Jeroen Van Bouwel

Commenting on recent articles by Keith Sawyer and Julie Zahle, the author questions the way in which the debate between methodological individualists and holists has been presented and contends that too much weight has been given to metaphysical and ontological debates at the expense of giving attention to methodological debates and analysis of good explanatory practice. Giving more attention to successful explanatory practice in the social sciences and the different underlying epistemic interests and motivations for providing explanations or reducing theories (which ask for different kinds of explanatory information to be found on the social or on the individual level) might lead to real progress in the debate on methodological individualism, and away from the unending battles of (metaphysical) intuitions. Key Words: methodological individualism • nonreductive materialism • pluralism • pragmatics of explanation.

Explanatory pluralism has been defended by several philosophers of history and social science, recently, for example, by Tor Egil Førland in this journal. In this article, we provide a better argument for explanatory pluralism, based on the pragmatist idea of epistemic interests. Second, we show that there are three quite different senses in which one can be an explanatory pluralist: one can be a pluralist about questions, a pluralist about answers to questions, and a pluralist about both. We defend the last position. Finally, our third aim is to argue that pluralism should not be equated with “anything goes”: we will argue for non-relativistic explanatory pluralism. This pluralism will be illustrated by examples from history and social science in which different forms of explanation (for example, structural, functional, and intentional explanations) are discussed, and the fruitfulness of our framework for understanding explanatory pluralism is shown.

In this paper, we inquire how the eternal tension between science and values has been tackled in philosophy of science by analysing three different strategies that have been used: focussing on different kinds of values and allowing some of these kinds to be present in science ; stipulating the role values are allowed to play ; and, specifying a social procedure in order to deal with values in science. Recently, the distinction between the direct and indirect role values could play in science and expertise was elaborated extensively by Heather Douglas, allowing values to play an indirect role. We scrutinize Douglas' account and claim that identifying the different roles of values in science faces similar problems as earlier philosophical accounts distinguishing kinds of values, cf. epistemic and non-epistemic values. The problems discussed concern interpreting, weighing, variety of, and distinguishing the kinds/roles of values in science. Furthermore, we investigate whether some of these problems, rather than by the kinds-of-values-approach or Douglas' roles-of-values-approach, could be addressed by stipulating a social procedure in order to deal with values in science and expertise, or, whether combining two or all three of the strategies would help us developing a satisfying account of values in science.

Some scholars claim that Critical Realism promises well for the unification of the social sciences, e.g., "Unifying social science: A critical realist approach" in this volume. I will first show briefly how Critical Realism might unify social science. Secondly, I focus on the relation between the ontology and methodology of Critical Realism, and unveil the politics of metaphysics. Subsequently, it is argued that the division of labour between social scientific disciplines should not be metaphysics-driven, but rather question-driven. In conclusion, I will therefore defend a question-driven pluralism as a guide for interdisciplinarity.

In the literature on scientific explanation two types of pluralism are very common. The first concerns the distinction between explanations of singular facts and explanations of laws: there is a consensus that they have a different structure. The second concerns the distinction between causal explanations and uni.cation explanations: most people agree that both are useful and that their structure is different. In this article we argue for pluralism within the area of causal explanations: we claim that the structure of a causal explanation depends on the causal structure of the relevant fragment of the world and on the interests of the explainer.

When scientist investigate why things happen, they aim at giving an explanation. But what does a scientific explanation look like? In the first chapter (Theories of Scientific Explanation) of this book, the milestones in the debate on how to characterize scientific explanations are exposed. The second chapter (How to Study Scientific Explanation?) scrutinizes the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation, Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon and shows what went wrong. Next, it is the responsibility of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the pragmatic approach to scientific explanation and clarify briefly what this approach consists in. The third chapter (A Toolbox for Describing and Evaluating Explanatory Practices) elaborates the pragmatic approach by presenting a toolbox for analysing scientific explanation. In the last chapter (Examples of Descriptions and Evaluations of Explanatory Practices) the approach is illustrated with real-life examples of scientists aiming at explaining

This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make descriptive and normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to, but that they failed to give arguments for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the “pragmatic approach to scientific explanation.” We clarify what this approach consists in and defend it.

The story is sometimes told as follows: Once science was a disinterested activity giving scientists the opportunity to freely solve the puzzle of nature to the benefit of all. Nowadays science seems more and more driven by the search for patents and dollars compelling scientists to follow the logic of capitalism and corporatization. Take-home lesson: science is for sale and we should do everything to reverse this evolution. In this contribution, I want to analyze the narrator’s assumptions implicit in this account of science. In particular, the rosy description of earlier disinterested forms of scientific research will be questioned, as well as the lack of alternatives to the dichotomy disinterested versus corporatized. I will argue that beyond the dichotomy an interest-driven science can be conceived framed within an epistemic democracy.

In this contribution, I comment on Raffaella Campaner’s defense of explanatory pluralism in psychiatry (in this volume). In her paper, Campaner focuses primarily on explanatory pluralism in contrast to explanatory reductionism. Furthermore, she distinguishes between pluralists who consider pluralism to be a temporary state on the one hand and pluralists who consider it to be a persisting state on the other hand. I suggest that it would be helpful to distinguish more than those two versions of pluralism – different understandings of explanatory pluralism both within philosophy of science and psychiatry – namely moderate/temporary pluralism, anything goes pluralism, isolationist pluralism, integrative pluralism and interactive pluralism. Next, I discuss the pros and cons of these different understandings of explanatory pluralism. Finally, I raise the question of how to implement or operationalize explanatory pluralism in scientific practice; how to structure the “genuine dialogue” or shape “the pluralistic attitude” Campaner is referring to. As tentative answers, I explore a question-based framework for explanatory pluralism as well as social-epistemological procedures for interaction among competing approaches and explanations.

The question of whether Critical Realism has committed an "ontological fallacy" in revealing the "epistemic fallacy" in social scientific research is addressed. An overview of Critical Realism's treatment of the connection between epistemology & ontology, which culminated in the unveiling of the epistemic fallacy, is provided. Critical Realism's understanding of explanation as it applies to social scientific inquiry is then explored to determine whether such thought has committed the ontological fallacy. The presence of the ontological fallacy within the thinking of Tony Lawson & other Critical Realist thinkers is illustrated. A strategy for avoiding both the epistemic & ontological fallacies in conceptualizing explanatory power in social scientific practices is subsequently offered. It is concluded that acceptance of this alternative understanding of the epistemology-ontology relationship will encourage the development of explanatory pluralism. 31 References. J. W. Parker

Instances of explanatory reduction are often advocated on metaphysical grounds; given that the only real things in the world are subatomic particles and their interaction, we have to try to explain everything in terms of the laws of physics. In this paper, we show that explanatory reduction cannot be defended on metaphysical grounds. Nevertheless, indispensability arguments for reductive explanations can be developed, taking into account actual scientific practice and the role of epistemic interests. Reductive explanations might be indispensable to address some epistemic interest answering a specific explanation-seeking question in the most accurate, adequate and efficient way. Just like explanatory pluralists often advocate the indispensability of higher levels of explanation pointing at the pragmatic value of the explanatory information obtained on these higher levels, we argue that explanatory reduction—traditionally understood as the contender of pluralism—can be defended in a similar way. The pragmatic value reductionist, lower level explanations might have in the biomedical sciences and the social sciences is illustrated by some case studies.

Starting from the plurality of explanatory strategies in the actual practice of socialscientists, I introduce a framework for explanatory pluralism – a normative endorsement of the plurality of forms and levels of explanation used by social scientists. Equipped with thisframework, central issues in the individualism/holism debate are revisited, namely emergence,reduction and the idea of microfoundations. Discussing these issues, we notice that in recentcontributions the focus has been shifting towards relationism, pluralism and interaction, awayfrom dichotomous individualism/holism thinking and a winner-takes-all approach. Then, thechallenge of the debate is no longer to develop the ultimate individualistic approach ordefending the holist approach, but rather how to be combine individualism and holism; howcan they co-exist, interact, be integrated or develop some division of labour, while making thebest out of the strengths and limitations of the respective explanatory strategies of holists andindividualists? Thus, the debate shifts to how exactly pluralism should be understood as thenext leading question, going beyond the current individualism/holism debate. The paper endswith a discussion and evaluation of different understandings of explanatory pluralismdefended in the literature.