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20Sociology and Hacking's TrousersPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992. 1992.For Hacking, the word "real", like the sexist expression "wear the trousers", takes its meaning from its negative uses. In this essay, I criticize Hacking's reasons for believing that the objects of study of the social sciences are not real. First I argue that the realism issue in the social sciences concerns not unobservable entities but systems of social classification. I then argue that Hacking's social science nominalism derives from his considering social groups in isolation from the entire…Read more
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34Renouvier and the method of hypothesisStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 38 (1): 132-148. 2007.Renouvier was among the first philosophers in France to break with the nineteenth-century inductivist tradition and defend the use of hypotheses in science. Earlier in the century, the humanistically-educated eclectic spiritualist philosophers who dominated French academic life had followed Reid in proscribing the use of hypotheses. Renouvier, who was educated in the sciences, took up the Comtean positivist alternative and developed it further. He began by defending hypotheses that anticipate la…Read more
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65Book Reviews : Steve Fuller, Social Epistemology. Indiana University Press, Bloomington/ Indianapolis, 1988. Pp. xv, 316, US$22.00 (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 21 (1): 121-125. 1991.
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13Fact and Method: Explanation, Confirmation, and Reality in the Natural and Social Sciences. Richard W. MillerIsis 79 (3): 492-493. 1988.
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19Claude Blanckaert. La nature de la société: Organicisme et sciences sociales au XIXe siècle. 158 pp., bibl., index. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004. €14 (review)Isis 97 (3): 563-564. 2006.
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25Social science, epistemology, and the problem of relativism: Reply to Meja and StehrSocial Epistemology 2 (3). 1988.
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13Review of Lawrence E. Cahoone, Cultural Revolutions: Reason Versus Culture in Philosophy, Politics, and Jihad (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (8). 2005.
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41This Article does not have an abstract
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54Whither social epistemology? A reply to FullerPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 21 (2): 196-202. 1991.
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14The Empirical Character of Methodological RulesPhilosophy of Science 63 (5). 1996.Critics of Laudan's normative naturalism have questioned whether methodological rules can be regarded as empirical hypotheses about relations between means and ends. Drawing on Laudan's defense that rules of method are contingent on assumptions about the world, I argue that even if such rules can be shown to be analytic in principle, in practice the warrant for such rules will be empirical. Laudan's naturalism, however, acquires normative force only by construing both methods and epistemic goals…Read more
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43Evolutionary and Neuroscience Approaches to the Study of CognitionPhilosophy of Science 72 (5): 675-686. 2005.There is a lack of connection between the cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary approaches to the study of the mind, in philosophy as well as the sciences. For instance, although Millikan may display a thorough understanding of evolutionary theory in her arguments for the adaptive value of substance concepts, she gives scant attention to what could be the neural substrates of these concepts. Neuroscience research calls into question her assumption that substance concepts play a role in practic…Read more
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7Book Reviews : Helen E. Longino, Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1990. Pp. xii, 262, $35.00 (cloth), $13.95 (paper (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 23 (4): 562-566. 1993.
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24Reasons, causes, and the 'strong programme' in the sociology of knowledgePhilosophy of the Social Sciences 15 (2): 189-196. 1985.
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59Book Reviews : Helen E. Longino, Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1990. Pp. xii, 262, $35.00 (cloth), $13.95 (paper (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 23 (4): 562-566. 1993.
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221Functionalism and the meaning of social factsPhilosophy of Science 66 (3): 323. 1999.This paper defends a social functionalist interpretation, modeled on psychological functionalism, of the meanings of social facts. Social functionalism provides a better explanation of the possibility of interpreting other cultures than approaches that identify the meanings of social facts with either mental states or behavior. I support this claim through a functionalist reinterpretation of sociological accounts of the categories that identify them with their collective representations. Taking …Read more
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23Although standpoint theorists tend to characterize a scientist’s social situation in terms of her position in a hierarchy of power within the larger society, her social situation could also be characterized in terms of the degree to which she is integrated into the scientific community. The latter concept of social location may prove helpful in explaining a scientist’s potential for contributing to the growth of knowledge. It may also provide an independent measure of marginalization that makes …Read more
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3Review (review)Economics and Philosophy 11 (1): 203-208. 1995.The Critical Mass in Collective Action: A Micro-Social Theory, Marwell Gerald and Oliver PamelaOn Social Facts, Gilbert Margaret.
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74Kant's reception in France: Theories of the categories in academic philosophy, psychology, and social sciencePerspectives on Science 11 (1): 3-34. 2003.: It has been said that Kant's critical philosophy made it impossible to pursue either the Cartesian rationalist or the Lockean empiricist program of providing a foundation for the sciences (e.g., Guyer 1992). This claim does not hold true for much of nineteenth century French philosophy, especially the eclectic spiritualist tradition that begins with Victor Cousin (1792-1867) and Pierre Maine de Biran (1766-1824) and continues through Paul Janet (1823-99). This tradition assimilated Kant's tran…Read more
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61The empirical character of methodological rulesPhilosophy of Science 63 (3): 106. 1996.Critics of Laudan's normative naturalism have questioned whether methodological rules can be regarded as empirical hypotheses about relations between means and ends. Drawing on Laudan's defense that rules of method are contingent on assumptions about the world, I argue that even if such rules can be shown to be analytic in principle (Kaiser 1991), in practice the warrant for such rules will be empirical. Laudan's naturalism, however, acquires normative force only by construing both methods and e…Read more
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36A Reappraisal Of Comte's Three-state LawHistory and Theory 21 (2): 248-266. 1982.Comte's three-state law concerns the historical development of our methods of cognitive inquiry. Comte believes he can defend his three-state law either by :,rational proofs" based upon our knowledge of the human mind or upon 'historical verifications." Comte then uses the three-state law of scientific progress to argue for the existence of industrial and multistate political laws of progress. Here Comte strays from his positivism. He attributes a kind of causal efficacy to scientific progress w…Read more
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History of Western Philosophy |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
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History of Western Philosophy |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |