scholarly journals John Maynard Keynes Between Old and New Institutionalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-39
Author(s):  
Carolina Miranda Cavalcante ◽  
Emmanoel De Oliveira Boff
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Social World ◽  
Individual Action ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
Thorstein Veblen ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Douglass North

The article considers the possible compatibility (in epistemological and ontological terms) of the conceptions of convention and institutions in the thought of John Maynard Keynes, Thorstein Veblen and Douglass North. We argue, first, that while Veblen suggests an approach to institutions based on instincts, North sustains an approach to institutions based on rational choice, which implies distinct conceptions about institutions and the social world. We then present Keynes's ontological commitments and the epistemological implications of his ontology. We conclude that there is a background ontological compatibility between Keynes and the late North in that both accept that the socioeconomic world is fundamentally uncertain and non-ergodic; also that Keynes is epistemologically closer to North than Veblen in studying the economy as a market system embedded in social institutions; and finally that Keynes's treatment of individual action is closer to Veblen’s than North’s, in that both Keynes and Veblen see human action as based on instincts and not only on rationality.

The Not-so-trivial Truth of Methodological Individualism

1998 ◽  
pp. 69-76
Author(s):  
Maarten Franssen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intentional Psychology ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Social Entities

I defend the truth of the principle of methodological individualism in the social sciences. I do so by criticizing mistaken ideas about the relation between individual people and social entities held by earlier defenders of the principle. I argue, first, that social science is committed to the intentional stance; the domain of social science, therefore, coincides with the domain of intentionally described human action. Second, I argue that social entitites are theoretical terms, but quite different from the entities used in the natural sciences to explain our empirical evidence. Social entities (such as institutions) are conventional and open-ended constructions, the applications of which is a matter of judgment, not of discovery. The terms in which these social entities are constructed are the beliefs, expectations and desires, and the corresponding actions of individual people. The relation between the social and the individual 'levels' differs fundamentally from that between, say, the cellular and the molecular in biology. Third, I claim that methodological individualism does not amount to a reduction of social science to psychology; rather, the science of psychology should be divided. Intentional psychology forms in tandom with the analysis of social institutions, unitary psycho-social science; cognitive psychology tries to explain how the brain works and especially how the intentional stance is applicable to human behavior.

scholarly journals The Contract of Language: John Searle's Philosophy of Society

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-112
Author(s):  
Michiel Leezenberg
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Social World ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
John Searle ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
The Social

AbstractIn Making the Social World, John Searle develops what he calls a "philosophy of society", which explores the ontological status and logical structure of institutional facts like universities and baseball games. This philosophy of society crucially depends on Searle's earlier work in the philosophy of language and mind. In this review, I discuss some aspects of Searle's theory of institutional facts as structured in terms of declaratives that are most relevant to working linguists, like the relation of language to other social institutions, the emergence of normativity in language, the articulation of (legitimate and illegitimate) power in language usage, and the question of whether there should be any restrictions on the allegedly universal human right to free speech.

scholarly journals Top-down causation and social structures

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave Elder-Vass
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Level Structure ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social World ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
Social Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Entity ◽  
Social Entities

Top-down causation has been implicit in many sociological accounts of social structure and its influence on social events, but the social sciences have struggled to provide a coherent account of top-down causation itself. This paper summarizes a critical realist view of causation and emergence, shows how it supports a plausible account of top-down causation and then applies this account to the social world. The argument is illustrated by an examination of the concept of a norm circle , a kind of social entity that, it is argued, is causally responsible for the influence of normative social institutions. Nevertheless, social entities are structured rather differently from ordinary material ones, with the result that the compositional level structure of reality implicit in the concept of top-down causation has some limitations in the social world. The paper closes by considering what might be involved in examining how top-down causation can be shown to be at work in the social domain.

2. Forms of Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Halperin ◽  
Oliver Heath
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Social World ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Constructivist Approach ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Political Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

This chapter focuses on fundamental assumptions that researchers make about how we can know and develop knowledge about the social world, such as assumptions about the nature of human behaviour and the methods appropriate to studying and explaining that behaviour. The main objective is how to carry out a systematic and rigorous investigation of social phenomena. The chapter considers three different answers to the question of how to approach the study of social phenomena: those offered by positivism, scientific realism, and interpretivism. It also explores the differences among these answers and their implications for conducting political research. Finally, it discusses the use of a positivist (rational choice) and interpretivist (constructivist) approach to the analysis of ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Theories of Social Networks

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-49
Author(s):  
Jan Fuhse
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social World ◽  
Mutual Orientation ◽  
Relational Sociology ◽  
Individual Action ◽  
The Social ◽  
Action Networks ◽  
Theoretical Thinking ◽  
Objective Structures

Theories of social networks offer abstract perspectives of what social networks are and how they are connected to other features of the social world. This chapter gives an overview of three recent perspectives: (1) Theorists of action (Burt, Coleman, Lin, Hedström) regard social networks as objective structures restricting or enabling individual action. Networks become a resource (social capital) that actors strive to maximize. (2) Authors following pragmatism or symbolic interactionism (Emirbayer, Martin, Crossley) consider social networks as patterns of subjective meaning arising out of the interaction between actors. This approach is linked to field theoretical thinking, considering networks as arising out of the mutual orientation in fields. (3) Relational sociologists (White, Tilly, Mische, Padgett, Fuhse) treat social networks as infused with meaning that is processed in communication/transaction/switchings between actors. Relational sociology has been amended to study networks of symbols and the communicative dynamics of social networks.

scholarly journals Understanding Institutions without Collective Acceptance?

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 608-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pekka Mäkelä ◽  
Raul Hakli ◽  
S. M. Amadae
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social World ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collective Acceptance

Francesco Guala has written an important book proposing a new account of social institutions and criticizing existing ones. We focus on Guala’s critique of collective acceptance theories of institutions, widely discussed in the literature of collective intentionality. Guala argues that at least some of the collective acceptance theories commit their proponents to antinaturalist methodology of social science. What is at stake here is what kind of philosophizing is relevant for the social sciences. We argue that a Searlean version of collective acceptance theory can be defended against Guala’s critique and question the sufficiency of Guala’s account of the ontology of the social world.

A Defence of an ‘Immanentist’ Account of Social Form and Experience

2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Durrheim
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social World ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Social Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Practices

In defence of South African discursive social psychology, this paper provides a brief account of social form and experience as immanent in discursive practices. Social order and social Institutions must be viewed as no more and no less than the sedimentation of coordinated human practices, and that any attempt to explain the ‘objectivity’ of the human made social world by recourse to biological or cultural essences is to entirely misunderstand its ontology. I argue that this immanentist perspective provides a more adequate account of the social psychology of social transformation, and steers clear of some potential political problems associated with cultural essentialism.

scholarly journals Introduction

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jurgen Brauer ◽  
J. Paul Dunne
Keyword(s):  
Karl Marx ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
Thorstein Veblen ◽  
Voluntary Exchange ◽  
History Of ◽  
Werner Sombart ◽  
Douglass North ◽  
David Ricardo

The essay introduces the new journal and points out that economists have a long-standing, albeit virtually unknown, history of thinking about questions of conflict, war, and peace. Prominent contributors include Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Boulding, F.Y. Edgeworth, John Kenneth Galbraith, Jack Hirshleifer, John Maynard Keynes, Lawrence Klein, Wassily Leontief, V.I. Lenin, Friedrich List, Karl Marx, Jean Monnet, Mancur Olson, Vilfredo Pareto, A.C. Pigou, David Ricardo, Lionel Robbins, Joseph A. Schumpeter, Werner Sombart, Thomas Schelling, Adam Smith, Jan Tinbergen, Thorstein Veblen, and Knut Wicksell, a surprisingly diverse assembly. If one draws the net a bit wider and thinks about how societies constitute and regulate themselves, even thinkers such as James Buchanan and Douglass North would be included in this list. Members of society can produce and engage in voluntary exchange and grant-making, or they can produce and appropriate from each other. Clearly, economics as a discipline is intimately linked to issues of conflict, war, and peace.

Epistemic Oppression and Epistemic Privilege

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 191-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miranda Fricker
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social World ◽  
Unfair Advantage ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Economic

[T]he dominated live in a world structured by others for their purposes — purposes that at the very least are not our own and that are in various degrees inimical to our development and even existence.We are perhaps used to the idea that there are various species of oppression: political, economic, or sexual, for instance. But where there is the phenomenon that Nancy Hartsock picks out in saying that the world is “structured” by the powerful to the detriment of the powerless, there is another species of oppression at work, one that has not been registered in mainstream epistemology: epistemic oppression. The word ‘structured’ may be read materially, so as to imply that social institutions and practices favour the powerful, or ontologically, so as to imply that the powerful somehow constitute the world. But for present purposes I am interested only in an epistemological reading, which implies that the powerful have some sort of unfair advantage in “structuring” our understandings of the social world. I will try to present an account of what this initially vague idea involves. I hope thereby to explain an exact sense in which the powerful can have a kind of epistemic advantage that means the powerless are epistemically oppressed.

2. Forms of Knowledge: Laws, Explanation, and Interpretation in the Study of the Social World

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-63
Author(s):  
Sandra Halperin ◽  
Oliver Heath
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Social World ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Constructivist Approach ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Political Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

This chapter focuses on fundamental assumptions that researchers make about how we can know and develop knowledge about the social world, such as assumptions about the nature of human behaviour and the methods appropriate to studying and explaining that behaviour. The main objective is how to carry out a systematic and rigorous investigation of social phenomena. The chapter considers three different answers to the question of how to approach the study of social phenomena: those offered by positivism, scientific realism, and interpretivism. It also explores the differences among these answers and their implications for conducting political research. Finally, it discusses the use of a positivist (rational choice) and interpretivist (constructivist) approach to the analysis of ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

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