Mechanisms and the Contingency of Social Causality PDF Download
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Author: Alexei Anisin
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527586375
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 170
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Book Description
Mechanisms are frequently brought up across the natural and social sciences as supplements to laws and empirical regularities. Recent decades have seen an explosion in mechanistic explanations in which philosophers of science, natural scientists, and social scientists have advocated, debated, and criticized the usage of mechanisms in their respective disciplines. As the intensity of these debates has increased, our understanding of the historical origin of mechanisms remains incomplete. Of the explanations that have been put forward, it has been argued that the roots of mechanisms are to be found in mechanical philosophy. This book demonstrates that an important set of factors have been overlooked in our understanding of the ontology of mechanisms. In shifting attention to a never-before-explored terrain in the etymological and semantic evolution of what arguably is the most commonly used scientific term, “the mechanism,” this text discovers that the origin of mechanisms is to be witnessed in ideas about social causality that arose within Ancient Greek tragedy and theater. It takes readers on a journey through socio-cultural settings and changes in Ancient Greece, early Christianity, the Roman Empire, and the Middle Ages, as well as the rise of science and modernity, and finishes in our current era of digital technology. As such, the book reveals how understandings of mechanisms have changed and evolved across time.
Author: Alexei Anisin
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527586375
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 170
Get Book Here
Book Description
Mechanisms are frequently brought up across the natural and social sciences as supplements to laws and empirical regularities. Recent decades have seen an explosion in mechanistic explanations in which philosophers of science, natural scientists, and social scientists have advocated, debated, and criticized the usage of mechanisms in their respective disciplines. As the intensity of these debates has increased, our understanding of the historical origin of mechanisms remains incomplete. Of the explanations that have been put forward, it has been argued that the roots of mechanisms are to be found in mechanical philosophy. This book demonstrates that an important set of factors have been overlooked in our understanding of the ontology of mechanisms. In shifting attention to a never-before-explored terrain in the etymological and semantic evolution of what arguably is the most commonly used scientific term, “the mechanism,” this text discovers that the origin of mechanisms is to be witnessed in ideas about social causality that arose within Ancient Greek tragedy and theater. It takes readers on a journey through socio-cultural settings and changes in Ancient Greece, early Christianity, the Roman Empire, and the Middle Ages, as well as the rise of science and modernity, and finishes in our current era of digital technology. As such, the book reveals how understandings of mechanisms have changed and evolved across time.
Author: Jerald Hage
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Australia
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Author: Federica Russo
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402088175
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
This investigation into causal modelling presents the rationale of causality, i.e. the notion that guides causal reasoning in causal modelling. It is argued that causal models are regimented by a rationale of variation, nor of regularity neither invariance, thus breaking down the dominant Human paradigm. The notion of variation is shown to be embedded in the scheme of reasoning behind various causal models. It is also shown to be latent – yet fundamental – in many philosophical accounts. Moreover, it has significant consequences for methodological issues: the warranty of the causal interpretation of causal models, the levels of causation, the characterisation of mechanisms, and the interpretation of probability. This book offers a novel philosophical and methodological approach to causal reasoning in causal modelling and provides the reader with the tools to be up to date about various issues causality rises in social science.
Author: Peter Hedström
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521596879
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
The advancement of social theory requires an analytical approach that systematically seeks to explicate the social mechanisms that generate and explain observed associations between events. These essays, written by prominent social scientists, advance criticisms of current trends in social theory and suggest alternative approaches. The mechanism approach calls attention to an intermediary level of analysis in between pure description and story-telling, on the one hand, and grand theorizing and universal social laws, on the other. For social theory to be of use for the working social scientist, it must attain a high level of precision and provide a toolbox from which middle range theories can be constructed.
Author: Marc J. Buehner
Publisher: Frontiers E-books
ISBN: 2889192520
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 119
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Book Description
The problem of how humans and other intelligent systems construct causal representations from non-causal perceptual evidence has occupied scholars in cognitive science for many decades. Most contemporary approaches agree with David Hume that patterns of covariation between two events of interest are the critical input to the causal induction engine, irrespective of whether this induction is believed to be grounded in the formation of associations (Shanks & Dickinson, 1987), rule-based evaluation (White, 2004), appraisal of causal powers (Cheng, 1997), or construction of Bayesian Causal Networks (Pearl, 2000). Recent research, however, has repeatedly demonstrated that an exclusive focus on covariation while neglecting contiguity (another of Hume’s cues) results in ecologically invalid models of causal inference. Temporal spacing, order, variability, predictability, and patterning all have profound influence on the type of causal representation that is constructed. The influence of time upon causal representations could be seen as a bottom-up constraint (though current bottom-up models cannot account for the full spectrum of effects). However, causal representations in turn also constrain the perception of time: Put simply, two causally related events appear closer in subjective time than two (equidistant) unrelated events. This reversal of Hume’s conjecture, referred to as Causal Binding (Buehner & Humphreys, 2009) is a top-down constraint, and suggests that our representations of time and causality are mutually influencing one another. At present, the theoretical implications of this phenomenon are not yet fully understood. Some accounts link it exclusively to human motor planning (appealing to mechanisms of cross-modal temporal adaptation, or forward learning models of motor control). However, recent demonstrations of causal binding in the absence of human action, and analogous binding effects in the visual spatial domain, challenge such accounts in favour of Bayesian Evidence Integration. This Research Topic reviews and further explores the nature of the mutual influence between time and causality, how causal knowledge is constructed in the context of time, and how it in turn shapes and alters our perception of time. We draw together literatures from the perception and cognitive science, as well as experimental and theoretical papers. Contributions investigate the neural bases of binding and causal learning/perception, methodological advances, and functional implications of causal learning and perception in real time.
Author: Giorgos Tsiolis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000260739
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
This book extends debates in the field of biographical research, arguing that causal explanations are not at odds with biographical research and that biographical research is in fact a valuable tool for explaining why things in social and personal lives are one way and not another. Bringing reconstructive biographical research into dialogue with critical realism, it explains how and why relational social ontology can become a unique theoretical ground for tapping emergent mechanisms and latent meaning structures. Through an account of the reasons for which reductionist epistemologies, rational action models and covering law explanations are not appropriate for biographical research, the authors develop the philosophical idea of singular causation as a means by which biographical researchers are able to forge causal hypotheses for the occurrence of events and offer guidance on the application of this methodological principle to concrete, empirical examples. As such, this volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in biographical research and social research methods.
Author: Ruth Groff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134193653
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 496
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Book Description
This cutting edge collection of new and previously published articles by philosophers and social scientists addresses just what it means to invoke causal mechanisms, or powers, in the context of offering a causal explanation. A unique collection, it offers the reader various disciplinary and inter-disciplinary divides, helping to stake out a new, neo-Aristotelian position within contemporary debate.
Author: Michael Waldmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199399557
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 769
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Book Description
Causal reasoning is one of our most central cognitive competencies, enabling us to adapt to our world. Causal knowledge allows us to predict future events, or diagnose the causes of observed facts. We plan actions and solve problems using knowledge about cause-effect relations. Without our ability to discover and empirically test causal theories, we would not have made progress in various empirical sciences. The handbook brings together the leading researchers in the field of causal reasoning and offers state-of-the-art presentations of theories and research. It provides introductions of competing theories of causal reasoning, and discusses its role in various cognitive functions and domains. The final section presents research from neighboring fields.
Author: Stephen L. Morgan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400760949
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 423
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Book Description
What constitutes a causal explanation, and must an explanation be causal? What warrants a causal inference, as opposed to a descriptive regularity? What techniques are available to detect when causal effects are present, and when can these techniques be used to identify the relative importance of these effects? What complications do the interactions of individuals create for these techniques? When can mixed methods of analysis be used to deepen causal accounts? Must causal claims include generative mechanisms, and how effective are empirical methods designed to discover them? The Handbook of Causal Analysis for Social Research tackles these questions with nineteen chapters from leading scholars in sociology, statistics, public health, computer science, and human development.
Author: Andrew Sayer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134902891
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326
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Book Description
Method in Social Science was widely praised on its first publication for providing a series of penetrating reflections on central questions in social science discourse. This second edition directly reflects new developments in the areas of philosophy and method. The introduction has been rewritten and substantially enlarged, clarifying many of the arguments that appear in the text. There is also a short discussion of the importance of narrative form, particularly useful for students concerned with the problems of writing, composition and presentation of their own material.
