Dlittle30

Description

I am a philosopher of social science with a strong interest in China and Southeast Asia. Paying attention to the logical and conceptual issues raised by the social sciences is key to better understanding the modern world. I think philosophers need to interact seriously and extensively with working social scientists and historians if they are going to be able to make a useful contribution.


Report spam/abuse
20219 shares

MY BLOGS

LATEST ARTICLES ( 896 )

  • Culture Change Within an Organization

    Culture Change Within 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

    Social Mechanisms 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

  • Ian Hacking on Chance as Worldview

    Hacking Chance Worldview

    Ian Hacking was one of the more innovative and adventurous philosophers to take up the philosophy of science as their field of inquiry. Read more

    Posted on 02 September 2013 SOCIETY

  • Poverty and Economics

    Poverty Economics

    How important should the subject of poverty be within the discipline of economics? Some economists appear to think it is a very small issue compared to the... Read more

    Posted on 29 August 2013 SOCIETY

  • Social Structures and Causal Powers

    The idea of a causal power has been appealing to the realist tradition within the philosophy of science, and especially so for the philosophy of social science. Read more

    Posted on 28 August 2013 SOCIETY

  • Friedman on Racial Discrimination

    Friedman Racial Discrimination

    It is interesting to re-read Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom some fifty years after its original publication. There are many aspects of the book that... Read more

    Posted on 22 August 2013 SOCIETY

  • Youth Studies

    Youth Studies

    One of the smaller sub-fields within sociology is "youth studies." This strikes me as an intriguing area of research, and it seems as though the possible... Read more

    Posted on 18 August 2013 SOCIETY

  • The Street and the Ring

    Street Ring

    Loïc Wacquant offers a fascinating piece of urban ethnography in Body Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. It is his account of his three-year experience... Read more

    Posted on 11 August 2013 SOCIETY

  • Expert Knowledge

    Expert Knowledge

    We often want the judgment of "experts" as we make important decisions in life, health, and business. But what exactly is an expert? One aspect of the idea is... Read more

    Posted on 09 August 2013 SOCIETY

  • Economic Observations

    Economic Observations

    Oskar Morgenstern was one of the founders of mathematical game theory, as co-author with John von Neumann in 1944 of Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Read more

    Posted on 07 August 2013 BUSINESS, ECONOMICS, SOCIETY

  • Eurasian Population Project

    Eurasian Population Project

    In the historical demography hall of fame there is but a single bust -- that of Thomas Malthus. (I'm joking -- there is no historical demography hall of fame. Read more

    Posted on 04 August 2013 SOCIETY

  • Nelson Goodman on Psychology

    Nelson Goodman Psychology

    Nelson Goodman is best known within philosophy as an iconoclast within the logical empiricist tradition. He published Fact, Fiction and Forecast in 1954,... Read more

    Posted on 01 August 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIETY

  • A New History of China

    History China

    James Lee and Byong-Ho Lee have created a remarkable new course on Coursera titled "A New History for a New China, 1700-2000: New Data and New Methods, Part 1". Read more

    Posted on 31 July 2013 SOCIETY

  • Quine's Indeterminacies

    Quine's Indeterminacies

    W.V.O. Quine's writings were key to the development of American philosophy in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. His landmark works ("Two Dogmas of Empiricism,"... Read more

    Posted on 29 July 2013 SOCIETY

  • Marx and the Physiocrats

    Marx Physiocrats

    An earlier post highlighted an interesting piece of Marx scholarship by Regina Roth, included in a Routledge collection of important articles on the history of... Read more

    Posted on 18 July 2013 SOCIETY

  • Adelman on Albert Hirschman

    Adelman Albert Hirschman

    Jeremy Adelman's detailed and illuminating biography of Albert Hirschman in Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman is an excellent example of... Read more

    Posted on 15 July 2013 SOCIETY

  • Life-course Histories and Methods

    Life-course Histories Methods

    source: G. Alter, "Completing Life Histories with Imputed Exit Dates" (link) I talked recently with George Alter, a leading historical demographer at the... Read more

    Posted on 12 July 2013 SOCIETY

  • Graphing Metadata

    Graphing Metadata

    One element of the NSA revelations of the past month is the apparent fact that the NSA's PRISM program enables the agency to collect wholesale the transactions... Read more

    Posted on 07 July 2013 SOCIETY

  • Marx's Thinking About Technology

    Marx's Thinking About Technology

    It sometimes seems as though there isn't much new to say about Marx and his theories. But, like any rich and prolific thinker, that's not actually true. Read more

    Posted on 05 July 2013 SOCIETY