Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 893 )

• Thorstein Veblen's Critique of the US System of Business

  

  Thorstein Veblen was certainly a heterodox observer of modern capitalism. He was trained in the late nineteenth-century iteration of neoclassical economics,... Read more

  Posted on 03 November 2013 BUSINESS, SOCIETY

• Thorsten Veblen's Critique of the American System of Business

  

  Thorsten Veblen was certainly a heterodox observer of modern capitalism. He was trained in the late nineteenth-century iteration of neoclassical economics, but... Read more

  Posted on 03 November 2013 SOCIETY

• Six Years of Understanding Society

  

  This week celebrates six years of Understanding Society.  This effort represents over 850 posts, on topics ranging from current debates in philosophy about... Read more

  Posted on 01 November 2013 SOCIETY

• Mechanisms and Powers

  

  source: William Bechtel, Discovering Cell Mechanisms: The Creation of Modern Cell Biology The causal-powers approach to the understanding of causation is... Read more

  Posted on 29 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Causality and Metaphysics

  

  Advocates of the causal powers approach attach a great deal of importance to the metaphysics of causation -- the sorts of properties and relations that we... Read more

  Posted on 27 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Change in Higher Education

  

  There are a couple of former university presidents whose opinions seem particularly insightful on the subject of the strengths and weaknesses of universities... Read more

  Posted on 26 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Causal Powers from a Metaphysical Point of View

  

  A number of scholars who are interested in causation have recently expressed new interest in the concept of causal powers. This makes sense in a very... Read more

  Posted on 23 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Polarization

  

  Suppose a country had come to the brink of financial catastrophe because the two parties in its legislature were unable to find compromises in the public... Read more

  Posted on 18 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Purposive Social Action

  

  How can citizens strive to bring about significant social change?So many of the changes we have witnessed in the past forty years have happened to us, not by us. Read more

  Posted on 12 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Why a War on Poor People?

  

  American conservatives for the past several decades have shown a remarkable hostility to poor people in our country. The recent effort to slash the SNAP food... Read more

  Posted on 09 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Issues About Microfoundations

  

  I believe that hypotheses, theories, and explanations in the social sciences need to be subject to the requirement of microfoundationalism. Read more

  Posted on 06 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Beyond Stagnation

  

  source: Lane Kenworthy, Consider the Evidence blog (link) Thirty years ago Sam Bowles, David Gordon and Tom Weisskopf published a book with a provocative... Read more

  Posted on 02 October 2013 SOCIETY

• How to Probe Public Attitudes?

  We are almost always interested in knowing how the public thinks and feels about various issues -- global warming, race relations, the fairness of rising... Read more

  Posted on 29 September 2013 SOCIETY

• What is Reduction?

  

  The topics of methodological individualism and microfoundationalism unavoidably cross with the idea of reductionism -- the notion that higher level entities... Read more

  Posted on 25 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Large Predictions in History

  

  To what extent is it possible to predict the course of large-scale history -- the rise and fall of empires, the occurrence of revolution, the crises of... Read more

  Posted on 20 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Response to Little by Tuukka Kaidesoja

  [Tuukka Kaidesoja accepted my invitation to write a response to my discussion (link) of his recent article in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, “Overcoming... Read more

  Posted on 19 September 2013 SOCIETY

• The Global City -- Saskia Sassen

  

  Saskia Sassen is the leading urban theorist of the global world. (Here are several prior posts that intersect with her work.) Her The Global City: New York,... Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Culture Change Within an Organization

  

  It is often said that culture change within an organization or workplace is difficult -- perhaps the most difficult part of trying to reform an organization.... Read more

  Posted on 13 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Meso Causes and Microfoundations

  In earlier posts I've paid attention to the need for microfoundations and the legitimacy of meso-level causation. And I noted that there seems to be a prima... Read more

  Posted on 11 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Social Mechanisms and Meso-level Causes

  

  (This post summarizes a paper I presented at the British Society for the Philosophy of Science Annual Meeting in 2012.) Here and elsewhere I want to defend the... Read more

  Posted on 05 September 2013 SOCIETY