Three concepts of causal mechanism in the social sciences

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A theoretical framework for explaining the paradox of university rankings

University rankings have led to the following paradox. On one hand, global and national university rankings have an increasing impact on scientific research and higher education. On the other hand, a growing number of researchers have argued that university rankings are biased and methodologically flawed as well as documented their unintended consequences that are counterproductive to education and research activities in universities. In this article, I combine sociological and cognitive perspectives to develop a theoretical framework for explaining this paradox. The theoretical framework has four interrelated parts. The first is a distinction between three temporal stages through which university rankings commensurate universities. The second consists of an account of the social mechanisms through which university rankings generate reactive outcomes that tend to transform universities instead of just measuring their quality. The third is a league table metaphor that links the conceptual domain of team sports and the conceptual domain of universities and, I argue, provides a cognitive mechanism that shapes how many extra-academic actors, such as prospective students and policymakers, understand the results of university rankings. The fourth focuses on the affordances of the published league tables of university rankings that many extra-academic actors use for outsourcing part of their decision-making to the league tables. As a whole, this framework allows us to understand how the interrelated and materially mediated actions of different groups of actors give rise to and sustain the paradox of university rankings.Peer reviewe

Reclaiming Naturalized Critical Realism : Response to McWherter

This article responds to McWherter’s detailed critique of my assessment of Roy Bhaskar’s method of transcendental argumentation in chapter four of my Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology (2013). I begin by describing some naturalist ontological and epistemological views defended in my book, thereby showing that my naturalist challenge to the original version of critical realism is not only methodological (or metaphilosophical) but also substantial. I also indicate that this point is effectively downplayed in McWherter’s framing of the debate in terms of competing metaphilosophies. I then consider how the doctrine of transcendental idealism is presupposed in Kant’s transcendental deduction and question the consistency of McWherter’s various descriptions of Bhaskar’s transcendental arguments. Finally, I provide detailed responses to McWherter’s objectives to my views. My conclusion is that naturalized critical realism is a more coherent and scientifically viable position than the neo-Kantian version of critical realism defended by McWherter. Nevertheless, I think that there is enough overlap between original and naturalized critical realism to regard the latter as a revised and elaborated version of the former.Peer reviewe

Context in Mechanism-based Explanation

In this article, we discuss the issue of context-dependence of mechanism-based explanation in the social sciences. The different ways in which the context-dependence and context-independence of mechanism-based explanation have been understood in the social sciences are often motivated by different and apparently incompatible understandings of what explanatory mechanisms are. Instead, we suggest that the different varieties of context-dependence are best seen as corresponding to different research goals. Rather than conflicting with one another, these goals are complementary to each other and therefore pave the way to a methodologically more cooperative approach to mechanism-based explanation in the social sciences.Peer reviewe

Mittarien reaktiivisuus ja objektiivisuus yliopistojen yhteismitallistamisessa

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Mechanistic explanations in the cognitive social sciences : lessons from three case studies

Discussions of the relations between the social sciences and the cognitive sciences have proliferated in recent years. Our article contributes to the philosophical and methodological foundations of the cognitive social sciences by proposing a framework based on contemporary mechanistic approaches to the philosophy of science to analyze the epistemological, ontological and methodological aspects of research programs at the intersection of the social sciences and the cognitive sciences. We apply this framework to three case studies which address the phenomena of social coordination, transactive memory, and ethnicity. We also assess how successful these research programs have been in providing mechanistic explanations for these phenomena, and where more work remains to be done.Peer reviewe

Sosiaalisilla mekanismeilla selittäminen historiallisessa sosiologiassa

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Akateeminen kapitalismi nykyisessä tiedepolitiikassa

Artikkelissa analysoidaan nykyistä suomalaista tiedepolitiikkaa akateemisen kapitalismin teorian näkökulmasta. Keskitymme erityisesti uuden yliopistolain jälkeiseen tilanteeseen, koska vuonna 2010 voimaan tullut uusi yliopistolaki ja siihen liittynyt yliopistouudistus muuttivat yliopistojen suhdetta valtioon ja markkinoihin sekä nostattivat laajaa tiedepoliittista keskustelua. Siten on kiinnostavaa kysyä, mihin suomalainen tiedepolitiikka on suuntautunut yliopistolain jälkeisessä tilanteessa. Pyrimme vastaamaan tähän kysymykseen analysoimalla teoriaohjaavasti nykyistä tiedepolitiikkaa suuntaavia asiakirjoja akateemisen kapitalismin teorian näkökulmasta. Johtopäätöksemme on, että asiakirjojen tavoitteenasettelussa ja toimenpidesuosituksissa näkyvät selvästi akateemisen kapitalismin teorian korostamat piirteet. Lopuksi osoitamme joitain nykyisen tiedepolitiikan ongelmia ja sen perustelujen hataruuden.Peer reviewe

Two traditions of cognitive sociology : An analysis and assessment of their cognitive and methodological assumptions

Cognitive sociology has been split into cultural and interdisciplinary traditions that position themselves differently in relation to the cognitive sciences and make incompatible assumptions about cognition. This article provides an analysis and assessment of the cognitive and methodological assumptions of these two traditions from the perspective of the mechanistic theory of explanation. We argue that while the cultural tradition of cognitive sociology has provided important descriptions about how human cognition varies across cultural groups and historical periods, it has not opened up the black box of cognitive mechanisms that produce and sustain this variation. This means that its explanations for the described phenomena have remained weak. By contrast, the interdisciplinary tradition of cognitive sociology has sought to integrate cognitive scientific concepts and methods into explanatory research on how culture influences action and how culture is stored in memory. Although we grant that interdisciplinary cognitive sociologists have brought many fresh ideas, concepts and methods to cultural sociology from the cognitive sciences, they have not always clarified their assumptions about cognition and their models have sketched only a few specific cognitive mechanisms through which culture influences action, meaning that they have not yet provided a comprehensive explanatory understanding of the interactions between culture, cognition and action.Peer reviewe

Ympäristöön hajautunut kognitio

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