Contemporary Philosophy and Social Science: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue

Description

How should we theorize about the social world? How can we integrate theories, models and approaches from seemingly incompatible disciplines? Does theory affect social reality? This state-of-the-art collection addresses contemporary methodological questions and interdisciplinary developments in the philosophy of social science. Facilitating a mutually enriching dialogue, chapters by leading social scientists are followed by critical evaluations from philosophers of social science. This exchange showcases recent major theoretical and methodological breakthroughs and challenges in the social sciences, as well as fruitful ways in which the analytic tools developed in philosophy of science can be applied to understand these advancements. The volume covers a diverse range of principles, methods, innovations and applications, including scientific and methodological pluralism, performativity of theories, causal inferences and applications of social science to policy and business. Taking a practice-orientated and interactive approach, it offers a new philosophy of social science grounded in and relevant to the emerging social science practice. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Contents Illustrations Contributors Preface Introduction Methods Results Discussion How to Use This Book Part One The Plurality of Approaches, Disciplines, and Theories 1 Integration and the Disunity of the Social Sciences 1.1 Introduction 1.2 The Unity of the Social Sciences: A Failed Project 1.3 Explanations of Crowds 1.3.1 Crowd Psychology: Imitation and Contagion 1.3.2 Rational Choice: Unintended and Intended Crowd Formation 1.3.3 Network Science and the Ecology of Crowd Formation 1.4 Diversity of Explanatory Tools and the Integration of Theories 1.4.1 Fields in the Social Sciences as Explanatory Toolkits 1.4.2 Integration and Pluralism 1.5 Naturalism as an Integrative Stance 1.6 Conclusion Commentary: Plurality and Pluralisms for the Social Sciences 1. Plurality and Pluralism 2. Varieties of Philosophical Pluralism 3. Crowd Formation and Methodological Pluralism 4. On the Integrative Stance: From Plurality to Pluralism, and Back 2 The Eroding Artificial-Natural Distinction? 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The Artificial-Natural Distinction? 2.3 Disciplinary Purity and the Artificial-Natural Distinction 2.3.1 Ecology and Nonhuman Nature 2.3.2 Economics and Human Society 2.3.3 Bringing Things Together 2.4 Case Studies of Entangled Phenomena 2.4.1 Biodiversity: Urban Ecology and Biogeography 2.4.2 Invasive Species in Yellowstone National Park 2.5 Conclusion Commentary: Toward a Philosophy and Methodology for Interdisciplinary Research 1. Introduction 2. The Artificial-Natural Distinction 3. Methodology of Interdisciplinary Science 4. Conclusion 3 Team Agency and Conditional Games 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Equilibium Selection and Team Reasoning 3.3 Conditional Game Theory and Social Agency 3.4 Conclusion Commentary: Explaining Prosocial Behavior: Team Reasoning or Social Influence? 1. Social Preferences and the Explanation of Prosocial Behavior 2. Comparison a. Explanatory Power b. Explanatory Potential c. Agent Properties 3. Conclusion: Team Agency Part Two From Methodological Choice to Methodological Mix 4 The Methodologies of Behavioral Econometrics 4.1 Best-Practice Econometric Methods 4.1.1 Non-Structural Methods 4.1.2 Structural Methods 4.2 Behavioral Econometrics and Behavioral Welfare Economics 4.2.1 Risk Preferences 4.2.2 Welfare Evaluation 4.2.3 The Welfare Metric 4.2.4 Welfare Evaluation 4.2.5 What Should the Normative Welfare Metric Be 4.3 The Many Applications of Joint Estimation 4.3.1 Time Preferences 4.3.2 Subjective Probabilities 4.3.3 Intertemporal Risk Preferences 4.3.4 Social Preferences 4.3.5 A General Lesson 4.4 Just Read the Literature: A Case Study of CPT 4.5 There Is a Reason We Compute Likelihoods: A Case Study of the PH 4.6 Point Estimates Are Not Data: A Case Study of Source Dependence 4.7 Conclusion: Where Are the Methodologists? Commentary: Reflections on Decision Research and Its Empiricism: Four Comments Inspired by Harrison 1. Intuitions of Theorists 2. Estranged Siblings 3. All the Horses Are Dead, Long Live the Horse Race 4. Do as Theorists Say (Not as Empiricists Do) 5 Reasons for Using Mixed Methods in the Evaluation of Complex Projects 5.1 Introduction 5.2 The Complementary Strengths and Weaknesses of Different Methodological Approaches 5.3 Understanding Impact Trajectories 5.4 Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods into “Complex” Project Evaluations 5.5 Assessing the External Validity of Complex Interventions 5.5.1 Causal Density18 5.5.2 Implementation Capability 5.5.3 “Reasoned Expectation” 5.6 Conclusion Commentary: Why Mixed Methods Are Necessary for Evaluating Any Policy 1. Introduction 2. The Two Approaches 3. The Intervention-Centered Approach 4. The Three Problems i. The Long View Problem ii. The Donald Davidson Problem iii. The Concatenation Problem 5. Lessons from the Three Problems 6. When Does the Intervention-Centered Approach “Work”? 7. Voodoo 8. The Context-Centered Approach 9. Conclusion 6 From an Individual to a Holistic Lens: Reassessing Marketing Models to Deliver Impact 6.1 Introduction 6.1.1 Marketing Needs a New Theoretical Starting Point to Deliver Bigger Impact 6.2 Status Quo: Today’s Marketing Landscape 6.2.1 The Research Tools That Are Used to Gain Insight into Consumers’ Needs and Motivations Are Often Asking the Wrong Questio 6.2.2 The Models That Are Built to Map Consumer Behavior Assume That the Human Experience Is Atomizable 6.2.3 The Expectations for How Consumer Understanding Can Be Used to Guide Marketing Activities Are Self-limiting 6.3 Moving Beyond the Cartesian Worldview 6.4 Building Holistic Marketing Models 6.4.1 The World 6.4.2 The Aspects 6.4.3 The Mood 6.4.4 The Meaning 6.5 Implications for the Practice of Marketing 6.5.1 The Research Tools: Consumer Behavior Needs to Be Studied in Context 6.5.2 The Role of Brands in an Age of “Co-ownership”: Marketers Need to Think about the World in Which Their Brands Belong, in 6.5.3 The Role of Consumer Understanding in Business Strategy: Insights into the World of the Consumer Should Drive Decision-ma 6.6 Case Study: Holistic Framework Applied to Running Commentary: Unity and Disunity in Consumer Behavior Research Attilia Ruzzene 1. Ex uno plures 2. Ex pluribus unum 3. Plurality within Unity 7 The Fish Tank Complex of Social Modeling 7.1 A Change of Speed 7.2 The Spatial Framing of Collective Modeling 7.3 The Shortcomings of the Micro-Macro Divide 7.4 Versions 7.5 The Example of the Law Factory 7.6 Everything Needs to Change, so Everything Can Stay the Same Commentary: Versioning and Structural Change 1 The Micro-Macro Distinction 2 Representations of What? 3 The Difficulty of Modeling Structural Change 4 Conclusion 8 Social Statistics Using Strategic Structuralism and Pluralism 8.1 Introduction 8.1 Strategic Structuralism 8.1.1 Inductive, Deductive, Retroductive, and Abductive 8.1.2 A Little Background on Realism in Social Science 8.2 Realist Statistics: Simple Examples 8.3 Latent Variable Regression Models 8.4 Criteria for Validity of Research Arguments 8.5 Additional Use of Statistical Tests in Surprising Places 8.6 Conclusions Acknowledgments Commentary: Heterogeneity, Plasticity, and Mechanisms: Comments on Olsen Heterogeneity and Plasticity Critical Realism Methodological Pluralism Conclusion Part Three Explanation, Theorizing, Performativity 9 Causal Mechanisms and Qualitative Causal Inference in the Social Sciences 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Process Tracing 9.3 Causation as Intervention and the RCM 9.4 Process Tracing with Invariant Causal Mechanisms 9.5 Conclusion Commentary: An Alternative Hypothesis about Process Tracing: Comments on “Causal Mechanisms and Qualitative Causal Inference i 1. Introduction 2. Is Process Tracing a Method for Inferring Unit Causation? 3. An Alternative Hypothesis 10 How to Theorize? On the Changing Role and Meaning of Theory in the Social Sciences 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Classical Sociology 10.3 First Phase of Postwar Sociology 10.4 Second Phase of Postwar Sociology 10.5 Contemporary Sociology 10.6 Conclusion Commentary: Social Theory and Underdetermination: A Philosophical History and Reconstruction 1 The Project of Behavioral Science 2 The Next Stage 11 Assembling Economic Actors: Time-varying Rates and the New Electricity Consumer 11.1 Introduction 11.2 Economics and Dynamic Pricing for Electricity 11.3 Explaining the Emergent Price Regime 11.4 AMI Rate Cases 11.5 Price System as Political Accommodation 11.6 Assembling the Consumer 11.7 The Electricity Consumer as a Scientific Construction 11.8 Conclusion Commentary: Assembling the Economic Actors 1. Performativity: An Ontological Perspective 2. From Ontology to Methodology 3. Conclusion Index