Comment on Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology

This comment discusses Kaidesoja (2013) and raises the issue whether his analysis justifies stronger conclusions than he presents in the book. My com- ments focus on four issues. First, I argue that his naturalistic reconstruction of critical realist transcendental arguments shows that transcendental arguments should be treated as a rare curiosity rather than a general argumentative strategy. Second, I suggest that Kaidesoja’s analysis does not really justify his optimism about the usefulness of causal powers ontology in the social sciences. Third, I raise some doubts about the heuristic value of Mario Bunge’s social ontology that Kaidesoja presents as a replacement for critical realist ontology. Finally, I propose an alternative way to analyze failures of aggregativity that might better serve Kaidesoja’s purposes than the Wimsattian scheme he employs in the book.Non peer reviewe

Process-Tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines

Book review. Reviewed work: Process-Tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines / by Derek Beach, Rasmus Brun Pedersen. - Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780472051892.Non peer reviewe

Harry Collins and the Crisis of Expertise

Non peer reviewe

Moral Gods and the Origins of Human Cooperation

Peer reviewe

The Limits of Social Science. Causal Explanation and Value Relevance by Martyn Hammersley (book review)

Non peer reviewe

The challenge of human mind

Peer reviewe

Selittäminen, ymmärtäminen ja kausaaliset mekanismit

Peer reviewe

Mechanism-based theorizing and generalization from case studies

Generalization from a case study is a perennial issue in the methodology of the social sciences. The case study is one of the most important research designs in many social scientific fields, but no shared understanding exists of the epistemic import of case studies. This article suggests that the idea of mechanism-based theorizing provides a fruitful basis for understanding how case studies contribute to a general understanding of social phenomena. This approach is illustrated with a reconstruction of Espeland and Sauder's case study of the effects of rankings on US legal education. On the basis of the reconstruction, it is argued that, at least with respect to sociology, the idea of mechanism-based theorizing captures many of the generalizable elements of case studies.Peer reviewe

Methodological Individualism

Peer reviewe

Social Mechanisms

Social mechanisms and mechanism-based explanation have attracted considerable attention in the social sciences and the philosophy of science during the past two decades. The idea of mechanistic explanation has proved to be a useful tool for criticizing existing research practices and meta-theoretical views on the nature of the social-scientific enterprise. Many definitions of social mechanisms have been articulated, and have been used to support a wide variety of methodological and theoretical claims. It is impossible to cover all of these in one chapter, so I will merely highlight some of the most prominent and philosophically interesting ideas.Peer reviewe