scholarly journals Causality and Causal Explanation: The Constitution of Sufficient Reasoning in Social Research

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-51
Author(s):  
Ssemugenyi Fred ◽  
Tindi Seje Nuru ◽  
Leso Iki Robert
Keyword(s):  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Social Factor ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Factor X ◽  
Cause And Effect ◽  
The Social

As Social Researchers, we have for the last one and half decades witnessed a disturbing lag in the existing body of literature for causal explanations. The majority seem to contradict and provide no clear-cut explanations about the relevancy of applying causal techniques to understand social patterns. Much as it is true that understanding social processes and patterns is in many ways more challenging than understanding the physical world, social researchers need to provide a justification to these complexities through scientific inquiry using causal techniques and interpretations. Many times social researchers concentrate on the simple linearity between cause and effect and yet its ability to explain reality is doubtable. This sounds to reason that, our focus as social experts should be on what form of social interactions extend over time in the social world to establish the links between cause and effect. Again, how relevant is the available evidence to claim that social factor X causes a change in social factor Y? In other words, is social factor Y a function of social factor X? To establish a scientific conclusion and perhaps shed light on why things in the social world are the way they are, one must logically identify a competent X that can independently predict a change in Y through covariates. In light of this, social researchers can vividly offer logical explanations to various social processes which often seem to be beyond human description.   In this paper, the researchers offer a scientific explanation concerning the various errors in reasoning within the social world and provide a distinction between various types of social explanations, articulate causal reasoning behind social processes, events and patterns in order to draw conclusions that are based on evidence.

Zwischen Naturgeschichte, Statistik und Gesellschaftsroman. Soziographische Wissensordnungen im Kontext einer europäischen Publizistik im 19. Jahrhundert

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-162
Author(s):  
Christiane Schwab
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Scientific Terminology ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Periodical Publishing

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the rise of market-oriented periodical publishing correlated with an increasing desire to inspect the modernizing societies. The journalistic pursuit of examining the social world is in a unique way reflected in countless periodical contributions that, especially from the 1830s onwards, depicted social types and behaviours, new professions and technologies, institutions, and cultural routines. By analysing how these “sociographic sketches” proceeded to document and to interpret the manifold manifestations of the social world, this article discusses the interrelationships between epistemic and political shifts, new forms of medialization and the systematization of social research. It thereby focuses on three main areas: the creative appropriation of narratives and motifs of moralistic essayism, the uses of description and contextualization as modes of knowledge, and the adaptation of empirical methods and a scientific terminology. To consider nineteenth-century sociographic journalism as a format between entertainment, art, and science provokes us to narrate intermedial, transnational and interdisciplinary tales of the history of social knowledge production.

The Credulity of Conspiracy Theorists

2018 ◽  
pp. 422-431
Author(s):  
Brian L. Keeley
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Inquiry

Where does entertaining (or promoting) conspiracy theories stand with respect to rational inquiry? According to one view, conspiracy theorists are open-minded skeptics, being careful not to accept uncritically common wisdom, exploring alternative explanations of events no matter how unlikely they might seem at first glance. Seen this way, they are akin to scientists attempting to explain the social world. On the other hand, they are also sometimes seen as overly credulous, believing everything they read on the Internet, say. In addition to conspiracy theorists and scientists, another significant form of explanation of the events of the world can be found in religious contexts, such as when a disaster is explained as being an “act of God.” By comparing conspiratorial thinking with scientific and religious forms of explanation, features of all three are brought into clearer focus. For example, anomalies and a commitment to naturalist explanation are seen as important elements of scientific explanation, although the details are less clear. This paper uses conspiracy theories as a lens through which to investigate rational or scientific inquiry. In addition, a better understanding of the scientific method as it might be applied in the study of events of interest to conspiracy theorists can help understand their epistemic virtues and vices.

Glocalising the theory of generations: The case of Spain

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 333-357
Author(s):  
Manuela Caballero ◽  
Artemio Baigorri
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society ◽  
A Current

This work poses difficulties in the use of the generation concept as a social research instrument, due to its complex and multidimensional nature. A complexity by which is not a concept widely used in a current Sociology that focuses more on the mathematisation. But some social processes cannot be reduced to algorithms. For the theoretical review we have used contributions from Sociology, Philosophy and History, because it is of a transversal disciplinary nature, and we have applied it to the identification of Spanish generations in the 20th century. Inspired by Ortega’s theses and Strauss and Howe empirical development implemented for American society, the resulting model presents six generations with different collective identities that reflect the social changes in the history of Spain during the last century. A model that, after being tested in sectorial investigations, may constitute a useful new tool for the analysis of social change.

Scientific Explanation

Philosophy ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Pitt ◽  
Steven Mischler
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Mathematical Physics ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Carl Hempel ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
The Individual

The modern search for an adequate general theory of explanation is an outgrowth of the logical positivist’s agenda: to lay the groundwork for a general unified theory of science. Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim’s “Studies in the Logic of Explanation” (Hempel and Oppenheim 1948, cited under the Deductive-Nomological Model of Explanation) was the first major attempt to put forth an account that met the positivist’s criteria. It initiated a lively debate that has continued up to the present. But as the attention of the philosophers of science became increasingly focused on the individual sciences, it quickly became clear that one general theory of explanation would not do since the particulars of the various sciences called for different accounts of what constituted an adequate explanation in physics and biology as well as chemistry, etc. This article attempts to capture the flavor of the debates and the nature of the shifting targets over the years. It does not profess to be complete, being largely restricted to work published in English, but it is a start. While the modern debates surrounding explanation can be said to begin with Hempel and Oppenheim, the history of philosophical accounts of explanation can be traced at least to Aristotle, whose metaphysics set the logical framework for explanations until Galileo urged that appeals to metaphysical categories be replaced by mathematics and measurement. For the most part, Galileo was not interested in appealing to causes or occult forces. The account of how things behaved was to be expressed in the language of mathematics. Descartes tried to capitalize on that insight with his resurrection of medieval discussions of causation relying on Aristotle’s framework framed in a mathematical physics, only to be countered by Newton, who introduced non-Aristotelian causal explanation grounded in mathematical physics. Finally John Stuart Mill begins the long march to contemporary accounts of causal explanation in both the physical and the social sciences, again relying on certain key assumptions about human nature. So the history of explanation is long and intertwined with a variety of metaphysical frameworks. The Positivists of the 20th century unsuccessfully eschewed metaphysics and sought to create an account of causal explanation that somehow aimed to stick strictly to the dictates of science, only to be thwarted by the metaphysical assumptions in the sciences themselves.

scholarly journals Life stories and formation of subordinate subjectivity. Note on social research in Italy by Danilo Montaldi

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Silvano Calvetto
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pedagogical Aspect ◽  
The One

The social research performed by Danilo Montaldi (1929-1975) represented an interpretation of great interest in understanding the transformations of neo-capitalism between the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the ambit of a very critical militancy towards the traditional forms of political participation, his attention to subordinates is marked, in our view, by a significant pedagogical aspect. On the one hand, in fact, he focuses on the political and social processes through which subordinate subjectivity is formed, with particular regard to the role played by the institutions, while on the other hand, he examines strategies with regard to his own emancipation from that condition of oppression, based on the idea of education intended as liberation. Where the educational commitment and political commitment merge in the same project of reconstruction of society, looking beyond the drifts of neocapitalism in view of a world capable of recognizing the rights of all respecting each other’s differences. This, as has been observed by several commentators, seems to be the most significant legacy of Danilo Montaldi’s intellectual commitment.

scholarly journals Formation of sociological imagination in students of technical institutions in education in the process of teaching sociology

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-22
Author(s):  
L. Lipich ◽  
O. Balagura
Keyword(s):  
Social Problems ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Sociological Imagination ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Teaching Sociology ◽  
Educational Role ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status

The article is devoted to the problem of formation of sociological imagination in the process of teaching sociology to students studying in technical educational institutions. The concept of “sociological imagination”, introduced into scientific circulation by the American sociologist Wright Mills, is being clarified. It turns out that the concept of sociological imagination has acquired the status of one of the main in modern sociology and began to play an important educational role, and in sociological science, respectively, methodological and methodological. Attention is paid to the peculiarities of teaching sociology in technical educational institutions, and in view of this, the problem of forming the sociological imagination of students. The fact is that sociology in technical educational institutions is not professional, so it is taught exclusively as a general discipline of worldview. The purpose of teaching sociology in such higher education institutions is to promote the formation of students’ sociological imagination, ie to help future specialists in engineering to develop the ability to think socially, ie to adequately perceive, comprehend and interpret social processes and phenomena, analyze and be ready to solve complex social problems. The solution of this problem involves the use of such methods of teaching sociology, which would be related to the specific practices of modern society, taking into account the universal and professional interests of future professionals. The own experience of teaching sociology at the National Transport University is analyzed. There are examples of using different methods of teaching sociology, aimed at forming a sociological imagination that allow students to perceive the social world around them and relate their professional problems with general social problems, educate and shape their civic position and increase their general cultural level.

Functionalist Successes and Excesses in the Social Sciences

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Kincaid
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Functional Explanations

AbstractThis paper presents a model of functional explanations as a species of ordinary causal explanation and argues that they are widespread for understandable reasons in the social sciences. The remainder of the paper then looks at specific functional explanations in the social research and examines the prospects and problems for those accounts.

scholarly journals What’s at Stake in Digital Social Research?

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-40
Author(s):  
Nick Couldry
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Researcher ◽  
The Social ◽  
Multiple Actors

I am a social researcher who uses both theoretical and empirical enquiry not so much to describe the social as to understand the conflicts involved in constructing an order that appears to us as ‘social’. I seek to address the paradox of doing social research: for the social is not something concrete at which we can point, but a dimension of how whatever in our life is concrete holds together as a world. Media are crucial to what hangs together as a world – and in ways that much social research to this day still ignores. Media are in the contemporary era irrevocably ‘digital’: they take forms that automatically bring possibilities for recombination, retransmission, and reworking by multiple actors. As such, and unavoidably, digital media can be woven tight into the fabric of social life much more than previous media. But what does this mean for the social world, that is, for our possibilities to enhance or undermine how we live together today?

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