclusiones de una detenida compilación e interpretación de los planteamientos más importantes de F.A. Hayek sobre temas de filosofía de la ciencia, epistemología y metodo - logía de las ciencias sociales. En particular se resalta el diálogo que Hayek parece plantear entre ciencias y métodos y que se concretaría en dos senti-dos: en una conexión «por abajo», justificando el dualismo metodológico y los principios metodológicos adecuados para las ciencias sociales, desde el paradigma metodológico de las ciencias naturales en el que elabora su teoría sobre la mente humana en El Orden Sensorial; y en una conexión «por arriba» al concluir respecto a las teorías sobre fenómenos complejos de las ciencias naturales la existencia de retos comunes con los que también se enfrentan las ciencias sociales y que requieren dar cabida en ambos casos a diferencias metodológicas no previstas según el criterio ortodoxo dominante. En este último sentido, se propone una interpretación de la aproximación metodoló-gica de Hayek para la economía como una ciencia social aplicada o empí-rica que tiene como objetivo ofrecer explicaciones de la realidad, como el complemento necesario a la praxeología misesiana centrada en la teoría pura formal. Palabras clave: Hayek; Filosofía de la Ciencia; Metodología; Praxeología; Lógica Pura de la Elección. Clasificación JEL: A12 (Relación de la economía con otras disciplinas); A14 (Sociología de la economía); B41 (Metodología económica); B53 (Escuela aus-triaca).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document