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44The origins of 'mainstream sociology' and other issues in the history of american sociologySocial Epistemology 8 (1). 1994.The writing of history typically involves opinions that cannot be established by historical evidence. This 'involvement' takes two main forms: first, the intimation of evaluative opinions is often the point of historical narratives; and second, as Weber maintained, opinion plays a constitutive role-the identification of historical objects, of explanatory problems, and perhaps even the selection of solutions to these problems is governed by opinions or commitments that cannot be proven historical…Read more
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64Tradition and cognitive science: Oakeshott’s undoing of the Kantian mindPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 33 (1): 53-76. 2003.In this discussion, the author asks the question if Oakeshott’s famous depiction of a practice might be understood in relation to contemporary cognitive science, in particular connectionism (the contemporary cognitive science approach concerned with the problem of skills and skilled knowing) and in terms of the now conventional view of "normativity" in Anglo-American philosophy. The author suggests that Oakeshott meant to contrast practices to an alternative "Kantian" model of a shared tacit men…Read more
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31Rationality todaySociological Theory 9 (2): 191-194. 1991.We come to the finding of the sociology of scientific knowledge that all rationality is local, dependent on local customs and practices, shaped by the contingencies of history. Either this claim or that of the rational choice program is wrong. One way out of this conflict would be to accept the irreconcilability of the various concepts of rationality, to reject Boudon's and Bourricaud's conclusion that these usages have a common core, and to make rationality an "empirical problem." Yet this stra…Read more
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59Meaning without TheoryJournal of the Philosophy of History 5 (3): 352-369. 2011.There is a core conflict between conventional ideas about “meaning“ and the phenomenon of meaning and meaning change in history. Conventional accounts are either atemporal or appeal to something fixed that bestows meaning, such as a rule or a convention. This produces familiar problems over change. Notions of rule and convention are metaphors for something tacit. They are unhelpful in accounting for change: there are no rule-givers or convenings in history. Meanings are in flux, and are part of …Read more
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16II.5 Interpretive Charity, Durkheim, and the ‘Strong Programme’ in the Sociology of SciencePhilosophy of the Social Sciences 11 (2): 231-243. 1981.
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36Underdetermination and the promise of statistical sociologySociological Theory 5 (2): 172-184. 1987.The lack of "progress" in theory is often contrasted to progress in statistical methodology. The relation between the two bodies of thinking is itself problematic, however, for the particular advances in method that have occurred in quantitative sociology reflect a trade-off in which the results are characterized by the radical underdetermination of models by data and a high level of slack between measures and theoretical concepts. Both of these problems are usually understood as matters of "err…Read more
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664Cause, the Persistence of Teleology, and the Origins of the Philosophy of Social ScienceIn Stephen P. Turner and Paul Roth (ed.), Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, . pp. 21-42. 2003.The subject of this chapter is the complex and confusing course of the discussion of cause and teleology before and during the period of Mill and Comte, and its aftermath up to the early years of the twentieth century in the thinking of several of the major founding figures of disciplinary social science. The discussion focused on the problem of the sufficiency of causal explanations, and particularly the question of whether some particular fact could be explained without appeal to purpose. In r…Read more
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23Book Reviews : Theoretical Logic in Sociology, Volume 1: Positivism, Presuppositions, and Current Controversies. BY JEFFREY C. ALEXANDER. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Pp. 234. $25.00 cloth (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 15 (1): 77-82. 1985.
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42Social Theory and Sociology: The Classics and BeyondWiley-Blackwell. 1996.This Timely volume represents an attempt by leading practitioners in the field to think reflexively about the present state of social theory and its historical analogues, and to consider new directions opposed to the "classical" social theorists, as well as new uses of the classics. Social Theory and Sociology begins to address a problem that is salient for students as well as academics, namely, why and how does the legacy of social theory matter? What is the value of what we are learning? No at…Read more
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Public Sociology and Democratic Theory Stephen P. TurnerIn Jeroen Van Bouwel (ed.), The Social Sciences and Democracy, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 165. 2009.
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143 MacIntyre in the Province of the Philosophy of the Social SciencesIn Mark C. Murphy (ed.), Alasdair Macintyre, Cambridge University Press. pp. 70. 2003.Many of the key issues that the later papers address are contained in his 1962 paper “A mistake about causality in social science,” which I will show, was an important seed bed for his later thought. The concept of practices MacIntyre developed was itself a social theory: the “philosophical” conclusions are dependent on its validity as an account of practices as a social phenomenon. There is a question of philosophical or social theoretical method that bears on the status of this theory, one of…Read more
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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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40Normative all the way downStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 36 (2): 419-429. 2005.
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36Jasso'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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242Book 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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58Mirror 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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40Explaining 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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