Dear all, The CamPoS (Cambridge Philosophy of Science) seminar continues this Wednesday, 6th March, 1-2:30pm in HPS Seminar Room 2. Christopher Clarke (HPS, Cambridge) will give a talk entitled "Explanation in the social sciences: methodological individualism defended" (a slight change from the provisional title, "How autonomous are social scientific explanations?"). The abstract is below.
All are very welcome, and we hope to see many of you there. Best wishes, Vashka -- How do explanations given in terms of groups and their social properties relate to explanations given in terms of individuals and their non-social properties? Three options: (A) Sometimes social-level explanations are better than the best individual-level explanations; sometimes not; (B) Social-level explanations are never better than the best individual-level explanations (indeed typically the latter is better than the former) (C) Typically neither is better than the other; instead they compliment each other (B) is also known as methodological individualism, which is normally rejected in the literature in favour of holist (A) or pluralist (C). This is a mistake, I think. I argue for (B) in both its weak and strong versions. _____________________________________________________ Sent by the CamPhilEvents mailing list. To unsubscribe or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents Posts are archived here: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
