Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 866 )

• The Diachronic Social

  

  An earlier post offered what is for me a fairly large change of orientation on fundamental questions of social ontology: a conviction that the concept of... Read more

  Posted on 06 April 2023 SOCIETY

• ChatGPT Makes Stuff up

  

  It is really important for people to understand that ChatGPT is not a valid source of academic content or references. And it is not just useless because it make... Read more

  Posted on 27 March 2023 SOCIETY

• Red-state Authoritarianism

  

  Think about the many fronts in the war on individual rights and freedoms in Florida and other red states:vague but harsh limitations on what teachers can teach... Read more

  Posted on 19 March 2023 SOCIETY

• Corporate Ethics and Corporate Crimes

  

  Several earlier posts focused on corporate responsibility for crimes against humanity during the period of the Holocaust (link, link, link). Read more

  Posted on 09 March 2023 SOCIETY

• W.E.B. Du Bois' Stunning Modernist Data Graphics

  

  Du Bois, Diaspora of Africans to the AmericasW.E.B. Du Bois is well known for his pioneering work in American sociology, and most especially his studies of the... Read more

  Posted on 03 March 2023 SOCIETY

• Isaiah Berlin's Approach to History of Philosophy

  

  Isaiah Berlin's approach to the study of philosophy was strikingly different from that taken by practitioners of the technical disciplines of analytic... Read more

  Posted on 21 February 2023 SOCIETY

• Mechanisms of Extremist Mobilization

  

  The increase in public belief in core claims of far-right extremism in the United States is alarming. Central among those beliefs is the "Great Replacement"... Read more

  Posted on 17 February 2023 SOCIETY

• Decline of Support for Democratic Norms

  

  The signs of authoritarian and extremist assaults on the US constitutional democracy are ominous and increasing. The former president's explicit lawlessness... Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2023 SOCIETY

• New Public Administration 1968-2002

  

  Image: org chart, Housing and Urban Development (9,500 staff)Herbert Simon's important contribution to the study of administrative organizations appeared in... Read more

  Posted on 02 February 2023 SOCIETY

• Ten Paper Topics in Philosophy and History Framed by ChatGPT

  

  An earlier post considered the question of how to assess the quality of ChatGPT as an academic writer. One particular concern shared by professors in... Read more

  Posted on 22 January 2023 SOCIETY

• ChatGPT as an Academic Writer

  

  I've taken the view that the hoopla about ChatGPT is overblown, and that the texts generated by large language models in response to "prompts" are nothing more... Read more

  Posted on 21 January 2023 SOCIETY

• Philosophy of Public Administration?

  

  The Department of Energy building is shown in Washington, Friday, May 1, 2015. House Republicans Friday passed the second of 12 spending bills for the upcoming... Read more

  Posted on 19 January 2023 SOCIETY

• Is Ontological Individualism Still a Viable Social Ontology?

  

  image: a flat social ontology: actors and structuresOver the years I've continued to advocate for the position of ontological individualism -- the idea that... Read more

  Posted on 16 January 2023 SOCIETY

• Atomism Versus Holism in Social Ontology

  

  Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit addressed the micro-macro question in an essay called "Structural Explanation in Social Theory" (link), included in Reduction,... Read more

  Posted on 06 January 2023 SOCIETY

• Guest Post: Varieties of Realism by Jamie Morgan

  

  [Jamie Morgan accepted my invitation to contribute a guest post to Understanding Society on the topic of the varieties of realism in the philosophy of social... Read more

  Posted on 02 January 2023 SOCIETY

• Pinpointing Responsibility for Russian Atrocities in Bucha

  

  In November I wrote a blog post asking the question, "What organization and what commanders have directed the campaign of atrocity, murder, rape, mutilation,... Read more

  Posted on 28 December 2022 SOCIETY

• Sherwood Eddy’s Treatment of Marx

  

  Sherwood Eddy was an American Protestant activist and missionary in the early twentieth century. (Here is a brief biography and bibliography of Eddy; link. Read more

  Posted on 27 December 2022 SOCIETY

• Lies and Myths in the Social World

  

  An earlier post mentioned the topic of folk psychology and its relation to cognitive science. Scholars like Paul Churchland question whether there is a realisti... Read more

  Posted on 24 December 2022 SOCIETY

• Frameworks and Stereotypes

  

  It is evident that we approach the social world, and specific social settings, with a body of "framework" assumptions about what is going on, and how we should... Read more

  Posted on 21 December 2022 SOCIETY

• Journal of Critical Realism CFP on Judgemental Rationality

  

  Roy Bhaskar is best known for his ideas about social ontology. However, he also had a substantial interest in "the epistemology of social science" -- the means... Read more

  Posted on 08 December 2022 SOCIETY