John Rawls's A Theory of Justice was a strikingly original contribution to political philosophy upon its appearance in 1971. Against the prevailing preference for "meta-ethics" in the field of philosophical ethics, Rawls made an effort to arrive at substantive, non-tautological principles that could be justified as a sort of "moral constitution" for a just society. The theory …
Norms and deliberative rationality
Why do people cooperate? That is, what motivates individuals to come together to share labor and resources in pursuit of a common good from which they cannot be excluded -- fighting fires, hunting marauding tigers, cleaning up a public beach? Standard rational choice theory, and its application to problems of individual rationality in group settings, …
What to do?
Decision makers at every level are perplexed by the turbulence created by the current financial crisis. Everyone is acting under great uncertainty -- business owners, state governors, the Department of the Treasury, the presidential candidates, and university officials. And yet today's actions may have enormous effects on the business, the non-profit organization, the family, or …
Methodological individualism
Methodological individualism (MI) is a doctrine in the philosophy of the social sciences about the relationship between "society" and individuals. The idea can be formulated in several related but somewhat different ways: social facts are constituted by facts about individuals; social entities are composed of individuals and their properties and relations; social structures and entities …
Tributaries of the philosophy of the social sciences
The philosophy of the social sciences is largely focused on questions about the nature of our knowledge, representation, and explanation of social phenomena. There is an ontological side to some of the questions in this field -- for example, what is the nature of social phenomena? But many of the questions are epistemological, having to …
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The Perestroika debate in political science
A debate has been raging in the discipline of political science for at least a decade, over the nature of the scientific status and methods of the discipline. Fundamentally, the "dissidents" argue that a narrow and "scientistic" conception of what good political science research ought to look like has reigned and has repressed other, more …
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Reasoning about agents
Rational choice theory usually advances a highly abstract theory of decision-making -- utility-maximizing choice among discrete options -- and then draws deductive conclusions. But actual human reasoners don't look much like this abstract ideal. It is interesting to consider how much one can explain while weakening the heroic assumptions about agent rationality. It turns out …
What does rational choice theory explain?
Rational choice theory could be advanced as a pure set of axioms embodying a formal representation of individual choice under circumstances of uncertainty and strategic interaction. Decision theory incorporates the idea of maximizing utility under circumstances of uncertainty and risk. The basic rule is that the decision-maker could collect information about the utility and probability …
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Social "laws" and causal mechanisms
Are there social regularities? Is there anything like a "law of nature" that governs or describes social phenomena?My view is that this is a question that needs to be approached very carefully. As a bottom line, I take the view that there are no "social laws" analogous to "laws of nature", even though there are …
Impersonal social causes?
There is a substantial place in social causation for mechanisms that link the intentions of powerful actors to the specific features of the outcome. "The outcome came about because the powerful actor wanted it to." Why are there no petroleum refineries in mid-town Manhattan? Because zoning and planning boards have deliberately excluded such activities. But …
Understanding Society 