Department of Philosophy & Moral Science

Contents:

Where the Epistemic and the Political Meet: An Introduction to the Social Sciences and Democracy; J.Van Bouwel

PART I: DEMOCRATIZING THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: BALANCING EXPERTISE AND DIALOGUE
Social Sciences and the Democratic Ideal: From Technocracy to Dialogue; P.Baert, H.Mateus Jerónimo& A.Shipman
Stakeholders or Experts? On the Ambiguous Implications of Public Participation in Science; S.Solomon
Scientific Knowledge: A Stakeholder Theory; K.Rolin

PART II: THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IMPROVING DEMOCRATIC THEORY AND PRACTICE
Improving Democratic Practice: Practical Social Science and Normative Ideals; J.Bohman
Fact and Value in Democratic Theory; H.Kincaid

PART III: DEMOCRATIC THEORY ELUCIDATING SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC THEORY AND PRACTICE
The Problem With(Out) Consensus: The Scientific Consensus, Deliberative Democracy and Agonistic Pluralism; J.Van Bouwel
Joint Commitment, Coercion and Freedom in Science - Conceptual Analysis and Case Studies; A.Bouvier

PART IV: THE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
Public Sociology and Democratic Theory; S.P.Turner
Varieties of Democracy in Science Policy; E.Weber
Some Economists Rush to Rescue Science From Politics, Only to Discover in Their Haste, They Went to the Wrong Address; P.Mirowski

PART V: (FUTURE) OBSTACLES TO THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND DEMOCRACY
Fuller and Mirowski on the Commercialization of Scientific Knowledge; F.Remedios
Humanity: The Always Already – or Never to be – Object of the Social Sciences?; S.Fuller

Index

In her contribution Pleas for Pluralism to this journal, Esther-Mirjam Sent (2003) suggests that the plea for pluralism, as found in many contributions to the post-autistic economics movement, has a strategic motivation. Although I tend to agree that this is true of some contributions, it seems necessary to spell out the non-strategic motivations by which one can defend plurality and pluralism before we evaluate whether (heterodox) contributions are not really pluralistic.

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.

Amidst both philosophers of science and social scientists one finds people defending the thesis that explanations of particular facts should refer to proximate causes (ie remote causes are no good at all), or that explanations referring to remote causes are inferior to explanations that invoke proximate causes. This point of view is defended by eg Jon Elster (1983: 28):“Both probabilistic models and models involving remote temporal action reflect our ignorance of the local deterministic causality assumed to be operating.” So any ...

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.

Recent pleas for more heterodoxy in explaining economic action have been defending a pluralism for economics. In this article, I analyse these defences by scrutinizing the pluralistic qualities in the work of one of the major voices of heterodoxy, Tony Lawson. This scrutiny will focus on Lawson’s alternatives concerning ontology and explanation to mainstream economics. Subsequently, I will raise some doubts about Lawson’s pluralism, and identify questions that will have to be addressed by heterodox economists in order to maintain the claim of pluralism.

Résumé/Abstract En réponse à un article de J. Lachapelle consacré à «l'évolution culturelle,(au) réductionnisme dans les sciences sociales, et (au) pluralisme explicatif», l'A. critique la notion de réductionnisme ontologique, ainsi que les concepts de causalité et explication, définis par l'auteur, d'une part, mais reconnaît partager avec lui la thèse du pluralisme explicatif, d'autre part.

In this article we defend the view that the criteria by which the explanatory power of causal explanations is to be judged, are context-dependent. Explanation-seeking questions (even if we
confine ourselves to causal explanations) can have different motivations. The criteria for explanatory power depend on the motivation. We will argue that:(1) in most contexts, a posteriori
probability is important; (2) explanatory depth (going back further and further in time) is relevant in only one context; (3) in most contexts, there is an extra criterion (e.g. familiarity or manipulability). Though we will have several criteria for explanatory power, unification is not among them. We will motivate this absence in a separate section.

Explanatory pluralism is the view that the best form and level of explanation depends on the kind of question one seeks to answer by the explanation, and that in order to answer all questions in the best way possible, we need more than one form and level of explanation. In the first part of this article, we argue that explanatory pluralism holds for the medical sciences, at least in theory. However, in the second part of the article we show that medical research and practice is actually not fully and truly explanatory pluralist yet. Although the literature demonstrates a slowly growing interest in non-reductive explanations in medicine, the dominant approach in medicine is still methodologically reductionist. This implies that non-reductive explanations often do not get the attention they deserve. We argue that the field of medicine could benefit greatly by reconsidering its reductive tendencies and becoming fully and truly explanatory pluralist. Nonetheless, trying to achieve the right balance in the search for and application of reductive and non-reductive explanations will in any case be a difficult exercise.

Van Bouwel, Jeroen. 2009. “The Problem With(out) Consensus: The Scientific Consensus, Deliberative Democracy and Agonistic Pluralism.” In The Social Sciences and Democracy, ed. Jeroen Van Bouwel, 121–142. Palgrave Macmillan. ... Van Bouwel, J. (2009). The problem with(out) consensus: The scientific consensus, deliberative democracy and agonistic pluralism. In J. Van Bouwel (Ed.), The Social Sciences and Democracy (pp. 121–142). Palgrave Macmillan. ... Van Bouwel J. The problem with(out) consensus: The scientific consensus, deliberative ...

Van Bouwel, Jeroen. 2008. “Explanatory Pluralism.” In Pluralist Economics, ed. Edward Fullbrook, 151–170. London: Zed Books. ... Van Bouwel, J. (2008). Explanatory Pluralism. In E. Fullbrook (Ed.), Pluralist Economics (pp. 151–170). London: Zed Books. ... Van Bouwel J. Explanatory Pluralism. In: Fullbrook E, editor. Pluralist Economics. London: Zed Books; 2008. p. 151–70. ... Van Bouwel, Jeroen. “Explanatory Pluralism.” Pluralist Economics. Ed. Edward Fullbrook. London: Zed Books, 2008. 151–170. Print.

In the literature on scientific explanation, there is a classical distinction between explanations of facts and explanations of laws. This paper is about explanations of facts. Our aim is to analyse the role of unification in explanations of this kind. We discuss five positions with respect to this role, argue for two of them and refute the three others.

Van Bouwel, Jeroen. 2001. “Jean-Michel Berthelot (dir.): Epistémologie Des Sciences Sociales.” Ethiek & Maatschappij. Gent, Belgium: Academia Press. ... Van Bouwel, J. (2001). Jean-Michel Berthelot (dir.): Epistémologie des sciences sociales. ETHIEK & MAATSCHAPPIJ. Gent, Belgium: Academia Press. ... Van Bouwel J. Jean-Michel Berthelot (dir.): Epistémologie des sciences sociales. ETHIEK & MAATSCHAPPIJ. Gent, Belgium: Academia Press; 2001. p. 64–6. ... Van Bouwel, Jeroen. “Jean-Michel Berthelot (dir.): Epistémologie ...

Starting from the analogy between theories and maps, I will spell out which interdisciplinary approach to the social sciences can provide us with the atlas we need to navigate in the social world. After comparing the features of theories and maps in Sec. 2, I elaborate how different social theories can collaborate or get into a dialogue in Sec. 3, summarizing the different strategies that have been defended for interdisciplinarity in social science: theory-, method-, metaphysics-, and questiondriven interdisciplinarity, which I will illustrate with ...

Some social scientists and philosophers (e.g., James Coleman and Jon Elster) claim that all social facts are best explained by means of a micro-explanation. They defend a micro-reductionism in the social sciences: to explain is to provide a mechanism on the individual level.

The first aim of this paper is to challenge this view and defend the view that it has to be substituted for an explanatory pluralism with two components: (1) structural explanations of P-, O- and T-contrasts between social facts are more efficient than the competing micro-explanations; and (2) whether a plain social fact (as opposed to a contrast) is best explained in a micro-explanation or a structural explanation depends on the explanatory interest. The second aim of the paper is to show how this explanatory pluralism is compatible with ontological individualism.

This paper is motivated by our conviction that explanatory pluralism as defended by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit is on the right track, but must be further elaborated. We want to supplement their contribution, by (1) introducing the difference between explanations of facts and explanations of contrasts; (2) giving examples from the social sciences, instead of mainly from the natural sciences or common sense knowledge; and (3) emphasizing the pragmatic relevance of explanations on different levels –social, psychological, biological, etc. – which is insufficiently done by Jackson and Pettit.

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.

Van Bouwel, Jeroen, and Erik Weber. 2011. “Explanation in the Social Sciences.” In The Sage Handbook of the Philosophy of Social Sciences, ed. Ian Jarvie and Jesus Zamora-Bonilla, 633–646. Thousand Oaks, CA, USA: Sage. ... Van Bouwel, J., & Weber, E. (2011). Explanation in the social sciences. In I. Jarvie & J. Zamora-Bonilla (Eds.), The sage handbook of the philosophy of social sciences (pp. 633–646). Thousand Oaks, CA, USA: Sage. ... Van Bouwel J, Weber E. Explanation in the social sciences. In: Jarvie I, Zamora-Bonilla J, editors. The sage ...

In a recent paper on realism and pragmatism published in this journal, Osmo Kivinen and Tero Piiroinen have been pleading for more methodological work in the philosophy of the social sciences—refining the conceptual tools of social scientists—and less philosophically ontological theories. Following this de-ontologizing approach, we scrutinize the debates on social explanation and contribute to the development of a pragmatic social science methodology. Analyzing four classic debates concerning explanation in the social sciences, we propose to shift the debate away from (a) the ontologizing defenses of forms of social explanation, and (b) a winner-takes-all-approach. Instead, we advocate (c) a pragmatic approach towards social explanation, elaborating a rigorous framework for explanatory pluralism detached from the debates on social ontology.