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We live in a time of human paradoxes. Scientific knowledge has
reached a level of sophistication that permits understanding of the
most arcane phenomena and yet religious fundamentalism dominates in
many parts of the world. We witness the emergence of a civil,
liberal constitutionalism in many regions of the world and yet
ethnic violence threatens
This book provides a better understanding of some of the central
puzzles of empirical political science: how does "government"
express will and purpose? How do political institutions come to
have effective causal powers in the administration of policy and
regulation? What accounts for both plasticity and perseverance of
political institutions and practices? And how are we to formulate a
better understanding of the persistence of dysfunctions in
government and public administration - failures to achieve public
goods, the persistence of self-dealing behavior by the actors of
the state, and the apparent ubiquity of corruption even within
otherwise high-functioning governments?
Insights developed in the past two decades by philosophers of the
social sciences can serve to enrich the challenging intellectual
tasks of conceptualizing, investigating, and representing the human
past. Likewise, intimate engagement with the writings of historians
can deepen philosophers' understanding of the task of knowing the
past. This volume brings these perspectives together and considers
fundamental questions, such as: What is historical causation? What
is a large historical structure? How can we best conceptualize
"mentalities" and "identities"? What is involved in understanding
the subjectivity of historical actors? What is involved in arriving
at an economic history of a large region? How are actions and
outcomes related? The arguments touch upon a wide range of
historical topics -- the Chinese and French Revolutions, the
extension of railroads in the nineteenth century, and the
development of agriculture in medieval China.
This volume represents a contribution to the philosophy of
economics with a distinctive point of view -- the contributors have
selected particular areas of economics and have probed these areas
for the philosophical and methodological issues that they raise.
The primary essays are written by philosophers concentrating on
philosophical issues that arise at the level of the everyday
theoretical practice of working economists. Commentary essays are
provided by working economists responding to the philosophical
arguments from the standpoint of their own disciplines. The volume
thus represents something of an experiment' in the philosophy of
science, striving as it does to explore methodological issues
across two research communities. The purpose of the volume is very
specific: to stimulate a discussion of the epistemology and
methodology of economics that works at the level of detail of
existing best practice' in economics today. The contributors have
designed their contributions to stimulate productive conversation
between philosophers and economists on topics in the methodology of
economics.
Insights developed in the past two decades by philosophers of the
social sciences can serve to enrich the challenging intellectual
tasks of conceptualizing, investigating, and representing the human
past. Likewise, intimate engagement with the writings of historians
can deepen philosophers' understanding of the task of knowing the
past. This volume brings these perspectives together and considers
fundamental questions, such as: What is historical causation? What
is a large historical structure? How can we best conceptualize
"mentalities" and "identities"? What is involved in understanding
the subjectivity of historical actors? What is involved in arriving
at an economic history of a large region? How are actions and
outcomes related? The arguments touch upon a wide range of
historical topics -- the Chinese and French Revolutions, the
extension of railroads in the nineteenth century, and the
development of agriculture in medieval China.
We live in a time of human paradoxes. Scientific knowledge has
reached a level of sophistication that permits understanding of the
most arcane phenomena and yet religious fundamentalism dominates in
many parts of the world. We witness the emergence of a civil,
liberal constitutionalism in many regions of the world and yet
ethnic violence threatens the lives and dignity of millions. And we
live in a time of rapid economic and technological advance and yet
several billions of people live in persistent debilitating poverty.
In this book, Daniel Little dissects these paradoxes offering the
clearest perspective on how best to approach international
development. Using both empirical and philosophical approaches,
Little provides a schematic acquaintance with the most important
facts about global development at the turn of the twentieth
century. In doing so, he explores what appear to be the most
relevant moral principles and insights that ought to be invoked as
we consider these facts and then draws conclusions about what sorts
of values and goals ought to guide economic development in the
twenty-first century. Reviews
This volume represents a contribution to the philosophy of
economics with a distinctive point of view -- the contributors have
selected particular areas of economics and have probed these areas
for the philosophical and methodological issues that they raise.
The primary essays are written by philosophers concentrating on
philosophical issues that arise at the level of the everyday
theoretical practice of working economists. Commentary essays are
provided by working economists responding to the philosophical
arguments from the standpoint of their own disciplines. The volume
thus represents something of an experiment' in the philosophy of
science, striving as it does to explore methodological issues
across two research communities. The purpose of the volume is very
specific: to stimulate a discussion of the epistemology and
methodology of economics that works at the level of detail of
existing best practice' in economics today. The contributors have
designed their contributions to stimulate productive conversation
between philosophers and economists on topics in the methodology of
economics.
This book provides a better understanding of some of the central
puzzles of empirical political science: how does "government"
express will and purpose? How do political institutions come to
have effective causal powers in the administration of policy and
regulation? What accounts for both plasticity and perseverance of
political institutions and practices? And how are we to formulate a
better understanding of the persistence of dysfunctions in
government and public administration - failures to achieve public
goods, the persistence of self-dealing behavior by the actors of
the state, and the apparent ubiquity of corruption even within
otherwise high-functioning governments?
Systems Factorial Technology: A Theory Driven Methodology for the
Identification of Perceptual and Cognitive Mechanisms explores the
theoretical and methodological tools used to investigate
fundamental questions central to basic psychological and perceptual
processes. Such processes include detection, identification,
classification, recognition, and decision-making. This book
collects the tools that allow researchers to deal with the
pervasive model mimicry problems which exist in standard
experimental and theoretical paradigms and includes novel
applications to not only basic psychological questions, but also
clinical diagnosis and links to neuroscience. Researchers can use
this book to begin using the methodology behind SFT and to get an
overview of current uses and future directions. The collected
developments and applications of SFT allow us to peer inside the
human mind and provide strong constraints on psychological theory.
Philosophy matters for the social sciences. Our world faces ever
more complex and hazardous problems and, social science ontology
and methods need to be adequate to the changing nature of the
social realm. Imagination and new ways of thinking are crucial to
the social sciences. Based on Daniel Little's popular blog, this
book provides an accessible introduction to the latest developments
and debates in the philosophy of social science. Each chapter
addresses a leading issue in the philosophy of the social sciences
today. Little advocates for an 'actor-centred sociology', endorsing
the idea of meso-level causation and proposing a solution to the
problem of 'mechanisms or powers?'. The book draws significant
conclusions from the facts of complexity and heterogeneity in the
social world. The book develops a series of arguments that serve to
provide a new framework for the philosophy of social science
through deep engagement with social scientists and philosophers in
the field. Topics covered include: - the heterogeneity and
plasticity of the social world; - the complexity of social
causation; - the nuts and bolts of causal mechanisms; - the
applicability of the theory of causal powers to the social world; -
the intellectual coherence of the perspective of scientific realism
in application to social science.
"The Scientific Marx "was first published in 1986. Minnesota
Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable
books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the
original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Marx advanced "Capital " to the public as a scientific
explanation of the capitalist economy, intending it to be evaluated
by ordinary standards of scientific adequacy. Today, however, most
commentators emphasize Marx's humanism or his theory of historical
materialism over his scientific claims. "The Scientific Marx "thus
represents a break with many current views of Marx's analysis of
capitalism in that it takes seriously his claim that "Capital " is
a rigorous scientific investigation of the capitalist mode of
production. Daniel Little discusses the main features of Marx's
account, applying the tools of contemporary philosophy of
science.He analyzes Marx's views on theory and explanation in the
social sciences, the logic of Marx's empirical practices, the
relation between "Capital "and historical materialism, the
centrality of micro-foundations in Marx's analysis, and the minimal
role that dialectics plays in his scientific method. Throughout,
Little relies on "evidence taken from Marx's actual practice as a
social scientist rather than from his explicit methodological
writings." The book contributes to current controversies in the
literature of "analytic Marxism" joined by such authors as Jon
Elster, G.A. Cohen, and John Roemer.
Evil is sometimes thought to be incomprehensible and abnormal,
falling outside of familiar historical and human processes. And yet
the twentieth century was replete with instances of cruelty on a
massive scale, including systematic torture, murder, and
enslavement of ordinary, innocent human beings. These overwhelming
atrocities included genocide, totalitarianism, the Holocaust, and
the Holodomor. This Element underlines the importance of careful,
truthful historical investigation of the complicated realities of
dark periods in human history; the importance of understanding
these events in terms that give attention to the human experience
of the people who were subject to them and those who perpetrated
them; the question of whether the idea of 'evil' helps us to
confront these periods honestly; and the possibility of improving
our civilization's resilience in the face of the impulses towards
cruelty to other human beings that have so often emerged.
Philosophy matters for the social sciences. Our world faces ever
more complex and hazardous problems and, social science ontology
and methods need to be adequate to the changing nature of the
social realm. Imagination and new ways of thinking are crucial to
the social sciences. Based on Daniel Little's popular blog, this
book provides an accessible introduction to the latest developments
and debates in the philosophy of social science. Each chapter
addresses a leading issue in the philosophy of the social sciences
today. Little advocates for an 'actor-centred sociology', endorsing
the idea of meso-level causation and proposing a solution to the
problem of 'mechanisms or powers?'. The book draws significant
conclusions from the facts of complexity and heterogeneity in the
social world. The book develops a series of arguments that serve to
provide a new framework for the philosophy of social science
through deep engagement with social scientists and philosophers in
the field. Topics covered include: - the heterogeneity and
plasticity of the social world; - the complexity of social
causation; - the nuts and bolts of causal mechanisms; - the
applicability of the theory of causal powers to the social world; -
the intellectual coherence of the perspective of scientific realism
in application to social science.
In this innovative book, Daniel Little compares the positions of
various social scientists regarding debates in China studies.
Little focuses on four topics: the relative importance of
individual rationality and community values in explaining
traditional peasant behavior; the role of marketing and
transportation systems in Chinese society; the causes of
agricultural stagnation in traditional China; and the reasons for
peasant rebellions in Qing China. He not only makes a constructive
contribution to these controversies but also provides examples of
the diversity of social science research.
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