Original essays by leading philosophers of science explore the question of whether metaphysics can and should be naturalized--conducted as part of natural science.

This 1996 book defends the prospects for a science of society. It argues that behind the diverse methods of the natural sciences lies a common core of scientific rationality that the social sciences can and sometimes do achieve. It also argues that good social science must be in part about large-scale social structures and processes and thus that methodological individualism is misguided. These theses are supported by a detailed discussion of actual social research, including theories of agrarian revolution, organizational ecology, (...) social theories of depression, and supply-demand explanations in economics. Professor Kincaid provides a general picture of explanation and confirmation in the social sciences and discusses the nature of scientific rationality, functional explanation, optimality arguments, meaning and interpretation, the place of microfoundations in social explanation, the status of neo-classical economics, the role of idealizations and non-experimental evidence, and other specific controversies. (shrink)

In this volume, leading philosophers of psychiatry examine psychiatric classification systems, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, asking whether current systems are sufficient for effective diagnosis, treatment, and research. Doing so, they take up the question of whether mental disorders are natural kinds, grounded in something in the outside world. Psychiatric categories based on natural kinds should group phenomena in such a way that they are subject to the same type of causal explanations and respond similarly to (...) the same type of causal interventions. When these categories do not evince such groupings, there is reason to revise existing classifications. The contributors all question current psychiatric classifications systems and the assumptions on which they are based. They differ, however, as to why and to what extent the categories are inadequate and how to address the problem. Topics discussed include taxometric methods for identifying natural kinds, the error and bias inherent in DSM categories, and the complexities involved in classifying such specific mental disorders as "oppositional defiance disorder" and pathological gambling. -/- Contributors George Graham, Nick Haslam, Allan Horwitz, Harold Kincaid, Dominic Murphy, Jeffrey Poland, Nancy Nyquist Potter, Don Ross, Dan Stein, Jacqueline Sullivan, Serife Tekin, Peter Zachar. (shrink)

This paper discusses the nature and the status of inference to the best explanation. We outline the foundational role given IBE by its defenders and the arguments of critics who deny it any place at all ; argue that, on the two main conceptions of explanation, IBE cannot be a foundational inference rule ; sketch an account of IBE that makes it contextual and dependent on substantive empirical assumptions, much as simplicity seems to be ; show how that account avoids (...) the critics ' complaints and leaves IBE an important role ; and sketch how our account can clarify debates over IBE in arguments for scientific realism. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the recently renewed debate over methodological individualism (MI) by carefully sorting out various individualist claims and by making use of recent work on reduction and explanation outside the social sciences. My major focus is on individualist claims about reduction and explanation. I argue that reductionist versions of MI fail for much the same reasons that mental predicates cannot be reduced to physical predicates and that attempts to establish reducibility by weakening the requirements for reduction also fail. (...) I consider and reject a number of explanatory theses, among them the claims that any adequate theory must refer only to individuals and that individualist theory suffices to explain fully. The latter claim, I argue, is not entailed by the supervenience of social facts on individual facts. Lastly, I argue that there is one individualist restriction on explanation which is far more plausible and significant than one would initially suspect. (shrink)

_The_ _Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Medicine _is a comprehensive guide to topics in the fields of epistemology and metaphysics of medicine. It examines traditional topics such as the concept of disease, causality in medicine, the epistemology of the randomized controlled trial, the biopsychosocial model, explanation, clinical judgment and phenomenology of medicine and emerging topics, such as philosophy of epidemiology, measuring harms, the concept of disability, nursing perspectives, race and gender, the metaphysics of Chinese medicine, and narrative medicine. Each of (...) the 48 chapters is written especially for this volume and with a student audience in mind. For pedagogy and clarity, each chapter contains an extended example illustrating the ideas discussed. This text is intended for use as a reference for students in courses in philosophy of medicine and philosophy of science, and pairs well with _The_ _Routledge Companion to Bioethics_ for use in medical humanities and social science courses. (shrink)

In the recent methodological individualism-holism debate on explanation, there has been considerable focus on what reasons methodological holists may advance in support of their position. We believe it is useful to approach the other direction and ask what considerations methodological individualists may in fact offer in favor of their view about explanation. This is the background for the question we pursue in this paper: Why be a methodological individualist? We start out by introducing the methodological individualism-holism debate while distinguishing two (...) forms of methodological individualism: a form that says that individualist explanations are always better than holist accounts and a form that says that providing intervening individualist mechanisms always makes for better explanations than purely holist ones. Next, we consider four lines of reasoning in support of methodological individualism: arguments from causation, from explanatory depth, from agency, and from normativity. We argue that none of them offer convincing reasons in support of the two explanatory versions of individualism we consider. While there may well be occasions in which individualists’ favorite explanations are superior, we find no reason to think this always must be the case. (shrink)

This article defends laws in the social sciences. Arguments against social laws are considered and rejected based on the "open" nature of social theory, the multiple realizability of social predicates, the macro and/or teleological nature of social laws, and the inadequacies of belief-desire psychology. The more serious problem that social laws are usually qualified ceteris paribus is then considered. How the natural sciences handle ceteris paribus laws is discussed and it is argued that such procedures are possible in the social (...) sciences. The article ends by arguing that at least some social research is roughly as well as confirmed as good work in evolutionary biology and ecology. (shrink)

Advances in molecular biology have generally been taken to support the claim that biology is reducible to chemistry. I argue against that claim by looking in detail at a number of central results from molecular biology and showing that none of them supports reduction because (1) their basic predicates have multiple realizations, (2) their chemical realization is context-sensitive and (3) their explanations often presuppose biological facts rather than eliminate them. I then consider the heuristic and confirmational implications of irreducibility and (...) argue that purely biochemical approaches are likely to be unsound and to be unable to confirm an important range of statements. I conclude by sketching criteria for scientific unity that do not entail reducibility and yet leave an important place for identifying underlying mechanisms. Molecular biology, properly understood, provides an excellent paradigm of non-reductive unity between different explanatory levels. (shrink)

This Handbook is a major, comprehensive look at the key ideas in the field, is guided by several principles.

I share with all the other authors the view that conceptual metaphysics without close ties to science is of minimal value, that this holds for much of current work on social ontology, and that if there is value in social ontology, it has to be in contributing to empirical social science. I do perhaps disagree with all three authors about making any blanket statements concerning either instrumentalism or realism about the social sciences and their ontologies. I argue and try to (...) show instead that if there are fruitful questions of social ontology, they are probably mostly local empirical issues raised by specific pieces of social science. Certain kinds of pluralism and instrumentalism may well make sense in some situations. I illustrate with debates over the need for psychological realism and revealed preference theory in economics. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics is a cutting-edge reference work to philosophical issues in the practice of economics. It is motivated by the view that there is more to economics than general equilibrium theory, and that the philosophy of economics should reflect the diversity of activities and topics that currently occupy economists. Contributions in the Handbook are thus closely tied to ongoing theoretical and empirical concerns in economics. Contributors include both philosophers of science and economists. Chapters fall into (...) three general categories: received views in philosophy of economics, ongoing controversies in microeconomics, and issues in modeling, macroeconomics, and development. Specific topics include methodology, game theory, experimental economics, behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, computational economics, data mining, interpersonal comparisons of utility, measurement of welfare and well being, growth theory and development, and microfoundations of macroeconomics. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics is a groundbreaking reference like no other in its field. It is a central resource for those wishing to learn about the philosophy of economics, and for those who actively engage in the discipline, from advanced undergraduates to professional philosophers, economists, and historians. (shrink)

There is a lively ongoing debate among philosophers and social scientists about the reality of race and among social scientists about the reality of caste and ethnicity. This paper tries to sort out what the issues are and makes some preliminary suggestions about what the evidence shows. Standard philosophical analyses try to find the necessary and sufficient conditions of our concept of race. I argue that this is not the best way to approach the issue and that the reality of (...) these concepts should be taken as a scientific realism question; that is, do our best social scientific accounts of these phenomena show that appealing to the concepts of race, caste, and ethnicity is essential to successful social science explanation? I argue that in some cases that is the case and lay out the empirical issues involved. (shrink)

After sorting different structuralist claims, I argue that structural realist ideas are instantiated in the social sciences, providing both clarification of social science research and support for some components of structural realism. My main focus is on three distinct ways that the social sciences can be about structural relations—exemplified by claims about social structure, reduced form structures in causal modeling, and equilibrium explanations—and on the implication of structuralist ideas for thinking about issues concerning causal explanation and nonreductive pictures of the (...) unity of the science. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, 900 13th Street South, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294; e‐mail: [email protected] (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics is a reference work on philosophical issues in the practice of economics. It is motivated by the view that there is more to economics than general equilibrium theory, and that the philosophy of economics should reflect the diversity of activities and topics that currently occupy economists. Contributions in the book are thus closely tied to on-going theoretical and empirical concerns in economics. Contributors include both philosophers of science and economists. Articles fall into three (...) general categories: received views in philosophy of economics, on-going controversies in microeconomics, and issues in modeling, macroeconomics, and development. Specific topics include methodology, game theory, experimental economics, behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, computational economics, data mining, interpersonal comparisons of utility, measurement of welfare and well-being, growth theory and development, and microfoundations of macroeconomics. (shrink)

This article first surveys a significant set of issues that are intertwined in asking whether social classes are real. It distinguishes two different notions of class: class as organized social entities and class as types of individuals based on individual characteristics. There is good evidence for some classes as social entities—ruling classes and underclasses in some societies—but other classes in contemporary society are sometimes best thought of in terms of types, not social entities. Implications are drawn for pluralist accounts of (...) social classification and the individualism-holism dispute. (shrink)

I briefly argue that some issues in the individualism-holism debate have been fairly clearly settled and other issues still plagued by unclarity. The main argument of the paper is that there are a set of clear empirical issues around the holism-individualism debate that are central problems in current social science research. Those include questions about when we can be holist and how individualist we can be in social explanation.

This paper explores the explanatory adequacy of lower-level theories when their higher-level counterparts are irreducible. If some state or entity described by a high-level theory supervenes upon and is realized in events, entities, etc. described by the relevant lower-level theory, does the latter fully explain the higher-level event even if the higher-level theory is irreducible? While the autonomy of the special sciences and the success of various eliminativist programs depends in large part on how we answer this question, neither the (...) affirmative or negative answer has been defended in detail. I argue, contra Putnam and others, that certain facts about causation and explanation show that such lower-level theories do explain. I also argue, however, that there may be important questions about counterfactuals and laws that such explanations cannot answer, thereby showing their partial inadequacy. I defend the latter claim against criticisms based on eliminativism about higher-level explanations and sketch a number of empirical conditions that lower-level explanations would have to meet to fully explain higher-level events. (shrink)

Leading addiction researchers survey the latest findings in addiction science, countering the simplistic cultural stereotypes of the addict.

From the mid-1960s until the late 1980s, the well-known general philosophies of science of the time were applied to economics. The result was disappointing: none seemed to fit. This paper argues that this is due to a special feature of economics: it possesses ‘orientational paradigms’ in high number. Orientational paradigms are similar to Kuhn’s paradigms in that they are shared across scientific communities, but dissimilar to Kuhn’s paradigms in that they are not generally accepted as valid guidelines for further research. (...) As will be shown by several examples, orientational paradigms provide economics with common points of reference that support its epistemic coherence and make scientific discourse more easily possible across school boundaries. With the help of systematicity theory, a newer general philosophy of science, one can further elucidate the role of orientational paradigms with regard to scientific progress. (shrink)

Recent scientific findings about human decision making would seem to threaten the traditional concept of the individual conscious will. The will is threatened from "below" by the discovery that our apparently spontaneous actions are actually controlled and initiated from below the level of our conscious awareness, and from "above" by the recognition that we adapt our actions according to social dynamics of which we are seldom aware. In Distributed Cognition and the Will, leading philosophers and behavioral scientists consider how much, (...) if anything, of the traditional concept of the individual conscious will survives these discoveries, and they assess the implications for our sense of freedom and responsibility. The contributors all take science seriously, and they are inspired by the idea that apparent threats to the cogency of the idea of will might instead become the basis of its reemergence as a scientific subject. They consider macro-scale issues of society and culture, the micro-scale dynamics of the mind/brain, and connections between macro-scale and micro-scale phenomena in the self-guidance and self-regulation of personal behavior. Contributors: George Ainslie, Wayne Christensen, Andy Clark, Paul Sheldon Davies, Daniel C. Dennett, Lawrence A. Lengbeyer, Dan Lloyd, Philip Pettit, Don Ross, Tamler Sommers, Betsy Sparrow, Mariam Thalos, Jeffrey B. Vancouver, Daniel M. Wegner, Tadeusz W. ZawidzkiDon Ross is Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Finance, Economics, and Quantitative Methods at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. David Spurrett is Professor of Philosophy at the Howard College Campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Harold Kincaid is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Ethics and Values in the Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. G. Lynn Stephens is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. (shrink)

Contrary to economics or history, for example, there does not exist an organized field dedicated to the philosophy of political science. Given that the philosophical issues raised by political science research are just as pressing and vibrant as those raised in these more organized fields, fostering a field that labels itself Philosophy of Political Science (PoPS) is important. PoPS is advanced here as a fruitful meeting place where both philosophers and practicing political scientists contribute and discuss—with philosophical discussions that are (...) close to and informed by actual developments in political science, making philosophy of science continuous with the sciences in line with contemporary naturalist philosophy of science. The topics scrutinized in the different chapters of the Handbook will figure prominently in PoPS, as we lay out in this chapter. (shrink)

This paper argues that realism issue in the social sciences is not one that can be decided by general philosophical arguments that evaluate entire domains at once. The realism issue is instead many different empirical issues. To defend these claims, I sort issues that are often run together, explicate and criticize several standard realist and antirealist arguments about the social sciences, and use the example of the productive/nonproductive distinction to illustrate the approach to realism questions that I favor.

Debates about explanation in the social sciences often proceed without any clear idea what an 'account' of explanation should do. In this paper I take a stance - what I will call contextualism - that denies there are purely formal and conceptual constraints on explanation and takes standards of explanation to be substantive empirical claims, paradigmatically claims about causation. I then use this standpoint to argue for position on issues in the philosophy of social science concerning reduction, idealized models, social (...) mechanisms, functional explanations, inference to the best explanation and interpretive understanding. (shrink)

The claim that mechanisms are essential good science is widespread. I argue, however, that these claims are ambiguous in multiple ways. I sort out different version of the mechanism idea: (1) mechanisms that are horizontal —between cause and effect— and mechanisms that are vertical —they realize in lower-level terms causal properties—: and (2) different purposes or uses mechanisms may have. I then focus on the claim that various senses of mechanism are necessary for the confirmation of causal claims. The paper (...) shows that mechanisms can be useful, essential, or harmful depending on context, using the now standard graphical causal structure framework. These conclusions also support the larger philosophy of science moral that methodological norms in science are often context specific and empirical, not a priori and universal. (shrink)

Functionalism is a dominant but widely criticized perspective in social theory; my goal in this paper is to help clarify what functionalists claim, identify what would count as evidence for those claims and evaluate some standard criticisms. Functionalism relies essentially on functional explanations of the form "A exists in order to B." I point out problems with previous accounts of such explanations, offer an improved account, and discuss in detail evidence that might confirm such explanations and its difficulties. I argue (...) that some functionalist accounts can be confirmed and that, contra the critics, functionalism's problems are not inherent errors, "only" practical ones. (shrink)

Philosophers and behavioral scientists discuss what, if anything, of the traditionalconcept of individual conscious will can survive recent scientific discoveries that humandecision-making is distributed across different brain processes and ...

Biomedical science has been remarkably successful in explaining illness by categorizing diseases and then by identifying localizable lesions such as a virus and neoplasm in the body that cause those diseases. Not surprisingly, researchers have aspired to apply this powerful paradigm to addiction. So, for example, in a review of the neuroscience of addiction literature, Hyman and Malenka (2001, p. 695) acknowledge a general consensus among addiction researchers that “[a]ddiction can appropriately be considered as a chronic medical illness.” Like other (...) diseases, “Once addiction has taken hold, it tends to follow a chronic course.” (Koob and La Moal 2006, p. ?). Working from this perspective, much effort has gone into characterizing the symptomology of addiction and the brain changes that underlie them. Evidence for involvement of dopamine transmission changes in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) have received the greatest attention. Kauer and Malenka (2007, p. 844) put it well: “drugs of abuse can co-opt synaptic plasticity mechanisms in brain circuits involved in reinforcement and reward processing”. Our goal in this chapter to provide an explicit description of the assumptions of medical models, the different forms they may take, and the challenges they face in providing explanations with solid evidence of addiction. <br>. (shrink)

I defend the prospect of good science in the social sciences by looking at the obstacles to social laws. I criticize traditional approaches, which rule for or against social laws on primarily conceptual grounds, and argue that only a close analysis of actual empirical research can decide the issue. To that end, I focus on problems caused by the ceteris paribus nature of social generalizations, outline a variety of ways those problems might be handled, and then examine in detail the (...) work of Paige on agrarian revolutions. Paige's work, I argue, handles its problems roughly as well as does some of the best work in evolutionary biology. The upshot is that some social laws can be relatively well confirmed. (shrink)

Scientific realism is usually a thesis or theses advanced about our best natural science. In contrast, this book defends scientific realism applied to the social and behavioral sciences. It does so, however, by applying the same argument strategy that many have found convincing for the natural sciences, namely, by arguing that we can only explain the success of the sciences by postulating their approximate truth. The particular success that Trout emphasizes for the social sciences is the effective use of statistical (...) testing. Social scientists apply diverse statistical measurement tools to social reality; they are able to refine and improve those measurements over time. The best explanation for such success is that the social sciences give us an approximately true account of some of the laws and entities of the social world. (shrink)

Tuomela (this issue, pp. 96-103) raises several objections to the analysis and critique of methodological individualism in my (1986). In what follows I reply to those criticisms, arguing, among other things, that: (1) the alleged reductions provided by Tuomela and others fail, because they either presuppose rather than eliminate social predicates or do not avoid the problem of multiple realizations; (2) supervenience does not guarantee that the social sciences are reducible, because merely describing supervenieence bases leaves numerous questions unanswered, and (...) (3) the eliminativism that Tuomela favors verges on being self-refuting and is highly implausible short of a detailed empirical critique of the social sciences, something Tuomela does not provide and something there is little reason to think can be provided. (shrink)

An alternative account of Merton to that provided by Turner is sketched. It shows strong similarities to some quite plausible contemporary understandings of science in general. Given this reading, it would seem that Merton did not drastically change his position nor does it suffer from the ambiguities that Turner describes. Key Words: theory • naturalism • causation • functional explanation.

How should philosophy of social science proceed? Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9592-7 Authors Harold Kincaid, Department of Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 900 13th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35294-1260, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This article argues that a particular notion of rationality, more exactly a specific notion of legitimate inference, is presupposed by much work in the social sciences to their detriment. The author describes the notion of rationality he has in mind, explains why it is misguided, identifies where and how it affects social research, and illustrates why that research is weaker as a result. The notion of legitimate inference the author has in mind is one that believes inferences are guided by (...) principles that are formal, universal and a priori—that is, that make no substantive, domain-specific empirical assumptions about the world. The author briefly provides a variety of reasons to be skeptical about such principles. Those reasons extend from broad philosophical considerations to quasi-empirical evidence. The author then argues that this notion of inference is involved with both the practice and the content of the social sciences in various ways. In terms of practice, this notion of inference lies behind the way statistical testing is generally done in the social sciences. In terms of content, the author argues that this notion of rationality is invoked, for example, in game theory and in rational expectations macroeconomics. In all cases, use of the formal rationality notion leads social scientists to put more faith in their results than is warranted and thus is an obstacle to doing better social science. (shrink)

This volume approaches the philosophy of medicine from the broad naturalist perspective that holds that philosophy must be continuous with, constrained by, and ...

Mesoudi et al.'s case can be improved by expanding to compelling selectionist explanations elsewhere in the social sciences and by seeing that natural selection is an instance of general selectionist process. Obstacles include the common use of extreme idealizations and optimality evidence, the copresence of nonselectionist social processes, and the fact that selectionist explanations often presuppose other kinds of social explanations. (Published Online November 9 2006).