Recently and in this journal, I published a paper titled “Instrumental Rationality in the Social Sciences,” which offered a new argument against the equation of practical rationality with sound means-end reasoning. My paper attracted a critical commentary by Michael Moehler to which I reply here, without presupposing familiarity with my paper or Moehler’s comments. The critique is shown to rest on misunderstandings. Neither does my argument require that means-end reasoning always be egoistic nor can opponents, such as rational choice theorists, (...) avoid it by re-categorizing sound means-end inferences as only one rational kind of practical inference among many. (shrink)

This study of three different approaches to social structure finds Pleasants’s ideas for the use of different concepts of social structure intriguing but based on an untenable view about the possibility to discern an empirical modality. Porpora’s approach is based on the idea that the relational concept of social structure cannot be bypassed, ontologically speaking. Easton’s idea is to apply the two relational concepts of higher-order and lower-order structure. Relational structures are also salient in the specific scholarly debate studied, which (...) strengthens the idea that it is this concept of social structure that we primarily should focus on. (shrink)

While the concept of functional differentiation is one of sociology’s oldest analytic tools, there is significant confusion about its meaning and purpose in the contemporary discipline. This article addresses one source of uncertainty: the conflicting array of ontological and methodological positions which are currently attached to the differentiation term. Drawing on Laudan’s philosophy of science, I argue that sociology does not house a unified program of differentiation theory, but is instead marked by at least two discrete traditions of differentiation thinking. (...) Disentangling these traditions will, I contend, clarify our thinking, and help reduce the prevalence of internally contradictory conceptual models. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that Evidential Pluralism ought to be used to evaluate the impact of online fake news. To support this, I show how an application of Evidential Pluralism can overcome difficulties in assessing the impact of online fake news. The significance of this is twofold. Firstly, the application of Evidential Pluralism enables an evidence-based justification for legal interventions aimed at tackling online fake news. Secondly, the application of Evidential Pluralism to the problem of online (...) fake news provides a case study example to motivate a new methodology for evidence-based law, called EBL+. (shrink)

Both group agents (for group agency theorists) and individual agents (for enactivists) are themselves constituted by agents. This raises a similar challenge for both group agency and enactivism, namely to explain the constitutive relationship between sub-agential agents and the agents themselves. In this paper, I propose an enactivist account of what constitutes collective action. I conclude that non-human processes—both natural and artificial—may be constitutive of group agents typically recognized as human. In particular, I argue that machine learning recommendation algorithms should (...) be recognized as constitutive of certain group agents on an enactivist account of what constitutes collective action. (shrink)

Two recent practice-based conceptions of linguistic communication challenge the dominant “content-delivery” models. Beaver and Stanley’s The Politics of Language (2023) and Rouse’s Social Practices as Biological Niche Construction (2023) have different aims. Beaver and Stanley develop an account of linguistic meaning as affective and politically engaged. Rouse starts from evolutionary accounts of human ways of life to situate language within a more general, naturalistic account of social practices as forms of biological niche construction. Despite their different orientations, the two books (...) can work together as a more compelling challenge to standard accounts of linguistic meaning and communication. (shrink)

This paper challenges the view that race is a reliable scientific variable or kind for the purpose of inductive inference within the social sciences. I characterize stability in terms of Extended Conditional Independence (ECI) and show that the heterogeneity and instability of racial categories across different background circumstances undermines their ability to support robust inductive inference and explanatory power. I claim this, in turn, undermines racial categories' status as real scientific variables or kinds. Race, has local stability within restricted sets (...) of target systems and thus, its reality is limited to those domains. I argue for a restricted form of racial realism, a view I call Restricted Racial Realism (RRR). (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a Bio-Social conception of “race” is a socially salient conception within the United States. This conception is “socially salient” in the sense that is demonstrative of public understanding and public use of the race concept within context of the United States and its member institutions. This conception is “Bio-Social” in the sense that a set of biological and social properties form the necessary conditions for “race” and “racial group membership.” I explain that these biological (...) and social properties are the social interpretation of ancestral relations to geographically and culturally specified groups. (shrink)

Political methodologists have long sought to develop standards that can guide political scientists in the process of concept formation. Yet, the methodology literature has struggled to provide satisfactory solutions to the fundamental problem of conceptualization: for any given concept, there are a large number of attributes one could postulate as its defining characteristics, and it is unclear how to adjudicate between different possible definitions. We leverage the fact that the theory within which a concept appears places important restrictions on concept (...) formation: conceptualizations entail ontological claims that need to be consistent with those of the theories in which they appear. (shrink)

I argue here that the theoretically central aspect of Stanley Milgram’s “experiments on obedience to authority” continues to elude main current commentators because it does not fit into the current paradigm of Milgram’s studies: the presentation and the justification of a set of rules to the subjects. I argue that taking this fact into account radically changes the interpretation of the subjects’ conduct: they are not submitting to an authority, they are not obeying orders, but they are applying a justified (...) rule. If such is indeed the case, the interpretation of the experiments should not be primarily psychological, but normative. (shrink)

This article responds to recent criticism regarding the application of consequentialism and rational choice theory in the social and moral sciences. It clarifies the limited scope of the presented criticism and its overly simplistic view of social scientific inquiry that, together, lead to the presentation of an argument that claims more than it warrants. Moreover, I argue that the criticism overlooks one of the most important uses of instrumentalism in moral theory that may be considered the most challenging case for (...) the application of rational choice theory. (shrink)