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140Explaining normativityPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 37 (1): 57-73. 2007.In this reply, I raise some questions about the account of "normativity" given by Joseph Rouse. I discuss the historical form of disputes over normativity in such thinkers as Kelsen and show that the standard issue with these accounts is over the question of whether there is anything added to the normal stream of explanation by the problem of normativity. I suggest that Rouses attempt to avoid the issues that arise with substantive explanatory theories of practices of the kind criticized in The…Read more
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27The Disappearance of Tradition in WeberMidwest Studies in Philosophy 15 (1): 400-424. 1990.In this essay we will consider another basic topic: the problem of the nature of the distinctions between Sitte, Brauch, Wert, Mode, and Recht, on which Weber's discussion relies. These discussions typically involved the untranslatable concept of Sitte, which marks a contrast between practices or customs with normative force and “mere practice.” There is a close parallel to this distinction in American social thought in W. G. Sumner's latinate distinction between the mores and folkways of a soci…Read more
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13The Cambridge Companion to Weber (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2000.Max Weber is indubitably one of the very greatest figures in the history of the social sciences, the source of seminal concepts like 'the Protestant Ethic', 'charisma' and the idea of historical processes of 'rationalization'. But, like his great forebears Adam Smith and Karl Marx, Weber's work always resists easy categorisation. Prominent as a founding father of sociology, Weber has been a major influence in the study of ancient history, religion, economics, law and, more recently, cultural stu…Read more
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4Book Reviews : Social Knowledge: An Essay on the Nature and Limits of Social Science. By Paul Mattick, Jr. London: Hutchinson, 1986. Pp. x + 137. £12.95 (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 18 (4): 582-586. 1988.
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53Normative all the way downStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 36 (2): 419-429. 2005.
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37Jasso's principleSociological Theory 7 (1): 130-134. 1989.When S.C. Dodd concocted the empty formulae for which he is now remembered--as the butt of Sorokin's ridicule--he imagined that he was making a first pass at formulating the laws of social science. Dodd was as serious as Jasso and perhaps a bit more sophisticated and consistent in his choice of philosophical authorities. So one might suppose that Jasso's formulae (1988), which resemble them in certain respects, are subject to the same criticisms. I will argue that Jasso’s formulae are not empty,…Read more
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30What do We Mean by “We”?ProtoSociology 18 139-162. 2003.The analytic philosophy form of the problem of collective intentionality originated with the claim that individual statements of the form “I intend x” cannot add up to a “we intend x” statement. Analytic philosophers from Wilfrid Sellars on have pursued a strategy that construes these sentences as individual tellings of statements whose form is collective. The point of the strategy is to avoid the problematic idea of a real collective subject. This approach creates unusual epistemic problems. Al…Read more
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25Durkheim as a Methodologist Part II - Collective Forces, Causation, and ProbabilityPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 14 (1): 51-71. 1984.
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267Book Reviews : Theoretical Logic in Sociology, Volume 2: The Antinomies of Classical Thought: Marx and Durkheim. BY JEFFREY C. ALEXANDER. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Pp. 564. $39.50 (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 15 (2): 211-216. 1985.The four volume work of which this book is a part has been praised as one of the great monuments of theoretical scholarship in sociology of the century. The praise has come largely from the older generation of students of Parsons and Merton. A great deal of dispraise has come from Alexander's own generation. Alan Sica's (1983) brilliant, biting review of Volume I speaks for many of Alexander's peers. Volume II is likely to be even more controversial. This volume begins the substantive task of th…Read more
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51Social theory without wholesHuman Studies 7 (3-4). 1984.Language is the tradition of nations; each generation describes what it sees, but it uses words transmitted from the past. When a great entity like the British Constitution has continued in connected outward sameness, but hidden inner change, for many ages, every generation inherits a series of inapt words — of maxims once true, but of which the truth is ceasing or has ceased. As a man’s family go on muttering in his maturity incorrect phrases derived from a just observation of his early youth, …Read more
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60Mirror neurons and practices: A response to LizardoJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 37 (3). 2007.Lizardo argues that The Social Theory of Practices is refuted by the discovery of mirror neurons. The book argues that the kind of sameness of tacit mental content assumed by practice theorists such as Bourdieu is fictional, because there is no actual process by which the same mental content can be transmitted. Mirror neurons, Lizardo claims, provide such a mechanism, as they imply that bodily automatisms, which can be understood as the basis of habitus and concepts, can be shared and copied fro…Read more
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29Explaining the NormativePolity. 2010.Normativity is what gives reasons their force, makes words meaningful, and makes rules and laws binding. It is present whenever we use such terms as ‘correct,' ‘ought,' ‘must,' and the language of obligation, responsibility, and logical compulsion. Yet normativists, the philosophers committed to this idea, admit that the idea of a non-causal normative realm and a body of normative objects is spooky. Explaining the Normative is the first systematic, historically grounded critique of normativism. …Read more
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The Search for a Methodology of Social Science (review)Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 19 (2): 391-393. 1988.
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45Book review : Theoretical logic in sociology, volume 4: The modern reconstruction of classical thought: Talcott Parsons. By Jeffrey C. Alexander. Berkeley: University of california press, 1984. Pp. XXV + 530. $39.50 (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 15 (4): 513-522. 1985.
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19Review Essays : The End of Functionalism: Parsons, Merton, and Their Heirs (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 23 (2): 228-228. 1993.
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56Shrinking MertonPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 39 (3): 481-489. 2009.Agassi, Sztompka, Kincaid, and Crothers argue, in various ways, that Merton should not be held responsible for his published views on theory construction, and they provide psychological or strategic explanations for his failure to resolve issues with these views. I argue that this line of defense is unnecessary. A better case for Merton would be that theories in his middle-range sense were a nontechnical alternative solution to the problem of spurious correlation. Middle-range theory was not, ho…Read more
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26Not So Radical HistoricismPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 45 (2): 246-257. 2015.Mark Bevir raises the question of how genealogy, understood as a technique-based radical historicism, and the notion of the contingency of ideas, ground “critique.” His problem is to avoid the relativism of radical historicism in a way that allows for “critique” without appealing to non-radical historicist absolutisms of the kind that ground the notion of false consciousness. He does so by appealing to the notion of motivated irrationality, which he claims avoids the problem of relativism and th…Read more
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25'... a powerful piece of work that deserves to be read widely. It ranges across central concerns in the fields of social theory, political theory, and science studies and engages with the ideas of key classical and contemporary thinkers' - Barry Smart, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth.
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50Where explanation ends: Understanding as the place the spade turns in the social sciencesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (3): 532-538. 2013.Explanations implicitly end with something that makes sense, and begin with something that does not make sense. A statistical relationship, for example, a numerical fact, does not make sense; an explanation of this relationship adds something, such as causal information, which does make sense, and provides an endpoint for the sense-making process. Does social science differ from natural science in this respect? One difference is that in the natural sciences, models are what need ‘‘understanding.…Read more
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31Did Funding Matter to the Development of Research Methods in Sociology? (review)Minerva 36 (1): 69-79. 1998.Review of: A History of Sociological Research Methods in America, 1920-1960, by Jennifer Platt. One might expect a history of research methods in sociology during the 40 years this book examines to deal with such questions as the conceptual preconditions for the statistical techniques employed during the period, the changes in statistical practice, the failure of the effort to measure attitudes in a dramatically more precise way, the failure of the many hopes and expectations of methodologists, …Read more
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55Starting with tacit knowledge, ending with Durkheim? (review)Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (3): 472-476. 2011.
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37Review essays : The end of functionalism: Parsons, Merton, and their HeirsPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 23 (2): 228-228. 1993.
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37Mindblind philosophy of historyJournal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2): 227-236. 2008.Historical explanation after Hempel came to be discussed in terms of a contrast between nomic explanations and rationalizations, and later between cause and narrative. This period can be taken as an historical parenthesis, in which the notion of cause narrowed and the notion of historical understanding as empathic dropped out. In the present philosophical landscape there are different models of cause available, especially in the causal modeling literature, and a revived appreciation, through the…Read more
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