If postmodernism evaporates in the face of conditions that no one seems to want to dispute, then why bother putting so much effort into critically examining it? Isn’t that a redundant exercise? No, it is not, because even though most historians in their daily work proceed as if it were possible to discover the real […]
Theory of Science & Methodology
Instrumentalists are right to point out that the meaning of statements involving unobservable entities (like “quark”) is in part related to the implications of such statements for direct observations. But only in part: though it is difficult to say exactly how we give meaning to scientific expressions, it seems plausible that we do it by […]
. Last week, yours truly was invited by the Department of Criminology at Malmö University to deliver a lecture to fellow researchers on recent theoretical developments in causality modelling. Following the presentation, one key question emerged: How can the potential outcomes approach be effectively evaluated within the social sciences? Framing all causal questions as questions […]
Andrew Ross has drawn an analogy between the hierarchical taste cultures (high, middlebrow and popular) familiar to cultural critics, and the demarcation between science and pseudoscience. At a sociological level this is an incisive observation; but at an ontological and epistemological level it is simply mad … Such epistemological agnosticism simply won’t suffice, at least […]
There are other sleights of hand that cause economists problems. In their quest for statistical “identification” of a causal effect, economists often have to resort to techniques that answer either a narrower or a somewhat different version of the question that motivated the research. Results from randomized social experiments carried out in particular regions of, […]
One of the most important tasks of social sciences is to explain the events, processes, and structures that take place and act in society. However, the researcher cannot stop at this. As a consequence of the relations and connections that the researcher finds, a will and demand arise for critical reflection on the findings. To […]
Yours truly har under några år hållit i en kurs för forskare på Malmö universitet kring kausalitet. Den som är intresserad kan ta del av kursens powerpoint här: Kausalitet — en crash course Många frågeställningar inom samhällsvetenskapen idag handlar i grunden om frågor angående kausalitet. Vad ligger bakom den ökade arbetslösheten? Vilka effekter har friskolorna […]
A couple of weeks ago yours truly had a post up here where Julia Rohrer discussed possible alternatives to RCTs for making causal claims: It is instructive to consider cases in which most people readily accept causal claims in the absence of randomized experiments. Nowadays, few people doubt the effects of tobacco smoking on lung […]
In the potential outcomes approach to causality, sex and race are often not considered causes since they do not fit within this counterfactual manipulation/intervention framework of causal inference. Sex and race cannot be directly manipulated or intervened on, which is said to make it difficult to conceptualize what the ‘potential outcomes’ would be for individuals […]