Reduction, Supervenience, and the Autonomy of Social Scientific Laws

Springer Science and Business Media LLC - 2000
Lee C. McIntyre1
1Department of Philosophy and Religion, Colgate University, Hamilton, USA

Tóm tắt

Many have felt that it is impossible to defend autonomous laws of social science: where the regularities upheld are law-like it is argued that they are not at base social scientific, and where the phenomena to be explained would seem to require social descriptions, it is argued that laws governing the phenomena are unavailable at that level. But is it possible to develop an ontology that supports the dependence of the social on the physical, while nonetheless supporting the explanatory power of genuinely autonomous social scientific laws? The aim of this paper is to show that reductive explanation is not a requirement of a `naturalist' ontology, thereby defending an account of supervenience as a suitable framework within which to recognize a metaphysical relationship between the natural and the social that is consistent with the pursuit of autonomous nomological social scientific explanations.

Từ khóa


Tài liệu tham khảo

Block, Ned. (ed.) (1980), Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Charles, D. and Lennon, K. (1992), Reduction, Explanation, and Realism. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Davidson, Donald (1980), Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Fay, Brian (1984), 'Naturalism as a Philosophy of Social Science', Philosophy of Social Science, Vol. 14: 529–542.

Fodor, Jerry. 'Two Kinds of Reductionism' in The Language of Thought. New York: Thomas Crowell, pp. 1–26.

Fodor, Jerry (1974), 'Special Sciences: Or the Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis', Synthese, Vol. 28: 97–115.

Hare, R.M. (1984), 'Supervenience', The Aristotelian Society Supplement, Vol. 58: 1–16.

Haugeland, J. (1983), 'Ontological Supervenience', The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 22: 1–13.

Hellman, G. P. and Thompson, F.W. (1975), 'Physicalism: Ontology, Determination and Reduction', The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 72: 551–564.

Hooker, C.A. (1981), 'Towards and General Theory of Reduction', Parts I, II, and III in Dialogue, Vol. 20(1–3): 38–60, 201–235, 496–529.

Horgan, Terence (1978), 'Supervenient Bridge Laws', Philosophy of Science, Vol. 43: 227–249.

Horgan, T. (ed.) 'The Spindel Conference 1983: Supervenience', The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 22,Supplement.

Jackson, Frank and Pettit, Philip (1992), 'In Defense of Explanatory Ecumenia', Economics and Philosophy, Vol. 8: 1–21.

Kemeny, J. and Oppenheim, P. (1952), 'On Reduction', Philosophical Studies, Vol. 7: 6–19.

Kim, Jaegwon. (1987), “Strong' and 'Global' Supervenience Revisited', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 48: 129–150.

Kim, Jaegwon (1989), 'The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism', Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 63(3), (November): 31-47.

Kim, Jaegwon (1984), 'Concepts of Supervenience', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 45(2): 153–176.

Kim, Jaegwon (1987), 'Explanatory Realism, Causal Realism, and Explanatory Exclusion', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 12: 225–239.

Kim, Jaegwon (April 1978), 'Supervenience and Nomological Incommensurables', American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 15(2): 149–156.

Kim, Jaegwon (1985), 'Psychophysical Laws', in E. LePore and B. McLaughlin (eds.), Actions and Events: Perspectives in the Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 369–386.

Kim, Jaegwon (1989), 'Mechanism, Purpose, and Explanatory Exclusion', in J. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 3, (Atascadero, Calif: Ridgeview): 77–108.

Kim, Jaegwon (1982), 'Psychophysical Supervenience', Philosophical Studies, Vol. 41: 51–70.

Kim, Jaegwon (1985), 'Supervenience, Determination, and Reduction', The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 82: 616–618.

Kincaid, Harold (1987), 'SupervenienceDoesn't Entail Reducibility', The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 25: 343–356.

Kincaid, Harold (1988), 'Supervenience and Explanation', Synthese, Vol. 77: 251–281.

Kincaid, Harold (1990), 'Eliminativism and Methodological Individualism', Philosophy of Science, Vol. 57: 141–148.

Kincaid, Harold (1986), 'Reduction, Explanation, and Individualism', Philosophy of Science, Vol. 53: 492–513.

Little, Daniel (1991), Varieties of Social Explanation. Boulder: Westview Press.

Marras, Ausonio (1993), 'Psychophysical Supervenience and Nonreductive Materialism', Synthese, Vol. 95: 275–304.

McIntyre, Lee (1993), 'Complexity and Social Scientific Laws', Synthese, Vol. 97(2), (November): 209–227.

McIntyre, Lee (1996), Laws and Explanation in the Social Sciences. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

Nagel, Ernest (1961), The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

Petrie, B. 'Global Supervenience and Reduction', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 48: 119–130.

Place, U.T. (1956), 'Is Consciousness a Brain Process?', British Journal of Psychology, Vol. 47: 44–50.

Railton, Peter (1989), 'Explanation and Metaphysical Controversy', in P. Kitcher and W. Salmon (eds.), Scientific Explanation: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 13. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press): 220–252.

Railton, Peter. 'Explanations Involving Rationality', in J. Earman (ed.), Pittsburgh Series in the Philosophy of Science, (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming).

Rosenberg, Alexander (1988), Philosophy of Social Science. Boulder: Westview Press.

Rosenberg, Alexander (1978), 'The Supervenience of Biological Concepts', Philosophy of Science, Vol. 45: 368–386.

Rosenberg, Alexander (1980), Sociobiology and the Preemption of Social Science. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Salmon, Merrilee (1989), 'Explanation in the Social Sciences', in P. Kitcher and W. Salmon (eds), Scientific Explanation: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 13. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 384–409.

Sklar, Lawrence (1967), 'Types of Inter-Theoretic Reduction', British Journal of the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 18: 109–124.

Teller, Paul (1985), 'Is Supervenience Just Disguised Reduction?', The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 23: 93–99.

Thomas, David (1979), Naturalism and Social Science: A Post-Empiricist Philosophy of Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wimsatt, William (1979), 'Reduction and Reductionism', Current Research in the Philosophy of Science. East Lansing, MI: The Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 352–380.

Thông tin
Thông tin xuất bản

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Thông tin tác giả