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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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63Scientific Norms/CounternormsIn G. Ritzer, J. M. Ryan & B. Thorn (eds.), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (1st Ed.), John Wiley & Sons. pp. 4109-4112. 2007.The classic sociological formulation of the “norms of science” was given by Robert K. Merton, in an article originally published as “A Note on Science and Democracy” and reprinted as “Science and Democratic Social Structure” in his Social Theory and Social Structure and as “The Normative Structure of Science” in The Sociology of Science. The formulation is sometimes known by its initials, CUDOS, which stands for the four norms: communism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism…Read more
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60Tacit Knowledge Meets Analytic KantianismTradition and Discovery 41 (1): 33-47. 2014.Neil Gascoigne and Tim Thornton’s Tacit Knowledge is an attempt to find a place for tacit knowledge as “knowledge” within the limits of analytic epistemology. They do so by reference to Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson’s analysis of the term “way” and by the McDowell-like claim that reference to the tacitly rooted “way” of doing something exhausts the knowledge aspect of tacit knowledge, which preserves the notion of tacit knowledge, while excluding most of Michael Polanyi’s examples, and re…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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58Emile Durkheim: sociologist and moralist (edited book)Routledge. 1993.This volume presents an overview of Durkheim's thought and is representative of the best of contemporary Durkheim scholarship.
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58What is the Problem with Experts?Social Studies of Science 31 (1): 123-149. 2001.The phenomenon of expertise produces two problems for liberal democratic theory: the first is whether it creates inequalities that undermine citizen rule or make it a sham; the second is whether the state can preserve its neutrality in liberal ’government by discussion’ while subsidizing, depending on, and giving special status to, the opinions of experts and scientists. A standard Foucauldian critique suggests that neutrality is impossible, expert power and state power are inseparable, and that…Read more
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58Habermas meets science Content Type Journal Article Category Essay Review Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9560-2 Authors Stephen Turner, Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796
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57Meaning 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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563.What Are Disciplines? And How Is Interdisciplinarity Different?In Peter Weingart & Nico Stehr (eds.), Practising Interdisciplinarity, University of Toronto Press. pp. 46-65. 2000.
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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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56Verstehen NaturalizedPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 49 (4): 243-264. 2019.Verstehen, understanding another human being through some form of empathy, is a natural process with the involvement, probably in a complex way, of the brain. There is a temptation to describe Vers...
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55Collingwood and Weber vs. Mink: History after the Cognitive TurnJournal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2): 230-260. 2011.Louis Mink wrote a classic study of R. G. Collingwood that led to his most important contribution to the philosophy of history, his account of narrative. Central to this account was the non-detachability thesis, that facts became historical facts through incorporation into narratives, and the thesis that narratives were not comparable to the facts or to one another. His book on Collingwood was critical of Collingwood's idea that there were facts in history that we get through self-knowledge but …Read more
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54Starting 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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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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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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50The limits of social constructionismIn Irving Velody & Robin Williams (eds.), The Politics of Constructionism, Sage Publications. pp. 109--120. 1998.What is social constructionism? Is it a form of relativism that is essentially similar to cultural relativism and historical relativism? Is it a thesis about the contingency of knowledge? What is the point of saying constructionism is 'social'? Partly as a result of the fact that the term 'social construction' had its origins in sociology, in Berger and Luckmann's influential book The Social Construction of Reality, these simple 'philosophical' questions have not been systematically addressed. I…Read more
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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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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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42The Sage Handbook of Political Sociology (edited book)Sage. 2017.This is a two volume handbook covering contemporary and to some extent historical political sociology, and is an attempt to restore the large footprint of classical political sociology as found in Weber and his contemporaries.
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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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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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40Political Epistemology, Experts, and the Aggregation of KnowledgeSpontaneous Generations 1 (1): 36. 2007.Expert claims routinely “affect, combat, refute, and negate” someone or some faction or grouping of persons. When scientists proclaim the truth of Darwinism, they refute, negate, and whatnot the Christian view of the creation, and thus Christians. When research is done on racial differences, it affects, negates, and so on, those who are negatively characterized. This is why Phillip Kitcher argues that it should be banned. Some truths are too dangerous to ever inquire into, because, he reasons, e…Read more
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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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39On the relevance of statistical relevance theoryTheory and Decision 14 (2): 195-205. 1982.In Salmon's discussion of his account of statistical relevance and statistical explanation there is a peculiarity in the selection of examples. Where he wishes to show that statistical accounts are reasonably treated as explanatory, he draws examples from the social sciences, such as juvenile delinquency. But when he explains the concept of 'causal' relevance, the examples are selected from the natural sciences. This conceals difficulties with salmon's account of causality in the face of multipl…Read more
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38Robert Merton and Dorothy Emmet: Deflated Functionalism and StructuralismPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (6): 817-836. 2014.Dorothy Emmet, in two books, one of which was based on extensive personal contact with Robert Merton and Columbia sociology, provides the closest thing we have to an authorized philosophical defense of Merton. It features a deflationary account of functionalism which dispenses with the idea of general teleological ends. What it replaces it with is an account of “structures” that have various consequences and that are maintained because, on Emmet’s account, of the mutual reinforcement of motives …Read more
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