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Wednesday 06 March 2013, 13:00-14:30
How autonomous are social scientific explanations?
- đ¤ Speaker: Christopher Clarke (HPS, Cambridge)
- đ Date & Time: Wednesday 06 March 2013, 13:00 - 14:30
- đ Venue: Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
Abstract
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©. This is a mistake, I think. I argue for (B) in both its weak and strong versions.
Series This talk is part of the CamPoS (Cambridge Philosophy of Science) seminar series.
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