At a general level, you might say that the stage that comes after the stage of social observation should be dominated by speculation. To use a term such as speculation may seem odd and old-fashioned, and it is true that speculation is rarely used in today’s social science. But speculation does have a place in […]
Theory of Science & Methodology
Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) offers a compelling and robust framework for understanding how scientific knowledge advances. Moving beyond the traditional dichotomy between deduction and induction, IBE is not merely one instrument among many in the scientist’s toolkit, but a fundamental engine of scientific reasoning itself. Its significance lies in its capacity to model […]
Among the soft obscurantists some aim at truth, but do not respect the norms for arriving at truth, such as focusing on causality, acting as devil’s advocate, and generating falsifiable hypotheses. Others do not aim at truth, and often scorn the very idea that there is such a thing. By assumption, these non-respecters of truth […]
As I have argued, explanations are not deductive proofs in any particularly interesting sense. Although they can always be presented in the form of deductive proofs, doing so seems not to capturing anything essential, or especially useful, and usually requires completing an incomplete explanation. Thinking of explanations as proofs tends to confuse causation with logical […]
When in mathematics the unknown becomes the unknown quantity in an equation, it is made into something long familiar before any value has been assigned. Nature, before and after quantum theory, is what can be registered mathematically; even what cannot be assimilated, the insoluble and irrational, is fenced in by mathematical theorems. In the preemptive […]
At the juncture of Roy Bhaskar’s refounding of critical realism philosophy of science, postmodernism had spread like a virus across academia with its seductive attack on grand theories or “metanarratives.” Neoliberal policies took advantage of the subsequently lowered intellectual immune systems and “identity politics” squabbling to impose its anti-working class “meta” economic model upon global […]
Traditionally, philosophers have focused mostly on the logical template of inference. The paradigm-case has been deductive inference, which is topic-neutral and context-insensitive. The study of deductive rules has engendered the search for the Holy Grail: syntactic and topic-neutral accounts of all prima facie reasonable inferential rules. The search has hoped to find rules that are […]
All explanations of a phenomenon have underlying premises which limit the number of alternative explanations. These premises significantly affect the capacity of different potential explanations to truly explain anything. If we have a system in which underlying structural factors govern the functional relations between the parts of a system, a satisfactory explanation can never disregard […]
Although economics produces knowledge, it is only partial — knowledge that is useful in specific contexts but not universally generalisable. Mainstream economics certainly aspires to be an exact science, but if it is to be considered as such, it only applies to the ‘small worlds’ that economists know how to model. As we all know, […]
To be ‘analytical’ and ‘logical’ is a quality most people find commendable. These words carry a positive connotation. Scientists are thought to think more deeply than most because they employ ‘logical’ and ‘analytical’ methods. Dictionaries often define logic as “reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity” and ‘analysis’ as concerning the “breaking […]