Philosophy of social science /
This is a tightly argued yet accessible introduction to the philosophical foundations of the human sciences, including economics, anthropology, sociology, political scients, psychology, history, and the disciplines emerging at the intersections of these subjects with biology.
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Boulder, CO :
Westview Press,
©2008.
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| Edition: | 3rd ed. |
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Table of Contents:
- Preface to the third edition
- 1. What is the philosophy of social science?
- Philosophical problems of social science
- Progress and prediction
- A brief history of the philosophy of science
- Lawlessness in social science
- Rejecting prediction for intelligibility
- Taking sides in the philosophy of social science
- Naturalism versus interpretation
- Introduction to the literature
- 2. The explanation of human action
- Making folk psychology explicit
- Reasons and causes
- The holism of the mental
- The logical connection argument
- Intentionality
- Intensionality and extensionality
- Introduction to the literature
- 3. From behaviorism to rational choice, and back
- Causation and purpose
- The experimental analysis of behavior
- The ghost in behaviorism's machine
- Folk psychology formalized: the theory of rational choice
- The economist as behaviorist
- Instrumentalism in economics
- The eclipse of behaviorism in psychology and economics
- Introduction to the literature
- 4. Interpretation
- The hermeneutics of human action
- Can we reconcile rules and causes?
- The social construction of society
- The philosophy of history
- Freud and the analysis of deep meanings
- Marxism and meaning
- Critical theory
- Epistemological impasse?
- Introduction to the literature
- 5. Functionalism and macrosocial science
- Holism and human action
- The autonomy of sociology
- Holism and reductionism in psychology and sociology
- Functional analysis and functional explanation
- The trouble with functionalism
- Introduction to the literature
- 6. Biology, human behavior, and social science
- The prisoner's dilemma to the rescue?
- Farewell to the standard social science model?
- Blunting the threat of genetic determinism
- Natural selection and mother-nurture?
- Causation, statistics, laws and the relevance of biology
- Introduction to the literature
- 7. Shall we commit a social science?
- Moral problems of controlled research
- Naturalism and utilitarianism
- Kant: interpretation and deontology
- Facts and values
- Feminist philosophy of (social) science
- Dangerous questions, moral obligations, and predictive knowledge
- Introduction to the literature
- 8. Social science and the enduring questions of philosophy
- The unavoidability of epistemology
- Science and metaphysics
- Reductionism and instrumentalism
- Philosophy and the moral sciences
- Conclusion.