{"title":"Do We Have to Choose Between Different Concepts of Social Structure? A Comparative Analysis of Approaches and Ideas From Nigel Pleasants, Douglas V. Porpora, and David Easton","authors":"Mikael Rundqvist","doi":"10.1177/00483931241280716","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241280716","url":null,"abstract":"This study of three different approaches to social structure finds Pleasants’s ideas for the use of different concepts of social structure intriguing but based on an untenable view about the possibility to discern an empirical modality. Porpora’s approach is based on the idea that the relational concept of social structure cannot be bypassed, ontologically speaking. Easton’s idea is to apply the two relational concepts of higher-order and lower-order structure. Relational structures are also salient in the specific scholarly debate studied, which strengthens the idea that it is this concept of social structure that we primarily should focus on.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":"68 1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142205806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review Essay: Limits of the Numerical and the Personalized Measurement Trend in Mental Health Care","authors":"Nina S. de Boer, Rosa W. Runhardt","doi":"10.1177/00483931241255255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241255255","url":null,"abstract":"Limits of the Numerical calls for the (re)contextualization of the numerical in the social domain and emphasizes that using quantitative data has epistemic and practical/moral considerations that may not align. In this review essay, we evaluate these claims using a case study, viz. the personalized, clinical experience sampling method (ESM) in mental health care. This case study (1) nuances claims made in Limits of the Numerical regarding the generality and non-contextuality of numerical data, and (2) highlights two additional dimensions to the numerical that have been underexposed in the book (i.e., reactivity and Ballung concepts).","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141194473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Instrumentalism in the Social and Moral Sciences","authors":"Michael Moehler","doi":"10.1177/00483931241256019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241256019","url":null,"abstract":"This article responds to recent criticism regarding the application of consequentialism and rational choice theory in the social and moral sciences. It clarifies the limited scope of the presented criticism and its overly simplistic view of social scientific inquiry that, together, lead to the presentation of an argument that claims more than it warrants. Moreover, I argue that the criticism overlooks one of the most important uses of instrumentalism in moral theory that may be considered the most challenging case for the application of rational choice theory.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141151186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Concepts in Context: Ontological Coherence in Political Science Research","authors":"Moritz S. Graefrath, Marcel Jahn","doi":"10.1177/00483931241254514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241254514","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":"2019 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141059391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: A Way Through the Global Techno-Scientific Culture","authors":"Alcibiades Malapi-Nelson","doi":"10.1177/00483931241248823","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241248823","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140928485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jienian Zhang, Colter Uscola, Seth Abrutyn, Anna S. Mueller
{"title":"Phenomenology, Cultural Meaning, and the Curious Case of Suicide: Localizing the Structure-culture Dialectic","authors":"Jienian Zhang, Colter Uscola, Seth Abrutyn, Anna S. Mueller","doi":"10.1177/00483931241246069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241246069","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":"54 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140600022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Science and Technology Studies Challenge to Trustworthiness Criteria: Toward a More Naturalistic Approach","authors":"Rahman Sharifzadeh","doi":"10.1177/00483931241245931","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241245931","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":"54 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140600095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Unintended Consequences and the Social Sciences: An Intellectual History","authors":"Kei Yoshida","doi":"10.1177/00483931241231022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241231022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140156680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Cold War Social Science: Transnational Entanglements","authors":"Jialu Xie","doi":"10.1177/00483931241238256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241238256","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140073861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Historical Kinds in the Social World","authors":"Muhammad Ali Khalidi","doi":"10.1177/00483931241228906","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241228906","url":null,"abstract":"This paper makes a distinction between ahistorical causal-functional kinds and historical kinds, which include both type- and token-historical kinds, some of which are “copied kinds.” After showing how these distinctions play out in various social sciences, a number of reasons are put forward for the historical individuation of some social kinds. As in the natural sciences, historical individuation in the social sciences can enable us to infer common causes, explain synchronic causal properties, and discover exceptions to causal regularities, among other epistemic aims.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139945559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}