Practical Objections to Social Scientific Laws

2018 ◽  
pp. 53-82
Author(s):  
Lee C. McIntyre
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Laws ◽  
Social Scientific

The Woodgrain of the Chessboard: A Response to Roy Germano

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 686-687
Author(s):  
Henry Farrell
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Laws ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Film Making

Roy Germano argues for an “analytic filmmaking,” which would use film as a means to elucidate social scientific laws and generalizations. Yet film, even when it seeks simply to document the truth, is a form of narrative. To strip these ambiguities away in the name of a crude empiricism would rob these narratives of just that kind of information that makes them most valuable—the subtleties and nuances that they can capture and that simple transcripts cannot. Better models for understanding film can be found either in the direct acknowledgment and exploration of these ambiguities, or, alternatively, in the “analytic narratives” approach. Unlike Germano’s analytic film making, which prizes the abstract over the particular, analytic narratives gather their energy from the continuing tension between the particular and the abstraction.

“Counting As” a Bridge Principle

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Butchard ◽  
Robert D’Amico
Keyword(s):  
Bridge Principle ◽  
Social Kinds ◽  
Scientific Laws ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Bridge Principles

John Searle’s argument that social-scientific laws are impossible depends on a special open-ended feature of social kinds. We demonstrate that under a noncontentious understanding of bridging principles the so-called “counts-as” relation, found in the expression “X counts as Y in (context) C,” provides a bridging principle for social kinds. If we are correct, not only are social-scientific laws possible, but the “counts as” relation might provide a more perspicuous formulation for candidate bridge principles.

Social-Scientific Research Competency

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 737-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Gess ◽  
Christoph Geiger ◽  
Matthias Ziegler
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Test Scores ◽  
Research Performance ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Research Education ◽  
Crystallized Intelligence ◽  
Research Competency ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Education Courses

Abstract. Although the development of research competency is an important goal of higher education in social sciences, instruments to measure this outcome often depend on the students’ self-ratings. To provide empirical evidence for the utility of a newly developed instrument for the objective measurement of social-scientific research competency, two validation studies across two independent samples were conducted. Study 1 ( n = 675) provided evidence for unidimensionality, expected differences in test scores between differently advanced groups of students as well as incremental validities over and above self-perceived research self-efficacy. In Study 2 ( n = 82) it was demonstrated that the competency measured indeed is social-scientific and relations to facets of fluid and crystallized intelligence were analyzed. Overall, the results indicate that the test scores reflected a trainable, social-scientific, knowledge-related construct relevant to research performance. These are promising results for the application of the instrument in the evaluation of research education courses in higher education.

Narrating Society: Enacting ‘Immigrant’ Characters through Negotiating, Naturalization, and Forgetting

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Boersma
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Work ◽  
Immigrant Integration ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Global Perspectives ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Media And Communication

This article scrutinizes how ‘immigrant’ characters of perpetual arrival are enacted in the social scientific work of immigrant integration monitoring. Immigrant integration research produces narratives in which characters—classified in highly specific, contingent ways as ‘immigrants’—are portrayed as arriving and never as having arrived. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork at social scientific institutions and networks in four Western European countries, this article analyzes three practices that enact the characters of arrival narratives: negotiating, naturalizing, and forgetting. First, it shows how negotiating constitutes objects of research while at the same time a process of hybridization is observed among negotiating scientific and governmental actors. Second, a naturalization process is analyzed in which slippery categories become fixed and self-evident. Third, the practice of forgetting involves the fading away of contingent and historical circumstances of the research and specifically a dispensation of ‘native’ or ‘autochthonous’ populations. Consequently, the article states how some people are considered rightful occupants of ‘society’ and others are enacted to travel an infinite road toward an occupied societal space. Moreover, it shows how enactments of arriving ‘immigrant’ characters have performative effects in racially differentiating national populations and hence in narrating society. This article is part of the Global Perspectives, Media and Communication special issue on “Media, Migration, and Nationalism,” guest-edited by Koen Leurs and Tomohisa Hirata.

Bringing Moral Culture into the Fray

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Farrell
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Conflict ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Moral Culture ◽  
Social Scientific Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Basic Level

This introductory chapter briefly presents the conflict in Yellowstone, elaborates on the book's theoretical argument, and specifies its substantive and theoretical contributions to the social scientific study of environment, culture, religion, and morality. The chapter argues that the environmental conflict in Yellowstone is not—as it would appear on the surface—ultimately all about scientific, economic, legal, or other technical evidence and arguments, but an underlying struggle over deeply held “faith” commitments, feelings, and desires that define what people find sacred, good, and meaningful in life at a most basic level. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Wissensasymmetrien, Interaktionsrollen und die Frage der „gemeinsamen“ Sprache in der interdisziplinären Projektkommunikation

Fachsprache ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 187-204
Author(s):  
Nina Janich ◽  
Ekaterina Zakharova
Keyword(s):  
Process Models ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Project Proposal ◽  
Communication Problems ◽  
Project Participants ◽  
Interdisciplinary Projects ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Initial Results

goal of the present discourse analysis is to report on the initial results of a DFG project on communication in interdisciplinary projects. Based on a case study, the following questions were investigated: 1) at what times or phases of a project communication problems occur, 2) what kinds of problems occur as a result of knowledge asymmetries, and 3) which interactive and discourse roles do participants take on when facing such problems? Three main conclusions can be drawn from the findings; first, that linguistic-communicative problems occurring in interdisciplinary projects are not simply a result of attempts to find a “common language”, but are grounded in issues of contextual, methodological, organisitory, and socio-pragmatic agreements. Second, these communication problems arise during the initial, preparatory phases of a project, earlier than social scientific process models suggest, i. e. as early as the writing and submission of the project proposal, as opposed to when the project work actually begins. Third, that these problems, induced by the inevitable presence of knowledge asymmetries among participants, must be resolved not only through active and consistent meta-communication, but also through meta-meta-communication. Evidence for these findings was gathered by means of interviews with project participants in which they reflected on the phase of jointly writing their project proposal from the perspective of their respective disciplines.

Governance and Corruption

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zafar Iqbal
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Remedial Action ◽  
The West ◽  
Scientific Thought ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
Order Preference ◽  
Rational Understanding ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Character Building ◽  
The Individual

This paper compares the Islamic and the western social scien­tific perspectives on corruption. Jt is argued that the emerging shift in social scientific thought in viewing corruption from "grease that oils the economic wheel" to a "menace that under­mines economic growth" has brought rational understanding of the phenomenon much closer to [slamic doctrine. Where they differ is with respect to remedial action. The western approach focuses on governance and designing appropriate systems and institutions that gear information and incentives toward minimiz­ing opportunities and enticement for corruption. In short, it emphasizes constraints external to the individual. By comparison, Islam seeks to go beyond such constraints, and also instill in believers a clear "second-order" preference for non­corrupt behavior. lt recommends developing a firm belief in transcendent accountability, stresses character building through practicing moral virtues and shunning vices. In essence, much of the restraint comes from within through a moral renovation. rt is our contention that both emphases are important in eliminating corruption and that the followers oflslam and the West can learn from one another.

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