image: Tuileries, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Toledo Museum of Art exibition It seems self evident, barely worth remarking, that social outcomes are the result of the actions of numbers of ordinary human beings, doing things for their own particular reasons -- finding solutions to the challenges of life that confront them, taking care of themselves and their …
Social upheaval
image: Monte Carlo simulation of portfolio value We sometimes think that there is fundamental stability in the social world, or at least an orderly pattern of development to the large social changes that occur. When there are crises -- like the financial crisis of 2008 or the riots in London and Stockholm in the past …
The near future
There is a lot going on in America and the world today: climate change, increasing separation between the rich and the non-rich, entrenched poverty in cities, continuing effects of racism in American life, and a rising level of political extremism in this country and elsewhere, for starters. Add to this politico-military instability in Europe, continuing …
Historical sociologists on critical realism
Critical realism took its origin within the philosophy discipline, arising at the time that there was profound debate over the adequacy of logical positivism as a basis for the philosophy of science. Carl Hempel represented the fruition of positivist philosophy of science, with his hypothetico-deductive model of confirmation, his deductive-nomological model of explanation, and his …
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Naturalizing causal powers
Several earlier posts have considered Tuukka Kaidesoja's very interesting recent book, Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology (NCR). The book is an important contribution to the evolving literature on next steps for critical realism, and TK is an exceptionally clear and perceptive philosopher. Here I will focus on Tuuka's contribution to the causal powers literature. The topic …
Entrenched poverty
A quick review of Peter Edelman's So Rich, So Poor: Why it’s So Hard to End Poverty in America posted on svbtle.com ... http://dlittle30.svbtle.com/entrenched-poverty
Quantitative and qualitative social science
The social world is one reality, but the methodologies associated with quantitative and qualitative research are quite different. Quantitative research allows the researcher to discover patterns, associations, correlations, and other features of a population based on analysis of large numbers of measurements of individuals. Qualitative research usually involves studies of single individuals, based on interviews …
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War and calculation
The Crimea is now securely within the grasp of Russia. This shift occurred as the result of the use of military force seemingly unconcerned about international law or opinion, the world objected, and Russia prevailed. Why is this kind of forcible seizure of territory not more common in contemporary international affairs? There are other places …
Causal necessity?
Do causes make their effects “necessary” in any useful sense? This is the claim that Hume rejected — the notion that there is any “necessary” connection between cause and effect. Steven Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum take up the issue in Getting Causes from Powers, and they take the view that Hume has raised a …
Social contingency?
Image: Mason-Pfizer monkey virus (link) Image: organization chart of General Motors What does it mean to say that the social world is contingent? Several things. First, it means that social changes and patterns are not strongly law governed. Outcomes are the result of intersecting chains of causal mechanisms and stochastic happenings, so there is no sense …
