Philosophy of Social Science

This paper discusses the explanatory power of discourse analysis, an approach to typically considered one of the main qualitative methods for data analysis. Although discourse analysis is typically not used to develop explanatory models, some have claimed that discourse models can causally explain social phenomena, such as institutional change. I analyze a case of institutional change to discuss and provide arguments for two claims. First, discourse analysis cannot generate causal explanations of social phenomena. Secondly, discourse analysis can generate non-causal explanations, (...) specifically constitutive explanations of social phenomena. I conclude the paper by discussing possible implications for social research. (shrink)

哲学传统的道德观念主要基于形而上学和神学的观念和理论。最突出的传统道德概念是神圣命令理论（DCT）。 根据DCT，上帝通过创造和启示为人类奠定了道德基础。 从人类文明的早期开始，道德与神性就密不可分。 这些概念基于神学框架。它们被三大亚伯拉罕传统中的大多数人类信徒所接受：犹太教，基督教和伊斯兰教。DCT理论仅基于信仰和启示，并没有提供严格的科学 示范。 几个世纪以来，"DCT"道德概念的反对者试图淡化其重要性（尽管没有成功），理由是其形而上学和宗教假设无法得到证实。 。这只是一种信念，应该这样理解。 除了这些极端对立之外，还有许多其他概念部分或完全与DCT理论相矛盾。 从古希腊哲学到今天，许多哲学家和社会科学家都坚持认为道德是一种建构，因此在文化上是相对的和确定性的。然而，这也引发了许多其他讨论，并提出了一些棘手的问题，例如文化的意义是什么，文化中的哪些因素在道德上 是决定性的，这种相对论的局限性是什么。 道德决定论者反过来声称，一旦自由意志不存在，包括道德在内的人类行为的一切都是确定性的。 最近，现代思想家认为道德是一门严谨的科学。然而，科学的方法虽然可以解释一些事实和证据，但它本身并不能揭示道德的内涵和意义。理解道德需要更广泛的理解，需要哲学家达成共识，这是他们从未实现过的。 只要许多问题相互冲突，就会产生复杂的分析和无休止的争论。 参与这项研究的宇宙和大气是所有这些概念冲突的主题，也是客观和进化观察的结果。 尽管存在这种情况及其固有的重要性，但这些问题远远没有讨论客观伦理分析的方法论，这是这项工作的目的和范围。 我们应该简要地重新审视这些众所周知的传统理论，因为这项工作是一项比较研究，其假设与至少所有传统理论都有很大不同。 -/- 因此，有必要为读者提供直接和具体的比较要素，以便在不进行广泛研究的情况下进行有效的批评。 这项工作的目的是证明和展示史前道德原型的存在和意义，这些原型直接源于最基本的社会需求和生存努力。这些原型定义了道德的本质基础，将其聚合到集体无意识中，并用相应的逻辑组织起来。 这种逻辑被传递到人类基因组的进化阶段和不同的时空关系，无论任何当代的个人经验。这些原型定义的系统构成了人类社会的进化模型。 这是一个元伦理立场吗？ 是的，是的。 此外，在任何元伦理推理中，我们都应该仔细寻找最佳和最连贯的路径，分析哲学提供了这样的路径。 因此，这项工作应该合理地证明道德不是文明人或现代社会的文化产物。虽然它经历了许多文化的相对聚集和缺失，但它的基础是原型，从未经历过结构变化。这种推理表明，道德是智人的第一个社会建构。 它不是一种属性或偶然现象：它与人的本质融为一体，是人体的特征。 人类现象是随机决定和自由意志之间不断演绎的过程。 我们需要质疑道德是如何开始的，以及它是如何来到我们身边的。 -/- .

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)

The paper offers a critique of ontological individualism as a framework for social ontology. The phrase gives unjustified priority to facts about individuals over facts about higher-level social features. The paper reviews several important contributions to more nuanced views, including Giddens, Archer, Granovetter, Mahoney, and Thelen. It is argued that our guiding “map” of the social world needs to reflect the unavoidable reciprocal dependency over time between individual actors and social entities. The ideas of methodological localism (Little) and the diachronic (...) character of the actor-social nexus explore the inherent interdependency between actor and structure. (shrink)

As a promising Social Science Methodology, Structural/Mechanism Explanation (SME) retains the advantages of mechanism-based explanation (ME), particularly its focus on “identifying causal patterns from micro-level social phenomena.” It also acknowledging the role of “structure”—seen as “macro-level conditions”—in incentivizing or disincentivizing key mechanisms, thus proving valuable for forecasting their emergence and decline. This article explores the theory of SME and applies it to examine how a revitalized “Legalist political structure coupled with a Confucianist ideological structure” can forecast the mechanisms by which (...) China’s National Social Credit System disciplines and punishes the citizens. This is observed across domains of legislation, administration, judiciary, and propaganda. (shrink)

This reply to Finn Collin’s critically sympathetic review of my Back to the University’s Future: The Second Coming of Humboldt, addresses some of the tensions involved in realizing “Humboldt 2.0” in today’s higher education environment. Its focus is largely on the academic’s sense of researcher as being one of learner. In other words, the Humboldtian sees research as the necessary complement to teaching, not something radically distinct from it.

We present a new justification for methodological triangulation (MT), the practice of using different methods to support the same scientific claim. Unlike existing accounts, our account captures cases in which the different methods in question are associated with, and rely on, incommensurable theories. Using a nonstandard Bayesian model, we show that even in such cases, a commitment to the minimal form of epistemic conservatism, captured by the rigidity condition that stands at the basis of Jeffrey’s conditionalization, supports the practice of (...) MT. (shrink)

The importance of focusing on long-term sustainability in pollinator conservation and sustainable ecosystem management cannot be underestimated. Cultivating an eco-surplus culture plays a key role in maintaining ecosystem health, particularly by protecting pollinator species essential for ecosystem functioning and agricultural productivity. This cultural approach emphasizes environmental stewardship and conserving and generating surplus resources beyond immediate human needs, which is vital for future nature-based innovations. Additionally, ecological surplus culture highlights the resilience necessary to address significant environmental challenges such as habitat loss (...) and climate change, illustrating how nurturing pollinators can contribute to ecosystem resilience in the face of these challenges. (shrink)

Vào ngày 19/4/2024 vừa qua, Tuyên bố New York về Ý thức của Động vật đã được công bố tại một hội nghị "Khoa học Mới nổi về Ý thức của Động vật" được tổ chức tại Đại học New York. Tuyên bố New York là một nỗ lực để thể hiện sự đồng thuận của giới khoa học về sự tồn tại trải nghiệm ý thức ở tất cả các loài có xương sống (bao gồm tất cả các loài (...) bò sát, lưỡng cư và cá) và nhiều loài không xương sống (bao gồm, ít nhất là, các loài mực ống, giáp xác mười chân và côn trùng). Về mặt khoa học, Tuyên bố New York là một bước tiến bộ lớn cho nhân loại, nhưng nó cũng sẽ khiến cho nhiều người có ý thức hơn về các thách thức đạo đức liên quan đến động vật có trải nghiệm ý thức. Bài viết này sẽ bàn về các cách tiếp cận triết học đối với vấn đề đạo đức của việc giết các sinh vật có tri giác để từ đó chỉ ra nan đề đạo đức đang hiện hữu trong xã hội loài người: Để duy trì sự tồn tại của con người, loài được xem là có đạo đức, thì chúng ta lại vi phạm đạo đức của chính chúng ta, là sát sinh các loài có giá trị nội tại, ý thức, hay tri giác khác. Nan đề đạo đức này đã tồn tại trong xã hội loài người từ rất lâu trước đây. Nhiều giải pháp đã được đề xuất và ứng dụng vào thực tế nhầm giải quyết nan đề này, như cách tiếp cận bất bạo lực và ăn chay của Phật giáo, việc áp dụng luật Hồi giáo và các nghi lễ thiêng liêng đối với động vật trong Hồi giáo, các phòng trào đòi quyền cho động vật và thực hiện tuyệt chủng tự nguyện ở các nước phương Tây, hay chế biến thịt sử dụng tế bào động vật. Tuy nhiên, dù cách nào đi nữa thì hiện nay chúng ta vẫn chưa thể hoàn toàn giải quyết được nan đề đạo đức, đó là các sinh vật có tri giác vẫn tiếp tục bị giết vì sự sinh tồn của con người. Chúng tôi cho rằng giải pháp khả thi nhất hiện nay đó là thay đổi văn hóa tiêu dùng thực phẩm ở hiện tại, xây dựng các giá trị văn hóa thặng dư sinh thái, và thúc đẩy các giải pháp hòa bình. (shrink)

Sociology has largely followed Durkheim’s lead in ignoring the question: why do people die by suicide? This negation prioritizes a positivist, structuralist approach and stymies sociology’s contribution by closing off a wide range of tools sociologists might employ. An interpretivist turn in suicide studies accompanied by the growing adoption of qualitative methodology has opened up an array of opportunities to produce insights lost in a Durkheimian approach, but has yet to confront their own weaknesses. This paper shows we need not (...) abandon either tradition, advocating for a third path that integrates the strengths of both approaches. (shrink)

Lincoln and Guba provided some principles and four evaluative criteria called “trustworthiness” to guide social science research naturalistically. However, drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature, a field engaged with methods and practices of science for several decades, one can argue that this approach is not still fully naturalistic. In this paper, we review Lincoln and Guba’s four criteria of trustworthiness from an STS perspective. We argue that the STS literature can challenge these criteria, but at the same time (...) they have the potential to be reconstructed with the help of the materials STS provides. (shrink)

"Legitimacy is lost when the police either fail to protect the public or rely on coercion rather than consent to achieve that protection. Recovering Police Legitimacy challenges conventional criminological, political, and public solutions to the problem by approaching it from the bottom up"--.

There are several theses in political science that are usually explicitly called ‘laws’. Other theses are generally thought of as laws, but often without being explicitly labelled as such. Still other claims are well-supported and arguably interesting, while no one would be tempted to call them laws. This situation raises philosophical questions: which theses deserve to be called laws and which not? And how should we decide about this? In this paper we develop and motivate a strategy for thinking about (...) laws in political science which integrates two core concepts: spatio-temporal stability and social mechanisms. The proposed strategy is a set of guidelines that political scientists can use to reflect on and argue about specific cases within their discipline, not a clear-cut demarcation criterion. We defend and motivate this strategy and apply it to two cases (one with respect to state repression, one about parliamentary elections). After we have developed and motivated our strategy for political science, we show that our proposal is relevant for other disciplines in the social sciences. We explain how our views fit into critical realism and embed them in the debate on laws in general philosophy of science and in the philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

This paper critically explores the ethical dimensions of Behavioral Public Policy (BPP), a domain grounded in the understanding that human rationality is bounded and that this limitation often leads to behaviors deemed irrational. By applying the behavioral lens, which posits that people operate under bounded rationality, BPP aims to craft interventions that safeguard individuals against their biases. However, this approach raises significant ethical concerns, both in the scientific underpinnings of BPP and its application through policy interventions. Accordingly, this paper examines (...) two distinct ethical dimensions of BPP, both as a scientific discipline and through its intervention methodologies. The analysis of the first dimension argues that, viewing bounded rationality as only instrumental in decision-making processes, risks oversimplifying ethical complexities. Such simplification may ignore the moral and value-based rationalities underlying decisions, potentially misattributing instances of immorality and akrasia (the failure to act according to one's judgment) to mere deficiencies in rational thinking. Secondly, the paper examines the impact of BPP on moral behavior and character development, addressing ethical concerns like the evidentiary basis of BPP research, the bounded rationality of choice architects themselves, and the morality of behavior changes induced by policy. Overall, this article provides a much-needed examination of the moral considerations associated with behavioral strategies in public policy and its epistemological foundations, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of their ethical implications . (shrink)

Illustrating the knowledge and ideas of thinkers such as Mandeville, Hume, Montesquieu and Smith, this book fully investigates the entire panorama of social sciences as well as providing a clear and concise analysis of the history of the social sciences from the point at which evolutionary theory entered the field. Examining the history of culture and humanity, Lorenzo Infantino discusses the 'discovery of society, ' when people stopped seeing behind every social phenomenon the direct action of human and/or divine will, (...) and how the subsequent void was filled by the unintended creation of language, habits, customs, laws and public power. Focussing on the idea that the object of social sciences should be the study of unintended consequences, Infantino also expertly reviews the approach of 'methodological individualism'. Forward-thinking, the book highlights the need for a rule of law in cultural evolution to prevent harm to others and allow a greater freedom of choice when deciding future actions. Providing an in-depth explanation of why the social sciences are needed and highlighting the task of a social scientist, this book will be invaluable for researchers in the fields of politics, economics and sociology. (shrink)

Social ontology is the study of the nature and basic structure of social reality. It is a rapidly growing field at the intersection of philosophy and social science that has the potential to greatly assist social researchers of all kinds. One of the longest running projects in social ontology has developed over the better part of the last four decades through the work of Tony Lawson and the Cambridge Social Ontology Group. Cambridge social ontology has its origins in an assessment (...) that the widespread explanatory failure of modern mainstream economics, as well as in the social sciences more generally, is due to sustained ontological neglect and the resulting use of research methods that are inappropriate given the nature of social material. The Cambridge project's aim has been to rectify this neglect through conducting explicit and sustained inquiry into the nature of social material with a view to elaborating an explanatorily power conception of social ontology. The result is social positioning theory. This book is an introduction to the key features of social positioning theory, provides context as to the theory's development, and illustrates how social positioning theory can clarify the natures of phenomena such as gender and the corporation. Cambridge Social Ontology is for social scientists, philosophers and all readers interested in gaining a better understanding of the nature of social phenomena. (shrink)

We have many histories of social theory-what different authors attempted to do as they responded to previous theories. But we know precious little about how they did this in structural terms-what scaffolding they adopted and adapted to make their claims. Yet today's social thoughts largely employ structures passed down from previous generations, structures that were developed to solve problems that are no longer ours. In The True, the Good, and the Beautiful, John Levi Martin explores these structures, the resulting tensions, (...) and their broader significance for sociological thought. By examining how thinkers mapped interpersonal to intrapersonal structures, he traces the development of the underlying architectonics of theory, focusing on one that was inherited from eighteenth-century philosophy and brought into social science in the nineteenth century. He shows that the structural tensions inherent in these theories paralleled those being worked out in practical terms by constitutional theorists as thinkers attempted to return to their most fundamental understandings of the nature of the human, the social, and the political to recraft their societies. A magisterial new interpretation of the foundations of sociological thought, The True, the Good, and the Beautiful is as ambitious a work of social theory as we have seen in generations. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview of how existential phenomenology has influenced qualitative research methods across a range of disciplines across the social, health, educational, and psychological sciences. It focuses specifically on how the concepts of “existential structures,” or “existentials”—such as selfhood, temporality, spatiality, affectivity, and embodiment—have been used in qualitative research. After providing a brief introduction to what qualitative research is and why philosophers should be interested in it, the chapter provides clear, straightforward examples of how qualitative researchers have used (...) existentials to analyze qualitative data and design qualitative studies. The chapter is intended to introduce philosophers to existential approaches to phenomenological qualitative research, with the aim of facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. (shrink)

Social Theory and the Political Imaginary: Practice, Critique and History is an innovative work of synthesis, critique, and analysis. It presages a social theory perspective that recognises the constitutive significance of the political imaginary in modernity. Social theory's current dilemmas are explored through a series of interlinked asssessments of some of its recent substantial strands, specifically, Luc Boltanski's pragmatism and the wider 'practical turn', the perspectives of multiple modernities and global modernity, the outlook of social and political imaginaries, and critical (...) social theory. The political imaginary's reconfigurations are evident in the tensions of global modernity and original social theory interpretations are advanced of landmark instances of twenty-first century social contestation: the Hong Kong protests conditioned by threats to civil freedoms and a lack of self-determination, the radical democratic practices of anti-austerity movements contesting capitalist globalisation's injustices, and the inverted cosmopolitanism of the 2005 French Riots challenging the oppression and inequalities experienced by immigrant communities and marginalised youth. These incisive applications of social theory and complementary conceptual innovations illuminate the vicissitudes of social struggles, political forms, and theoretical perspectives. Similarly, reflection on the political imaginary is found to enable a necessary rethinking of the interrelationship of practice, critique and history. (shrink)

Mới đây, trong bài đánh giá tình hình phát triển tổng hợp của Tạp chí Economics and Business Letters, các bài nghiên cứu nhận được nhiều trích dẫn nhất của tạp chí ở cả 3 cơ sở dữ liệu Google Scholar, Web of Science và Scopus đã được vinh danh. Nghiên cứu của TS Vương Quân Hoàng về nguyên lý bán dẫn trong trao đổi giá trị tiền tệ và môi sinh đã đứng đầu ở cả 3 hạng mục. Việc (...) một nghiên cứu lý thuyết được vinh danh bởi tạp chí khoa học được bảo trợ bởi Đại học Oviedo - một trong những trường đại học lâu đời nhất tại châu Âu (450 tuổi), là tín hiệu tích cực về sự lan tỏa và đóng góp của khoa học Việt Nam. (shrink)

Highlights: -/- • -/- Proposes forward-looking approach to studying climate collapse risks. • -/- Suggests diminishing returns on climate adaptation as a collapse mechanism. • -/- Suggests strategies for sustainable adaptation pathways in face of climate change. • -/- Illustrates analysis with examples of small island states and global food security. -/- Abstract: -/- This article proposes a forward-looking approach to studying societal collapse risks related to climate change. Such an approach should indicate how to study emerging collapse risks and (...) suggest strategies for adapting to them. Our approach is based on three postulates that facilitate a forward-looking approach: (1) collapse, if it occurred, would be a lengthy process rather than an abrupt event; (2) significant collapse risks already exist in some places; and (3) diminishing returns on adaptation to intensifying climate impacts are a key driver of collapse risks. The first two postulates suggests that collapse risks can be studied in process, while the third points to strategies for adaptation pathways that avoid unsustainable diminishing returns. Applying diminishing returns to climate change adaptation, rather than sociopolitical complexity or resource extraction, is also a novel theoretical contribution to collapse literature. [Open access]. (shrink)

Social emergence is one the most important problems in social science that the way it is answered affects the results of social studies and policies. The complexity of social emergence conception has caused a variety of definitions. This article seeks to define the robust social emergence conditions, using the philosophy of mind conception such as subvenience, wildly disjunctives, and multiple realization. Different approaches have different challenges in satisfying robust social emergence conditions. These challenges could be formulated in three problems i.e. (...) realism, top-down causality, and mechanism. This article aims to analytically criticize how critical realism approaches these problems. Critics believe that critical realism faces two sort of difficulties in satisfying robust social emergence: the first, the independence of structure from agencies that leads to reifying and the second, that ontological and causal emergence conflicts with subvenience. It seems the first problem could be resolved by employing the unrestricted mereological composition conception, and the second by the fact that subvenience do not necessitate ontological dependence. (shrink)

Adaptive preferences have been extensively studied in decision theory and feminist political theory, but not in experimental philosophy. In feminist contexts, the term is used to discuss cases in which women seem to accept abusive treatment and other conditions of oppression. According to one class of theories, women who accept abusive behavior are cognitively deficient: irrational, lacking autonomy, or not acting in accordance with their identity. Other theories deny this, saying that under certain conditions, accepting abuse can be a sound (...) response, given available alternatives. We survey lay opinions about a case in which a woman endures domestic violence and find that people often attribute adaptive attitudes and tend to see them as rational, free, and reflective of identity. We also examine lay normative judgments, including options about the right course of action, and the locus of blame, finding, for example, some tendency to blame the victim in such cases. Such attitudes are impacts by gender and political orientation. We also manipulated the cultural setting of our vignette, but found no impact. (shrink)

In this chapter, we take stock of existing critiques of contemporary migration research and bring these debates into contact with ongoing debates among decolonial scholars and in feminist social epistemology. We illustrate how the ethical and epistemic concerns voiced by migration scholars in regard to the socio-epistemic functioning of their field can be understood using the conceptual apparatus that has been developed around the notions of epistemic injustice and oppression. In so doing, we illustrate the relevance and usefulness of both (...) feminist social epistemology and of decolonial theory for theorising the socio-epistemic challenges that migration scholars face. The conceptual framework of epistemic injustice and oppression not only offers clarity in what is at stake within migration studies both ethically and epistemically, but also elucidates moral and epistemic reasons for why these issues should be addressed. This framework both calls attention to issues of undue epistemic marginalisation, and centres these issues as a core concern as migration scholars critically reflect upon the knowledge production and dissemination practices of their field. Understanding the processes through which this happens, rather than just the epistemic outcomes, can help us to identify ways to address the structural inequalities with which the production of migration knowledge is often associated. (shrink)

We often hear how scientists have discovered that a certain human trait – or a trait of another type of organism – is innate, genetic, heritable, inherited, naturally selected etc. All these claims have something in common: they all declare a trait to have significant organism internal (for instance genetic) causes that are present in the organism at its birth. I call claims like these “nativist claims”. Nativist claims are important. They shape our overall understanding of what we are, what (...) we can do and what is good for us. They also impact our practical decision making. For instance, we know that certain types of genes increase the risk of certain diseases, and increasingly this has an effect on healthcare practices. Many people believe that in the matter of children’s education we should consider the fact that many cognitive abilities are highly heritable. Associations between genetics and aggressive behavior have been taken to be alleviating circumstances in criminal sentencing. It is therefore important to correctly understand the content and implications of nativist claims. In this doctoral thesis I analyze, by philosophical means, the content of different kinds of nativist claim. What does it mean that some psychological tendency is innate? What does it mean that intelligence is 50% heritable? How (if at all) do genes come to carry information about the traits of an organism – they are nothing like the information carriers familiar to us, such as newspapers, e-mails, secret codes, and audio files. This thesis emphasizes two things. Firstly, I demonstrate, that in different scientific contexts these words ('innate', 'genetically caused' etc.) can mean very different things. Therefore, the implications of a given nativist claim in one scientific context can be remarkably different from another nativist claim’s implications in some other scientific context. Secondly, I explain how the development of innate, heritable and genetically caused traits can be determined in different and often unexpected ways by our environment and experiences. I demonstrate that the content of a concept that is considered innate by cognitive scientists can be determined by what the organism that possesses the concept has experienced. I also show that even a trait which is 100% heritable can at the same time be a socially constructed trait. (shrink)

O utopianismo científico de Neurath é a proposta para que as ciências sociais se envolvam na elaboração, desenvolvimento e comparação de cenários contrafactuais, as ‘utopias’. Tais cenários podem ser entendidos como peças centrais de experimentos de pensamento científicos, isto é, em exercícios da imaginação que não apenas promovem a revisão conceitual, mas também estimulam a criatividade para lidar com problemas vivenciados, já que utopias são esforços para imaginar como o futuro poderia ser. Ademais, experimentos de pensamento utópicos podem oferecer conhecimento (...) científico para informar debates e decisões políticas, contribuindo para formatar a sociedade. Este ensaio reconstrói um evento histórico como um exemplo da metodologia utopianista de Neurath. No final dos anos 1970 e início dos anos 1980, uma comissão científica e política designada pelo parlamento da Alemanha Ocidental inventou e comparou quatro cenários para políticas energético-econômicas futuras. Conclusões da comissão informaram decisões políticas que puseram a Alemanha Ocidental (e depois reunificada) em um caminho para se tornar uma potência industrial verde. Uma parte fundamental do trabalho da comissão envolveu um apelo à imaginação, permitindo a caracterização sob a metodologia de Neurath. (shrink)

Scientists and engineers seek to understand how real-world systems work and could work better. Any modeling method devised for such purposes must simplify reality. Ideally, however, the modeling method should be flexible as well as logically rigorous; it should permit model simplifications to be appropriately tailored for the specific purpose at hand. Flexibility and logical rigor have been the two key goals motivating the development of Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE), a completely agent-based modeling method characterized by seven specific modeling principles. (...) This perspective provides an overview of ACE, a brief history of its development, and its role within a broader spectrum of experiment-based modeling methods. (shrink)

This book explores how social robots and synthetic social agents will change our social systems and intersubjective relationships. It is obvious that technology influences societies. But how, and under what conditions do these changes occur? This book provides a theoretical foundation for the social implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. It starts from philosophy of technology, with a focus on social robotics, to systematically explore the concept of socio- technical change. It addresses two main questions: To what extent will (...) social robots modify our social systems? And how will human relationality be affected by human–robot interactions? The book employs resources from continental philosophy, actor–network theory, psychoanalysis, systemic theory, and constructivist cognitive theory to develop a theory of socio-technical change. It also offers a novel perspective on how we should evaluate the effectiveness of social robots, which has significant implications for how social robotics should be researched and designed. (shrink)

Why do we have social norms—of fairness, cooperation, trust, property, or gender? Modern-day Humeans, as I call them, believe these norms are best accounted for in cultural evolutionary terms, as adaptive solutions to recurrent problems of social interaction. In this paper, I discuss a challenge to this “Humean Program.” Social norms involve widespread behaviors, but also distinctive psychological attitudes and dispositions. According to the challenge, Humean accounts of norms leave their psychological side unexplained. They explain, say, why we share equally, (...) but not why we disapprove of those who don’t. I defend the Humean Program against this challenge. In particular, I suggest an idea for how to extend the Program to account for the psychological side of norms. Socially adaptive behaviors aren’t just likely to emerge in a group; They are also likely to be widely taught within it. The transmission of these behaviors through instruction explains why they are associated with distinctive normative attitudes and dispositions. These attitudes play a pedagogical role in helping transmit these behaviors to children and newcomers. (shrink)

Human nature is frequently evoked to characterize our species and describe how it differs from others. But how should we understand this concept? What is the nature of a species? Some take our nature to be an essence and argue that because humans lack an essence, they also lack a nature. Others argue for non-essentialist ways of understanding human nature, which usually aim to provide criteria for sorting human traits into one of two bins, the one belonging to our nature (...) and the other outside our nature. This Element argues that both the essentialist and trait bin approaches are misguided. Instead, the author develops a trait cluster account of human nature, which holds that human nature is based on the distribution of our traits over our (actual and possible) life histories. One benefit of this account is that it aligns human nature with the human sciences, rendering the central concern of the human sciences to be the study of human nature. (shrink)

Taking an analytic and historical approach, this work develops and defends Althusserian critical theory. This theory, it is argued, produces knowledge of how a particular class of people, in a particular time, in a particular place, is dominated, oppressed, or exploited. Moreover, without relying on a general notion of human emancipation, concrete critical theory can suggest political means for the alleviation of these conditions. Because it puts Althusser's ideas in dialogue with contemporary social science and philosophy, the book as a (...) whole makes contributions to Althusser studies, to Anglo-American political philosophy, and to current debates in the philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

إن وسم الأدب بالظاهرة الاجتماعية العامة ارتگز بالأساس على العلاقة الوثيقة التي تربط الأدب بالمجتمع في ظل الحقائق الاجتماعية التي تواجه المؤلِّف باعتباره كائناً اجتماعيا. وقد شكلت سوسيولوجيا والأدب والتواصل هماً معرفيا لدى النقاد والمؤلفين، وجعلت من حقلها مكاناً خصباً للبحث والتحليل خصوصا في عصرنا الحالي، فتعددت مقاربات الأدب، وتنوعت مناهج التواصل، فيما رسمت براديغمات رئيسة خطابات السوسيولوجيا، وحددت مواقعها وعلاقاتها بالمجتمع. وخضعت لمقاربات منهجية كثيرة غلب عليها الوصف والتصنيف على الرغم من تطورها واعتمادها على منظور تحلیلی و تفسیري بنيوي (...) مستوحى من الأدوات المفهومية التي وفرتها اللسانيات؛ إلا أن مناهج سوسيولوجيا الأدب والتواصل أظهرت كفاءة كبيرة في دراسة هذا الحقل وبخاصة علاقة الأدب والتواصل، وما يحيط بهما، وما يؤدي إليهما، إلى جانب البعد السوسيولوجي الذي يتناول مواضيع التربية كوقائع اجتماعية، من خلال دراسة وتحليل النماذج التربوية، والطرق والتقنيات والأساليب التربوية، ومعالجة القضايا والمشكلات داخل نسقها الاجتماعي، في إطار نظرية شمولية تدرك مختلف العلاقات القائمة بين الأدب والتواصل، وتفاعل مكونات البنية والنسق التي توجد ضمه ظاهرة التربية عموماً.,,,,,,Revue Brochures Éducatives. n12, 2024 . (shrink)

Ricoeur’s philosophical project can be broadly termed as a philosophical anthropology. Within this context, a main role is given to the issue of imagination through the resources of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and reflexive philosophy. The issue of picture, however, remains quite unknown and has not been much questioned; it might even be undermined by being reduced to the context of reproductive imagination as opposed to that of productive imagination within Ricoeur’s anthropology, and due to the emphasis on the linguistic relationship to (...) sense or meaning. Yet, instead of opposing the plane of picture to the plane of sense or meaning, an articulated connection between those two planes should be sought. The issue of symbolism opened by Ricoeur in his Philosophie de la volonté provides the starting point for our investigation. From that early hermeneutics on to La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, via De l’interprétation. Essai sur Freud, La Métaphore vive, and Temps et récit, one could also consider that picture makes us think. But the issue of symbolism cannot be distinguished from that of imagination. One also has to link two paths of Ricoeur’s philosophy through the issue of symbolism, one that is orientated in the path of hermeneutics – the progression to the standpoint set by Du texte à l’action –, another that links the project of a philosophical anthropology to the fields of art and aesthetics. The research is thus structured around four parts. A first part is focused on the articulated connection between Ricoeur’s philosophy of imagination and philosophical aesthetics by addressing the hermeneutical prospect as the condition for the effectiveness of this connection. Extending this hermeneutical stance, a second part seeks to establish a bond between Ricoeur’s notion of a critical hermeneutics and the issue of picture. A third part, concurrent with the context of a critical hermeneutics, aims to consider imagination as mediating the plane of art and the plane of experience by referring to Ricoeur’s reading of analytic philosophy and, more specifically, analytic philosophy of art. Relying on the previous parts, a fourth part finally addresses the field of film, articulating ontological, narrative, and social layers to a philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)