Explanation In Social Sciences Research Articles

Mechanistic explanations in the cognitive social sciences: Lessons from three case studies

Discussions of the relations between the social sciences and the cognitive sciences have proliferated in recent years. Our article contributes to the philosophical and methodological foundations of the cognitive social sciences by proposing a framework based on contemporary mechanistic approaches to the philosophy of science to analyze the epistemological, ontological and methodological aspects of research programs at the intersection of the social sciences and the cognitive sciences. We apply this framework to three case studies which address the phenomena of social coordination, transactive memory, and ethnicity. We also assess how successful these research programs have been in providing mechanistic explanations for these phenomena, and where more work remains to be done.

The cultural wantons of the new millennium

AbstractIn Culture and Agency (1988/1996, CUP), I made the distinction between the ‘Cultural System’ (C.S.), that is all items logged into the universal cultural archive, and ‘Socio‐Cultural’ (S‐C) interaction, namely how we persuade others to accept our views. The two are distinct; but any adequate explanation in social science involving ‘culture’ must respect this distinction and needs must come in a SAC, namely always entailing ‘Structure’, ‘Agency’ and ‘Culture’. Although not accepting that culture (C.S) was or is ever fully coherent or shared by definition, I charter a precipitous decline in its free accessibility as part of the Commons everywhere, but most markedly when and where morphogenesis predominates today – adding new variety to the (C.S.) and fostering divergent (S‐C) aims. Together, their ideational opportunism greatly augments Fake News as opponents lock in conflict, particularly when social integration is already low. Such Fake News is especially harmful to personal and collective Reflexivity and the ‘data smog’ of social media induces a ‘presentism’ that generates cultural wantons (Harry Frankfurt's term) amongst both those lying and in receipt of their lies.

Personality, (NEURO) Trust and LMX in Information Apportionment

Neuromanagement has evolved into a full-fledged enterprise of consilience; an attempt to not only test and bridge, but truly unify natural science and social science explanations of human behaviour (Wilson, 1998; Glimcher and Rustichini, 2004; Rangel, Camerer and Montague, 2008). This paper presents an empirical approach to neuro - based information sharing dynamics via personality, (neuro) trust and LMX. The Big Five Inventory matrix has been adopted to test the phenomenon. A neuro – based pathway has been projected. A symbiotic relational model has been arrived at.

Does Philosophy Require De-Transcendentalization? Habermas, Apel, and the Role of Transcendentals in Philosophical Discourse and Social-Scientific Explanation

The heritage of transcendental philosophy, and more specifically its viability when it comes to the problematic of the philosophy of social sciences, has been a key point of dissensus between Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel. Whereas Apel has explicitly aimed at a transcendental-pragmatic transformation of philosophy, Habermas has consequently insisted that his formal pragmatics, and the theory of communicative action which is erected upon it, radically de-transcendentalizes the subject. In a word, the disagreement concerns whether transcendental entities have any substantial role to play in philosophical discourse and social-scientific explanations. My aim is to reconstruct how Apel establishes a connection between transcendentals, qua the ideal communicative community and the possibility of non-objectifying self-reflection. As I shall demonstrate, the principles that transcendental pragmatics sees as underlying social actions are not to be understood in a strictly judicial way, as “supernorms.” Rather, they should be conceptualized and used as a means for action regulation and mutual action coordination. Against this backdrop, I show that the concept of the ideal community provides the necessary underpinnings for Habermas’ schema of validity claims and the project of reconstructive sciences.

The ethical, legal and social implications of using artificial intelligence systems in breast cancer care

Breast cancer care is a leading area for development of artificial intelligence (AI), with applications including screening and diagnosis, risk calculation, prognostication and clinical decision-support, management planning, and precision medicine. We review the ethical, legal and social implications of these developments. We consider the values encoded in algorithms, the need to evaluate outcomes, and issues of bias and transferability, data ownership, confidentiality and consent, and legal, moral and professional responsibility. We consider potential effects for patients, including on trust in healthcare, and provide some social science explanations for the apparent rush to implement AI solutions. We conclude by anticipating future directions for AI in breast cancer care. Stakeholders in healthcare AI should acknowledge that their enterprise is an ethical, legal and social challenge, not just a technical challenge. Taking these challenges seriously will require broad engagement, imposition of conditions on implementation, and pre-emptive systems of oversight to ensure that development does not run ahead of evaluation and deliberation. Once artificial intelligence becomes institutionalised, it may be difficult to reverse: a proactive role for government, regulators and professional groups will help ensure introduction in robust research contexts, and the development of a sound evidence base regarding real-world effectiveness. Detailed public discussion is required to consider what kind of AI is acceptable rather than simply accepting what is offered, thus optimising outcomes for health systems, professionals, society and those receiving care.

Conceptualizing contexts or contextualizing concepts? On some issues of the modeling of relational spaces in the study of collective action

ABSTRACT The growing attention paid to the relational spaces of collective action is good news. It owes a lot to the legacy of interactionism and allows us to more accurately grasp the relevant contexts of protest that cannot be subsumed solely under big contexts such as political opportunity structure, economy, and so on. One can however worry about the never-ending succession of paradigms – more often acronyms – in the subfield of social movement studies. ‘Context’ issues are in fact linked to the very status of explanation in social sciences, and to the unequal nomological (or conversely more historical) ambitions of social sciences – a debate that is far from being settled. This article insists on this underlying epistemological debate, before highlighting different aspects of what is at stake in the way relational contexts of collective action should be considered: relational understanding of strategies, the link between mobilizations and transformations in and between social spaces, and the role and types of differentiation of society. Here, the classical (but barely translated) work of Michel Dobry appears as particularly useful in order to better understand contexts, if we consider them at the same time through interactions and the differentiation of society. But far from pleading for a new magic bullet, the article intends to support a more historically contextualized approach of social movements that is less interested in the establishment of laws than the understanding of the consequences of specific forms of social differentiations. This understanding could ultimately lead to a good definition of what relevant context of collective action might be.

Gametes as embodied capital: perceptions on self-pricing reproductive biocommodities

The exchange of gametes has polarized and captivated the attention of biomedical practitioners, policy stakeholders, ethicists, and the general public alike. Studies have thoroughly explored the unique histories of this industry, its economies, legal statutes that influence clinical practice, motivating factors of donors, as well as debates on differentiating donor, offspring, and family rights from each other. This mixed-method study refocuses the analytical lens to examine the perceptions and decision-making processes of individual willingness to participate in gamete exchange networks in the United States for procreative or research purposes. Analyses revealed that individuals engage in a form of self-biocommodification, where ascribed values of gametes are explained as embodied capital and rationalized by Western biomedical explanatory models of genetics and reproduction. This work contributes to social scientific explanations of biocommodification while providing new points of departure in reconceptualizing science and technology studies through the perspectives of potential actors in gamete exchange networks.

Institutional-Political Scenarios for Anthropocene Society

Natural scientists have proposed that humankind has entered a new geologic epoch. Termed the “Anthropocene,” this new reality revolves around the central role of human activity in multiple Earth ecosystems. That challenge requires a rethinking of social science explanations of organization and environment relationships. In this article, we discuss the need to politicize institutional theory as a means understanding “Anthropocene Society,” and in turn what that resultant society means for the Anthropocene in the natural environment. We modify the constitutive elements of institutional orders and a set of main change mechanisms to explore three scenarios around which future Anthropocene Societies might be built—Collapsing Systems, Market Rules, and Cultural Re-Enlightenment. Simultaneously, we use observations from the Anthropocene to expose limitations in present institutional theory and propose extensions to remedy them. Overall, this article challenges organizational scholars to consider a new paradigm under which research in environmental sustainability and social sustainability takes place.

Culture and choice: Toward integrating cultural sociology with the judgment and decision-making sciences

Cultural sociologists frequently theorize about choices and decisions, although we tend to shy away from this language, and from concepts that are used by the judgment and decision-making (JDM) sciences. We show that cultural sociology and JDM are compatible and complementary fields by dispelling some common misunderstandings about JDM. We advocate for a strategic assimilation approach in which cultural sociologists are able to translate their work into key JDM terms like beliefs, preferences, and endowments. Learning to speak the JDM language will allow cultural sociologists to make important, and uniquely sociological, contributions to social scientific explanations of choices and decisions.

Killing Fields: Explaining Police Violence against Persons of Color

AbstractThis concluding article situates the police violence against persons of color in an historical context, suggesting that the current wave of killings replicates historical trends. A social science explanation is proposed to better understand the antecedents and consequences of police violence. A major strength of the articles in this volume is their delineation of causes of police violence and their consequences. The underlying and recurring explanation for police violence is stereotypical racial attitudes and their behavioral consequences. Effects of police violence extend beyond immediate victims to include communities of color. Comparisons with European police suggest that while lethal actions by police in Europe are far fewer, patterns of brutality and its justification mirror the U.S. context. The problem of police violence against persons of color is multidimensional and complex. This article concludes that there is no easy overarching solution or “fix” to this violence. Rather, each facet must be carefully examined—as this volume has done—and approaches focused on causes and consequences of specific problems should be developed and pursued.

Debating the Reality of Race, Caste, and Ethnicity

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.

Explanation, Prediction, Causation – An Unholy Trinity? Appreciative Comments on The Philosophy and Methods of Political Science

In this short but critical appreciation of Keith Dowding’s seminal Philosophy and Methods in Political Science I reflect on the distinctive treatment of both realism and explanation in contemporary political science that its author offers, expressing rather more sympathy for the former than the latter. I welcome his critique of the use and misuse of ‘isms’ in much of the existing literature, while pointing to some potential inconsistencies; I accept his broad and inclusive understanding of philosophic realism; and I praise Dowding for putting the question of explanation – and its adequacy – at the heart of the philosophy of political science (where I think it belongs). Yet I reject the idea that prediction is, or indeed, should be central to all social scientific explanation. Similarly, I take issue with the contention that we are typically distracted by questions of causation, suggesting that the presentation of a ‘credibly causal’ narrative is the crux of adjudicating good from bad explanation. I explore the implications of such a position and conclude with comments on Dowding’s call for the reproducibility and transparency of data.

Conceptualizing Archetypal Anthropocene Societies: An Institutional Framework

Natural scientists have proposed that humankind has entered a new geologic epoch. Termed the “Anthropocene,” this new reality revolves around the central role of human activity in multiple Earth ecosystems. That challenge requires a rethinking of social science explanations of organization and environment relationships. In this article, we discuss the need to politicize institutional theory as a means understanding “Anthropocene Society,” and in turn what that resultant society means for the Anthropocene in the natural environment. We modify the constitutive elements of institutional orders and a set of main change mechanisms to explore three scenarios around which future Anthropocene Societies might be built – Collapsing Systems, Market Rules, and Cultural Re-Enlightenment. Simultaneously, we use observations from the Anthropocene to expose limitations in present institutional theory and propose extensions to remedy them. Overall, this article challenges organizational scholars to consider a new paradigm under which research in environmental sustainability and social sustainability takes place.

: (Transformation Models of Explanation in the Social Sciences: The Utopian Imagination as a Resource for Sociological Theorizing)

Russian Abstract: В работе проводится анализ и развитие объяснительного потенциала понятия «утопическое воображение», различение между эпистемическим и нормативным измерениями утопии. Рассматриваются исследовательские программы, в которых отрицание принципа ценностной нейтральности квалифицируется как утопическая практика в нормативном смысле, класс утопий, которые выстраивают связи между социальным порядком и природой человека (антропологические утопии), а также связь между утопическим воображением и собственно социологическим стилем мышления. Выделяются устойчивые характеристики утопического воображения, которые объединяют эпистемическое и нормативное измерения утопии: критицизм, имажинативность, универсализм, конструктивизм, трансцендентизм, отрицание повседневности. Осуществляется концептуализация понятия «утопическое воображение» в качестве общего элемента конкурирующих моделей объяснения социального порядка. С использованием концепции гетеротопии производится описание случая - пример этнографического музея. На основании рассмотрения вопроса о возможности повседневной морали демонстрируется, что люди при выполнении своей практической деятельности также опираются на ресурсы воображения. Обосновывается существование различных типов повседневного воображения.English Abstract: The paper analyzes the development and potential explanatory concept of "utopian imagination", the distinction between epistemic and normative dimensions of utopia. We consider the research programs in which the negation of the principle of neutrality of the value qualifies as a utopian practice in a normative sense, the class of Utopias that build links between the social order and human nature (anthropological utopia), and the relationship between the utopian imagination and the actual sociological thinking style. Are allocated resistant characteristics of utopian imagination that combine epistemic and normative measurement utopia: criticism, imazhinativnost, Universalism, Constructivism, transcendentism, denial of everyday life. Implemented conceptualization of the concept of "utopian imagination" as a generic element of competing models explaining social order. Using the concept of heterotopia made a case report - example of the ethnographic museum. Based on the consideration of the possibility of everyday morality it demonstrates that people in the performance of their practice and rely on the resources of the imagination. Substantiates the existence of various types of everyday imagination.

Components and process in social science explanation: is there a role for Yin-Yang balancing

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to consider the proposal by Peter Li about developing an inclusive research paradigm bringing together eastern and western research approaches; and second, to make a proposal for a division of labor in this endeavor.Design/methodology/approachLiterature review and consideration of opposing intellectual traditions and their origins.FindingsIf the western approach was to deal with structures and institutions, and the eastern approach was to deal with process, then some progress might be possible toward a valuable fusion. But there may be sociological as well as intellectual reasons why this would be difficult.Research limitations/implicationsAs it is a commentary there are no specific limitations except for what can be covered in the space available.Practical implicationsIf the proposal can be made to bear fruit the chances of much greater East-West collaboration in research are higher.Social implicationsThe reduction of friction and non-cooperation between intellectual traditions.Originality/valueThe “process” suggestion is new in this form.

Lines of Demarcation: Causation, Design-Based Inference, and Historical Research

Qualitative historical knowledge is essential for validating natural experiments. Specifically, the validity of a natural experiment depends on the historical processes of treatment assignment and administration, including broader macro-historical dynamics. But if validating a natural experiment requires trust in the ability of qualitative evidence to establish the causal processes through which the data were generated, there is no good reason for natural experiments to be considered epistemically superior to historical research. To the contrary, the epistemic status of natural experiments is on a par with that of the historical research on which their validation depends. They are two modes of social-scientific explanation, each with its own pros and cons; neither is privileged. We illustrate this argument by re-examining an important recent contribution to the literature on violent conflict: Ferwerda and Miller’s 2014 natural experiment estimating the causal effect of the German decision to devolve authority to the Vichy French government on violent resistance during World War II.

Laws and explanation in social sciences

Laws and explanation in social sciences

Moral Accounting as Field Foundation in an Early Modern Empire: The English East India Company in the Late Eighteenth Century

Field analysis and the relational approach to historical social-scientific explanation of which it is an instance – helps illuminate the administrative dynamics of empires. While most studies of imperial dynamics emphasize the ‘high imperialism’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this article extends field analysis to a crucial case from the second half of the eighteenth century: the English East India Company's transition from a (largely) merchant trading company to a territorial power. In this disordered space of administration, officials struggling with one another for metropolitan recognition provided moral accounts of themselves which, on the one hand, explained their behaviour in terms drawn from abstract, purportedly universal social spaces, and, on the other hand, claimed credibility through a personal ‘interest in disinterest’. I argue that these moral accounts helped delimit the boundaries of and shape the dynamics within a distinctively imperial administrative field. To analyse this transformation, I suggest a synthesis of three varieties of relational analysis: Bourdieu's field theory, Fligstein and McAdam's analysis of strategic action fields, and Padgett and Powell's work on network folding and robust action.

How to define levels of explanation and evaluate their indispensability

Some explanations in social science, psychology and biology belong to a higher level than other explanations. And higher explanations possess the virtue of abstracting away from the details of lower explanations, many philosophers argue. As a result, these higher explanations are irreplaceable. And this suggests that there are genuine higher laws or patterns involving social, psychological and biological states. I show that this ‘abstractness argument’ is really an argument schema, not a single argument. This is because the argument uses the ‘is lower than’ relation, and this relation admits of different readings. I then suggest four rigorous definitions of the ‘is lower than’ relation, and show that the abstractness argument’s prospects are much brighter for some of these definitions than for others. To show this, I evaluate the so-called ‘disjunctive threat’ to the abstractness argument.

Moral accounting as field foundation in an early modern empire: the English East India Company in the late eighteenth century

Field analysis and the relational approach to historical social-scientific explanation of which it is an instance – helps illuminate the administrative dynamics of empires. While most studies of imperial dynamics emphasize the ‘high imperialism’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this article extends field analysis to a crucial case from the second half of the eighteenth century: the English East India Company's transition from a (largely) merchant trading company to a territorial power. In this disordered space of administration, officials struggling with one another for metropolitan recognition provided moral accounts of themselves which, on the one hand, explained their behaviour in terms drawn from abstract, purportedly universal social spaces, and, on the other hand, claimed credibility through a personal ‘interest in disinterest’. I argue that these moral accounts helped delimit the boundaries of and shape the dynamics within a distinctively imperial administrative field. To analyse this transformation, I suggest a synthesis of three varieties of relational analysis: Bourdieu's field theory, Fligstein and McAdam's analysis of strategic action fields, and Padgett and Powell's work on network folding and robust action.