Trata-se de um estudo que apresenta uma interpretação sobre o livro de Carson McCullers, intitulado O coração é um caçador solitário, com base no argumento de que a referida obra traz consigo elementos literários e filosóficos. Com isto em mente, objetivou-se compreender a solidão para além de um dilema que a encerra em si mesma, mas, sobretudo, compreendê-la inserida no contexto dos tempos sombrios, fenômeno epocal em que se manifesta o ódio e a intolerância (a exemplo de manifestações machistas, racistas, (...) xenófobas e homofóbicas) incentivados por uma espécie de obscurantismo anti-intelectual. O problema investigado se referiu às condições de possibilidade de enfrentar-se educacionalmente a solidão, fenômeno que afeta cada vez mais indivíduos. Em linhas gerais, percorre-se o campo dos conceitos filosóficos amparados pela materialidade da narrativa literária para a apresentação de proposições pedagógico-educacionais. Palavras-chave: Educação; Solidão; Hannah Arendt. Loneliness in somber times: pedagogical-educational propositions for a world out of axes Abstract: This is a study that presents an interpretation of Carson McCullers' book, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, based on the argument that the aforesaid work carries both literary and philosophical elements. That said, the objective was to understand the loneliness beyond a dilemma which encloses in itself, yet, especially, to comprehend it when inserted in dark times context, epochal phenomenon that manifests hatred and intolerance (sexism, racism, homophobic manifestations, for instance), encouraged by some sort of anti-intellectual obscurantism. The problem investigated in this article referred to the conditions of possibility of facing loneliness educationally, a phenomenon that has increasingly affected individuals. In general terms, the philosophical concepts field supported by the materiality of literary narrative for the presentation of pedagogical-educational propositions. Keywords: Education; Loneliness; Hannah Arendt. La solitud en tiempos de oscuridad: proposiciones pedagógico-educacionales para un mundo fuera de los ejes Resumen: Se trata de un estudio que presenta una interpretación sobre el libro de Carson McCullers, El corazón es un cazador solitario, bajo el argumento de que esta obra trae consigo elementos literarios y filosóficos. Con esto en mente, se ha objetivado comprender la solitud más allá de un dilema en si misma, pero, estudiarla introducida en el contexto de los tiempos de oscuridad, fenómeno de una época en que se manifiesta el odio y la intolerancia (a ejemplo de manifestaciones machistas, racistas, xenofóbicas y homofóbicas) incentivadas por una especie de oscurantismo anti-intelectual. El problema investigado se ha referido a las condiciones de posibilidad de enfrentarse, en la educación, la soledad, fenómeno que afecta cada vez más individuos. En líneas generales, vamos de los conceptos filosóficos valiéndose por la materialidad de la narrativa literaria para la presentación de proposiciones pedagógico-educacionales. Palabras-clave: Educación; Soledad; Hannah Arendt. Data de registro: 18/07/2020 Data de aceite: 16/02/2022. (shrink)

No presente artigo apresento uma reflexão acerca do conceito de “ação” e sua repercussão para a educação escolar, a partir de Hannah Arendt. Considerando a distinção arendtiana entre “fabricação”, “ labor ” e “ação”, argumento que uma das atividades específicas da escola é a “ação educacional”, no sentido de que alunos e professores atuam quando aparecem e se relacionam mediados pelos conteúdos e respondendo aos desafios que representam o “mundo”. Ademais, se a tarefa da educação é, em Arendt, introduzir as (...) novas gerações no mundo, essa introdução se dá preferencialmente pela ação. Mas, no que tange aos alunos, a ação não é no sentido político, visto que eles estão em processo de formação e não são responsáveis pelas consequências de seus atos e pelo mundo. Por isso, o cuidado, a proteção, a responsabilidade e a autoridade do adulto são fundamentais para compreender a escola e a educação, bem como a especificidade da ação na escola. Palavras-chave : Educação. Mundo. Ação educativa. Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

Bundel bijdragen over wijsgerige ontwikkelingen in Nederland in de twintigste eeuw.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Lectio praecursoria 28.9.2018: Hengitys on hyvin harvinainen teema filosofiassa. Aiemmin hengitystä filosofisena kysymyksenä ovat tarkastelleet mm. Luce Irigaray ja David Kleinberg-Levin. Väitöskirjatutkimuksessani Phenomenological Ontology of Breathing tutkin fenomenologisesti hengityksen filosofiaa, so. miten hengittäminen voisi olla filosofinen kysymys ja miten eletty kokemus hengityksestä voisi mahdollisesti avata ja jäsentää meille aivan uuden tavan tehdä filosofiaa. Väitöskirjani lähtökohtana on aiemmin tutkimattomat Maurice Merleau-Pontyn fenomenologiset huomiot hengityksestä. Näiden Merleau-Pontyn hengitystä koskevien huomioiden pohjalta pyrin jäsentämään uuden fenomenologisen käsityksen hengityksestä. Tämä uusi fenomenologinen käsitys hengityksestä ei (...) perustu fysiologis-luonnontieteelliseen näkemykseen hengityksestä kaasujen vaihteluna ja soluhengityksenä, vaan kokemukselliseen ymmärrykseen hengityksestä kehollisena maailmasuhteena. Hengittävä maailmasuhde on hengittävän kehon ja avoimen ja näkymättömän ilmapiirin, so. ilman atmosfäärin, välistä vuorovaikutusta. Tähän uuteen kokemukselliseen hengitys-käsitykseen perustuen pohdin, miten filosofia voitaisiin mahdollisesti aloittaa uudelleen hengityksen filosofia. Tämä uusi filosofia ei olisi olio- tai persoonaorientoitunut, vaan ilmapiiriorientoitunut filosofia. Merleau-Pontyn fenomenologisen filosofian lisäksi erityisesti Gaston Bachelardin elementaalinen ajattelu ilmasta ja ilman runoilijoista on avittanut väitöskirjatutkimustani tähän uuteen filosofiseen orientaatioon. Bachelardin tarkastelemat ilman runoilijat runoudessaan inspiroituneesti seuraavat ja kuuntelevat kosmista hengitystä pyrkien ilmaisemaan sanoin sen hiljaista viisautta. Väitöskirjassani pyrin kuuntelemaan fenomenologisen filosofian kontekstissa ilman runoilijoiden inspiroimana tätä kosmis-elementaalisen hengittävän ilman hiljaista viisautta. Pyrkimykseni synnyttää tämä uusi hengityksen filosofia kulkee käsi kädessä Irigarayn toiveen kanssa uudesta hengityksen kulttuurin kultivoimisesta. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Comparisons of rival explanations or theories often involve vague appeals to explanatory power. In this paper, we dissect this metaphor by distinguishing between different dimensions of the goodness of an explanation: non-sensitivity, cognitive salience, precision, factual accuracy and degree of integration. These dimensions are partially independent and often come into conflict. Our main contribution is to go beyond simple stipulation or description by explicating why these factors are taken to be explanatory virtues. We accomplish this by using the contrastive-counterfactual approach (...) to explanation and the view of understanding as an inferential ability. By combining these perspectives, we show how the explanatory power of an explanation in a given dimension can be assessed by showing the range of answers it provides to what-if-things-had-been-different questions and the theoretical and pragmatic importance of these questions. Our account also explains intuitions linking explanation to unification or to exhibition of a mechanism. (shrink)

In this chapter we examine Moti Mizrahi’s claim that philosophers’ opposition of scientism is founded on their worry that scientism poses “a threat to the soul or essence of philosophy as an a priori discipline”. We find Mizrahi’s methodology for testing this thesis wanting. We offer an alternative hypothesis for the increased resistance of scientism: the antipathy started as a reaction to the New Atheist movement. We also consider two varieties of weak scientism, narrow and broad, and argue that narrow (...) versions of scientism draw unnatural and unfounded distinctions within science. Mizrahi belongs somewhere between these two types, but he commits the same mistakes as proponents of the narrow variety. We demonstrate that Mizrahi’s defence of weak scientism is problematic, once again, due to methodological reasons. As an alternative, we propose that weak scientism should be based on epistemic opportunism. Epistemic opportunism explains the success of science with scientists’ willingness to adopt any methods that demonstrably work. We also show how opportunistic scientism can avoid charges of triviality. (shrink)

A. THE TEXT The main importance of these two treatises lies in the insight they provide into Spinoza's conception of the relation between mathematics and certain disciplines not touched upon elsewhere in his major writings. The mathematics they involve are not the as those of the Ethics however, and the precise connection same between the geometrical order of this work and these excursions into optics and probability is by no means obvious. Add to this difficulty the knotty problems presented by (...) their editorial his tory, dating and scientific background, and it is not perhaps surprising that in spite of the fact that they provide such an excellent illustration of Spinoza's reaction to certain important developments in the history of physics and mathematics, they should not, so far, have attracted much attention. They were first published in 1687 by Levyn van Dyck (d. 1695), official printer to the town council in The Hague. Printing anything by Spinoza was not without its risks, and it is probably significant that during the same year van Dyck should also have published a lengthy and elaborate refutation of Spinozism by 1 the pious and eccentric physician ]. F. Helvetius. Spinoza's name was omitted from the title-page, possibly because the editor or publisher thought that his reputation as an atheist might prejudice the sale of the booklet, and it was not until 1860 that the Amsterdam bookseller Frederik Muller (1817-1881) identified him as its author. (shrink)

This paper argues that the proponents of epistemological scientism must take some stand on scientific methodology. The supporters of scientism cannot simply defer to the social organisation of science because the social processes themselves must meet some methodological criteria. Among such criteria is epistemic evaluability, which demands intersubjective access to reasons. We derive twelve theses outlining some implications of epistemic evaluability. Evaluability can support weak and broad variants of epistemological scientism, which state that sciences, broadly construed, are the best sources (...) of knowledge or some other epistemic goods. Since humanities and social sciences produce epistemically evaluable results, narrow types of scientism that take only natural sciences as sources of knowledge require additional argumentation in their support. Strong scientism, which takes sciences as the only source of knowledge, also needs to appeal to some further principles since evaluability is not an all-or-nothing affair. (shrink)

This book studies the phenomenological ontology of breathing. It investigates breathing and air as a question of phenomenological philosophy and looks at phenomenological questions concerning respiratory methodology, ontological experience of respiration, respiratory spirituality and respiratory embodiment. Drawing on the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Luce Irigaray and David Kleinberg-Levin, the book argues for the ontological primacy of breathing and develops a new principle of philosophy that the author calls "Silence of Breath, Abyss/Yawn of Air". It (...) asserts that breathing is not a thing- or person-oriented relation, but perpetual communication with the immense elemental atmosphere of open and free air. This new phenomenological method of breathing offers readers a chance to begin to wonder, rethink, re-experience and reimagine all questions of life in an innovative and creative way as aerial and respiratory questions of life. Part of the Routledge Critical Perspectives on Breath and Breathing series, the book breaks new ground in phenomenology and phenomenological ontology by offering a decisive and insightful treatment of breath. It will be indispensable for students and researchers of philosophy, phenomenology, and ontology. It will also be of special interest to Merleau-Ponty scholars as it investigates uncharted dimensions of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. (shrink)

Several vaccines against COVID-19 have now been developed and are already being rolled out around the world. The decision whether or not to get vaccinated has so far been left to the individual citizens. However, there are good reasons, both in theory as well as in practice, to believe that the willingness to get vaccinated might not be sufficiently high to achieve herd immunity. A policy of mandatory vaccination could ensure high levels of vaccination coverage, but its legitimacy is doubtful. (...) We investigate the willingness to get vaccinated and the reasons for an acceptance (or rejection) of a policy of mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 in June and July 2020 in Germany based on a representative real time survey, a random sub-sample (SOEP-CoV) of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our results show that about 70 percent of adults in Germany would voluntarily get vaccinated against the coronavirus if a vaccine without side effects was available. About half of residents of Germany are in favor, and half against, a policy of mandatory vaccination. The approval rate for mandatory vaccination is significantly higher among those who would get vaccinated voluntarily (around 60 percent) than among those who would not get vaccinated voluntarily (27 percent). The individual willingness to get vaccinated and acceptance of a policy of mandatory vaccination correlates systematically with socio-demographic and psychological characteristics of the respondents. We conclude that as far as people’s declared intentions are concerned, herd immunity could be reached without a policy of mandatory vaccination, but that such a policy might be found acceptable too, were it to become necessary. (shrink)

The general topic of my philosophical dissertation is phenomenological ontology of breathing. I do not investigate the phenomenon of breathing as a natural scientific problem, but as a philosophical question. Within our tradition, breathing has been normally understood as a mechanistic-materialistic physiological life-sustaining process of gas exchange and cellular respiration which does not really seem to have any essential connection to human being’s spiritual, mental or philosophical capacities. On the contrary to this natural scientific view, I argue that breathing can (...) be understood as a philosophical question that has phenomenological, experiential, ontological, spiritual, bodily, mental, poetic, elemental, ethical, voluntary and mystical dimensions. My investigation conceptualizes breathing in the first place as a question of phenomenological ontology. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenologico-ontological method of interrogation of the lived body’s experiential openness to the world and Being provides the most fundamental point of departure in this dissertation. Merleau-Ponty emphasized in his investigations the lived body’s perceptual openness to the world and Being. He argued famously for the primacy of perception. His thesis of the primacy of perception means that perception as the perceptual openness to the world and Being is the foundation which is always presupposed by all the other levels of our existence and being-in-the-world. In this dissertation, I challenge this idea of the primacy of perception with Merleau-Ponty’s own remarks about breathing. I argue that in his own remarks about breathing, he implicitly points toward a level which is even more fundamental than the primacy of perception. In this dissertation, this level of our being-in-the-world I call the primacy of breathing. Breathing as the lived body’s respiratory openness to the world and Being is now understood as the foundation which is always presupposed by all the other dimensions of our being-in-the-world. These dimensions are, for example, our theoretical, practical, social and perceptual ways of relating with the world. If the idea of the primacy of breathing is taken seriously, it means that all the questions of philosophy could be rethought, reexamined and re-experienced within the fundamental atmosphere of respiratory openness to the world and Being. In this dissertation, I initially try to rethink philosophy as a new philosophy of breathing. This new philosophy of breathing would be phenomenological ontology of breathing. The bases of this new phenomenological ontology of breathing are Merleau-Ponty’s remarks about breathing. My task is to explicate and interpret them with the help of Merleau- Ponty’s own phenomenological ontology. In my task of beginning philosophy anew as philosophy of breathing or as respiratory philosophy, I will also use the ideas of Martin Heidegger, Gaston Bachelard, Paul Claudel, Luce Irigaray, Edmund Husserl and David Kleinberg-Levin. My dissertation is divided into two main sections. In Section One, I construct within the framework of phenomenological ontology a new notion of breathing as the primacy of breathing. In Section Two, I develop a phenomenological method that I call the method of ontologico-respiratory reduction. This method will lead us back to the primacy of breathing. (shrink)

This paper discusses the epistemic import of highly abstract and simplified theoretical models using Thomas Schelling’s checkerboard model as an example. We argue that the epistemic contribution of theoretical models can be better understood in the context of a cluster of models relevant to the explanatory task at hand. The central claim of the paper is that theoretical models make better sense in the context of a menu of possible explanations. In order to justify this claim, we introduce a distinction (...) between causal scenarios and causal mechanism schemes. These conceptual tools help us to articulate the basis for modelers’ intuitive confidence that their models make an important epistemic contribution. By focusing on the role of the menu of possible explanations in the evaluation of explanatory hypotheses, it is possible to understand how a causal mechanism scheme can improve our explanatory understanding even in cases where it does not describe the actual cause of a particular phenomenon. (shrink)

This article compares causal and constitutive explanation. While scientific inquiry usually addresses both causal and constitutive questions, making the distinction is crucial for a detailed understanding of scientific questions and their interrelations. These explanations have different kinds of explananda and they track different sorts of dependencies. Constitutive explanations do not address events or behaviors, but causal capacities. While there are some interesting relations between building and causal manipulation, causation and constitution are not to be confused. Constitution is a synchronous and (...) asymmetric relation between relata that cannot be conceived as independent existences. However, despite their metaphysical differences, the same key ideas about explanation largely apply to both. Causal and constitutive explanations face similar challenges (such as the problems of relevance and explanatory regress) and both are in the business of mapping networks of counterfactual dependence—i.e. mechanisms—although the relevant counterfactuals are of a different sort. In the final section the issue of developmental explanation is discussed. It is argued that developmental explanations deserve their own place in taxonomy of explanations, although ultimately developmental dependencies can be analyzed as combinations of causal and constitutive dependencies. Hence, causal and constitutive explanation are distinct, but not always completely separate forms of explanation. (shrink)

Most research on cross-cultural emotion recognition has focused on facial expressions. To integrate the body of evidence on vocal expression, we present a meta-analysis of 37 cross-cultural studies...

Tiivistelmä: Poliittisen filosofian paluu : teoreettisen politiikantutkimuksen mahdollisuutta koskevan keskustelun historia.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this chapter I will employ a well-known scientific research heuristic that studies how something works by focusing on circumstances in which it does not work. Rather than trying to describe what scientific understanding would ideally look like, I will try to learn something about it by observing mundane cases where understanding is partly illusory. My main thesis is that scientists are prone to the illusion of depth of understanding (IDU), and as a consequence they sometimes overestimate the detail, coherence, (...) and depth of their understanding. I will analyze the notion of understanding and its relation to a sense of understanding. In order to make plausible the claim that these are often disconnected, I will describe an interesting series of psychological experiments by Frank Keil and his coauthors that suggests that ordinary people routinely overestimate the depth of their understanding. en I will argue that we should take seriously the possibility that scientific cognition is also aðected by IDU and spell out some possible causes of explanatory illusions in science. I will conclude this chapter by discussing how scientific explanatory practices could be improved and how the philosophy of science might be able to contribute to this process. (shrink)

It is well known that John Stuart Mill repeatedly acknowledges Harriet Taylor Mill's substantial contribution to On Liberty. After her death, however, he decides to publish the book under his name only. Are we justified in continuing this practice, initiated by JSM, of refusing unequivocal co-authorship status to HTM? Drawing on stylometric analyses, we make a preliminary case that JSM did not write On Liberty all by himself and that HTM had a hand in formulating it. Drawing on plausible standards (...) for authorship ascription, we further point out that authorship status requires, in addition to a substantial contribution, the approval by all contributors. We discuss potential reasons to assume that HTM did not approve the published version of On Liberty and would have objected to including her name on the title page. (This paper is available on an open-access basis at UTILITAS). (shrink)

This study explored a dimensional approach to vocal expression of emotion. Actors vocally portrayed emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness) with weak and strong emotion intensity. Listeners (30 university students and 6 speech experts) rated each portrayal on four emotion dimensions (activation, valence, potency, emotion intensity). The portrayals were also acoustically analysed with respect to 20 vocal cues (e.g., speech rate, voice intensity, fundamental frequency, spectral energy distribution). The results showed that: (a) there were distinct patterns of ratings of activation, (...) valence, and potency for the different emotions; (b) all four emotion dimensions were correlated with several vocal cues; (c) listeners' ratings could be successfully predicted from the vocal cues for all dimensions except valence; and (d) the intensity dimension was positively correlated with the activation dimension in the listeners' ratings. (shrink)

Background: Adequate immunity to COVID-19 apparently cannot be attained in Germany by voluntary vaccination alone, and therefore the introduction of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination is still under consideration. We present findings on the potential acceptance of such a requirement by the German population, and we report on the reasons given for accepting or rejecting it and how these reasons vary according to population subgroup. -/- Methods: We used representative data from the Socio-Economic Panel for the period January to December 2021. We (...) linked the respondents’ answers concerning mandatory COVID-19 vaccination to information about their sociodemographic characteristics, state of health, political attitudes, and degree of confidence in the judicial and political systems. We analyzed these data using univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistical methods. -/- Results: Just over half of the respondents (50.44% [49.08%; 51.79%]) favored mandatory COVID-19 vaccination. Among the supporters, the reason most frequently given (95.22% [94.45; 96.00]) was that, without such a requirement, not enough people would be vaccinated. Among the opponents of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination (49.56% [48.21%; 50.92%]), by far the most common reason given for opposing it was a desire to uphold individual freedom (91.36% [90.31%; 92.40%]). Persons supporting mandatory COVID-19 vaccination, on average, older than those who opposed it; they less commonly had an education beyond secondary school, were less healthy, tended to have no children, had centrist political views, and expressed more confidence in the political system. The largest difference between the two groups was that about 90% of supporters of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination were themselves vaccinated, compared to only about 62% of opponents. -/- Conclusion: The lack of consensus on this issue among politicians and physicians in Germany is reflected in a similar lack of consensus in the German population as a whole. A discussion of the appropriate understanding of individual freedom would be the most promising way to widen the acceptance of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination. A commonly expressed conception of freedom that permits the deliberate endangerment of other people’s health seems morally questionable. -/- DOI: 10.3238/arztebl.m2022.0174. (shrink)

This work consists of two parts. Part I will be a contribution to a philo- sophical discussion of the nature of causal explanation. It will present my contrastive counterfactual theory of causal explanation and show how it can be used to deal with a number of problems facing theories of causal explanation. Part II is a contribution to a discussion of the na- ture of interest explanation in social studies of science. The aim is to help to resolve some controversies (...) concerning interest explanation by explicating the concept of interest and its explanatory uses by using the account of explanation developed in Part I. (shrink)

_Christianity and the Roots of Morality_ combines philosophical, early Christian and empirical studies to cast light on the role of religion, especially Christianity, in morality, pro-social behavior and altruism.

Background: According to Gelfand et al., COVID-19 infection and case mortality rates are closely connected to the strength of social norms: “Tighter” cultures that abide by strict social norms are more successful in combating the pandemic than “looser” cultures that are more permissive. However, countries with similar levels of cultural tightness exhibit big differences in mortality rates. We are investigating potential explanations for this fact. Using data from Germany and Japan—two “tight” countries with very different infection and mortality rates—we examined (...) how differences in socio-demographic and other determinants explain differences in individual preventive attitudes and behaviors. Methods: We compared preventive attitudes and behaviors in 2020 based on real-time representative survey data and used logit regression models to study how individual attitudes and behaviors are shaped by four sets of covariates: individual socio-demographics, health, personality, and regional-level controls. Employing Blinder-Oaxaca regression techniques, we quantified the extent to which differences in averages of the covariates between Japan and Germany explain the differences in the observed preventive attitudes and behaviors. Results: In Germany and Japan, similar proportions of the population supported mandatory vaccination, avoided travel, and avoided people with symptoms of a cold. In Germany, however, a significantly higher proportion washed their hands frequently and avoided crowds, physical contact, public transport, peak-hour shopping, and contact with the elderly. In Japan, a significantly higher proportion were willing to be vaccinated. We also show that attitudes and behaviors varied significantly more with covariates in Germany than in Japan. Differences in averages of the covariates contribute little to explaining the observed differences in preventive attitudes and behaviors between the two countries. Conclusion: Consistent with tightness-looseness theory, the populations of Japan and Germany responded similarly to the pandemic. The observed differences in infection and fatality rates therefore cannot be explained by differences in behavior The major difference in attitudes is the willingness to be vaccinated, which was much higher in Japan. Furthermore, the Japanese population behaved more uniformly across social groups than the German population. This difference in the degree of homogeneity has important implications for the effectiveness of policy measures during the pandemic. (shrink)

This article discusses agent-based simulation (ABS) as a tool of sociological understanding. I argue that agent-based simulations can play an important role in the expansion of explanatory understanding in the social sciences. The argument is based on an inferential account of understanding (Ylikoski 2009, Ylikoski & Kuorikoski 2010), according to which computer simulations increase our explanatory understanding by expanding our ability to make what-if inferences about social processes and by making these inferences more reliable. The inferential account also suggests a (...) number of ways in which the use of simulation methodology might give rise to illusory understanding. The structure of the article is as .. (shrink)

A well known paragraph in Mill's 'Utilitarianism' has standardly been misread. Mill does not claim that if some pleasure is of 'higher quality', then it will be (or ought to be) chosen over the pleasure of lower quality regardless of their respective quantities. Instead he says that if some pleasure will be chosen over another available in larger quantity, then we are justified in saying that the pleasure so chosen is of higher quality than the other. This assertion is unproblematic.

Sociology aims to explain the emergence, persistence, and change of larger-scale social events, entities, properties, and processes. A vital element of this explanatory task is to connect the larger-scale changes to smaller-scale social properties and processes. Philosophers of social science usually employ the idea of a level to analyze the relation between macro and micro, which leads to misunderstanding the sociological micro-macro problem. Philosophical arguments often assimilate the micro-macro challenge into the problem of methodological individualism and treat it as analogical (...) to the relation between the physical and the mental. This presupposes that there is an individual level that is unique, comprehensive, and privileged, but these conditions are not satisfied. As an alternative, one should pay attention to the pragmatics of the micro-macro distinction, which is flexible, local, and relative. Once this is taken seriously, the motivation for assuming levels vanishes. Levels thinking creates problem substitutions rather than problem solutions. Furthermore, it supports a sterile style of theorizing. As an alternative, the paper suggests thinking about micro and macro in terms of scale and recognizing their heterogeneity. The concept of level is a placeholder, rather than as a theoretical concept. While figuring out relations between micro and macro is vital in the social sciences, it can be practiced without postulating levels. The paper concludes that a skeptical strategy towards levels is justified in the social sciences as the concept is heuristically misleading. To sustain necessary conceptual vigilance, social scientists should adopt the meta-heuristic of avoiding it. (shrink)

This paper examines the relation between Cartwright's concept of 'capacities' and Mill's concept of 'tendencies' and argues that they are not equivalent. Cartwright's concept of 'capacities' and her motivation to adopt it as a central notion in her philosophy of science are described. It is argued that the Millian concept of 'tendencies' is distinct because Mill restricts its use to a set of special cases. These are the cases in which causes combine 'mechanically'. Hence for Mill 'tendencies' do not merely (...) describe the operation of causes, but also and perhaps even primarily how they combine. This does not hold of Cartwrightian capacities which are meant to have unlimited applicability. Mill also explicitly denies the realism of 'capacities' in a sense which overlaps with Cartwright's. Her attempt to derive empirist credentials for her notion of capacity from Mill is therefore unsuccessful. (shrink)