I argue that what-makes-it-possible questions are a distinct and important kind of sociological r... more I argue that what-makes-it-possible questions are a distinct and important kind of sociological research question. What is social phenomenon P made possible or enabled by? Results won't be about P's causes and causal relationships, but about its enablers and enabling relationships. I examine the character of what-makes-it-possible questions and claims, how they can be empirically investigated, and what they're good for. If I'm right, they provide a unique perspective on social phenomena, they show how the social world doesn't come ready-made, and they open up new avenues for research.
This text brings together 14 interventions by social scientists from different countries in Latin... more This text brings together 14 interventions by social scientists from different countries in Latin America. It is an exercise of collective reflection in which each author exposes in a condensed way the centrality of his vision on social theory and on the challenges that this entails for the development of social sciences in the contemporary Latin American context. The purpuse of the exercise is to show a general view of the development of social theory in the region, as well as to try to recover dynamics of collective recognition and production as forms of proactive resistance to the dominant fragmentation processes in the current academy. An impression shared by the authors is that the result of this dialogue experience makes evident the vitality and variety of sociological production in the region, as well as the need to advance in the construction of a common research agenda. Link: https://zenodo.org/record/3338586#.Xnt3zEN7m9Y
I consider how to do sociological things with thick concepts, what's the relation between thick c... more I consider how to do sociological things with thick concepts, what's the relation between thick concepts and social facts, what's unique about thick concepts, and what's unique about creatures in whose lives there are thick concepts.
Decisionists use decision/choice concepts to understand and represent X: bees, Deep Blue, and Ron... more Decisionists use decision/choice concepts to understand and represent X: bees, Deep Blue, and Ron Carter make decisions. Explicit decisionists argue that X should be understood and represented using decision/choice concepts: it's correct to speak of bees', computers', and jazz improvisers' decision‐making. Explicit anti‐decisionists disagree: bees, computers, jazz improvisers, algorithms, and drug addicts aren't correctly understood and represented as decision‐makers. Sociologists look at decisionism and explicit decisionism as social phenomena, which show up in discourses, practices, technologies, and organizations. I make a contribution to the sociology of decisionism and the sociology of morality by examining three kinds of explicit moral anti‐decisionism: Murdochian, sociological/structural, and Confucian/Daoist. I show why these discontents are discontent, what theories and evidence they draw on, what assumptions they make, and how they conceive of morality without decision/choice concepts. Then, I consider how moral anti‐decisionism might matter, how the sociology of decisionism might matter, and where to go from here (if anywhere).
Concepts of decision, choice, decision-maker, and decision-making are common practical tools in b... more Concepts of decision, choice, decision-maker, and decision-making are common practical tools in both social science and natural science, on which scientific knowledge, policy implications, and moral recommendations are based. In this article I address three questions. First, I look into how present-day social scientists and natural scientists use decision/choice concepts. What are they used for? Second, scientists may differ in the application of decision/choice to X, and they may explicitly disagree about the applicability of decision/choice to X. Where exactly do these disagreements lie? Third, I ask how scientists should use decision/choice concepts. What are they correctly and incorrectly used for? I argue that scientists must responsibly attend to a methodological demand: you have to have a principled, non-ad hoc, well-argued-for way of telling where decision/choice applicability ends. Thus, I aim to minimize the risk of conceptual stretching and foster responsible conceptual practices in a large body of scientific work.
I propose an agenda for empirical research on decision, choice, decision-makers, and decision-mak... more I propose an agenda for empirical research on decision, choice, decision-makers, and decision-making qua social facts. Given society S, group G, or field F, I make a twofold sociological proposal. First, empirically investigate the conditions under which something-call it X-is taken to be a decision or choice, or the outcome of a decision-making process. What must X be like? What doesn't count (besides, presumably, myotatic reflexes and blushing)? Whom or what must X be done by? What can't be a decision-maker (besides, presumably, rocks and apples)? Second, empirically investigate how decision/choice concepts are used in everyday life, politics, business, education, law, technology, and science. What are they used for? To what extent do people understand and represent themselves and others as decision-makers? Where do decision-centric or "decisionist" understandings succeed? These aren't armchair, theoretical, philosophical questions, but empirical ones. Decision/choice concepts' apparent ubiquity in contemporary societies calls for a well-thought-out research program on their social life and uses.
I make a contribution to the sociology of epistemologies by examining the neuroscience literature... more I make a contribution to the sociology of epistemologies by examining the neuroscience literature on love from 2000 to 2016. I find that researchers make consequential assumptions concerning the production or generation of love, its temporality, its individual character, and appropriate control conditions. Next, I consider how to account for these assumptions' being common in the literature. More generally, I'm interested in the ways in which epistemic communities construe, conceive of, and publicly represent and work with their objects of inquiry—and what's thereby assumed about them and about the world. I argue that these implicit or explicit assumptions are a distinct type of explanandum, whose distinctiveness sociology hasn't adequately appreciated and taken advantage of. I think it should and I hope it will.
How should neuroscience research about social-psychological phenomena identify its objects of inq... more How should neuroscience research about social-psychological phenomena identify its objects of inquiry, so as to develop adequate experimental paradigms and tasks to elicit them, and then look for their neural correlates? How should it go about conceptualizing objects such as morality, empathy, art, love, creativity, or religious belief? If a neuroscientist is after the neural correlates of X, how can she tell X from non-X? This is an important methodological problem, to which neuroscience hasn’t given enough thought. I argue that it actually consists of two distinct questions: first, what counts as object X; and second, how to tell what counts as object X. At neither level can neuroscientists avoid taking sides in philosophical and social science controversies. I further argue that they can therefore benefit from the relevant literatures in philosophy, social science, and the humanities. These literatures can help neuroscience studies better conceptualize and operationalize the social-psychological phenomena they are interested in—and thus better get at them, specify how experimental results might speak to the real social world, and clarify what exactly neural correlates are neural correlates of.
I argue that what-makes-it-possible questions are a distinct and important kind of sociological r... more I argue that what-makes-it-possible questions are a distinct and important kind of sociological research question. What is social phenomenon P made possible or enabled by? Results won't be about P's causes and causal relationships, but about its enablers and enabling relationships. I examine the character of what-makes-it-possible questions and claims, how they can be empirically investigated, and what they're good for. If I'm right, they provide a unique perspective on social phenomena, they show how the social world doesn't come ready-made, and they open up new avenues for research.
This text brings together 14 interventions by social scientists from different countries in Latin... more This text brings together 14 interventions by social scientists from different countries in Latin America. It is an exercise of collective reflection in which each author exposes in a condensed way the centrality of his vision on social theory and on the challenges that this entails for the development of social sciences in the contemporary Latin American context. The purpuse of the exercise is to show a general view of the development of social theory in the region, as well as to try to recover dynamics of collective recognition and production as forms of proactive resistance to the dominant fragmentation processes in the current academy. An impression shared by the authors is that the result of this dialogue experience makes evident the vitality and variety of sociological production in the region, as well as the need to advance in the construction of a common research agenda. Link: https://zenodo.org/record/3338586#.Xnt3zEN7m9Y
I consider how to do sociological things with thick concepts, what's the relation between thick c... more I consider how to do sociological things with thick concepts, what's the relation between thick concepts and social facts, what's unique about thick concepts, and what's unique about creatures in whose lives there are thick concepts.
Decisionists use decision/choice concepts to understand and represent X: bees, Deep Blue, and Ron... more Decisionists use decision/choice concepts to understand and represent X: bees, Deep Blue, and Ron Carter make decisions. Explicit decisionists argue that X should be understood and represented using decision/choice concepts: it's correct to speak of bees', computers', and jazz improvisers' decision‐making. Explicit anti‐decisionists disagree: bees, computers, jazz improvisers, algorithms, and drug addicts aren't correctly understood and represented as decision‐makers. Sociologists look at decisionism and explicit decisionism as social phenomena, which show up in discourses, practices, technologies, and organizations. I make a contribution to the sociology of decisionism and the sociology of morality by examining three kinds of explicit moral anti‐decisionism: Murdochian, sociological/structural, and Confucian/Daoist. I show why these discontents are discontent, what theories and evidence they draw on, what assumptions they make, and how they conceive of morality without decision/choice concepts. Then, I consider how moral anti‐decisionism might matter, how the sociology of decisionism might matter, and where to go from here (if anywhere).
Concepts of decision, choice, decision-maker, and decision-making are common practical tools in b... more Concepts of decision, choice, decision-maker, and decision-making are common practical tools in both social science and natural science, on which scientific knowledge, policy implications, and moral recommendations are based. In this article I address three questions. First, I look into how present-day social scientists and natural scientists use decision/choice concepts. What are they used for? Second, scientists may differ in the application of decision/choice to X, and they may explicitly disagree about the applicability of decision/choice to X. Where exactly do these disagreements lie? Third, I ask how scientists should use decision/choice concepts. What are they correctly and incorrectly used for? I argue that scientists must responsibly attend to a methodological demand: you have to have a principled, non-ad hoc, well-argued-for way of telling where decision/choice applicability ends. Thus, I aim to minimize the risk of conceptual stretching and foster responsible conceptual practices in a large body of scientific work.
I propose an agenda for empirical research on decision, choice, decision-makers, and decision-mak... more I propose an agenda for empirical research on decision, choice, decision-makers, and decision-making qua social facts. Given society S, group G, or field F, I make a twofold sociological proposal. First, empirically investigate the conditions under which something-call it X-is taken to be a decision or choice, or the outcome of a decision-making process. What must X be like? What doesn't count (besides, presumably, myotatic reflexes and blushing)? Whom or what must X be done by? What can't be a decision-maker (besides, presumably, rocks and apples)? Second, empirically investigate how decision/choice concepts are used in everyday life, politics, business, education, law, technology, and science. What are they used for? To what extent do people understand and represent themselves and others as decision-makers? Where do decision-centric or "decisionist" understandings succeed? These aren't armchair, theoretical, philosophical questions, but empirical ones. Decision/choice concepts' apparent ubiquity in contemporary societies calls for a well-thought-out research program on their social life and uses.
I make a contribution to the sociology of epistemologies by examining the neuroscience literature... more I make a contribution to the sociology of epistemologies by examining the neuroscience literature on love from 2000 to 2016. I find that researchers make consequential assumptions concerning the production or generation of love, its temporality, its individual character, and appropriate control conditions. Next, I consider how to account for these assumptions' being common in the literature. More generally, I'm interested in the ways in which epistemic communities construe, conceive of, and publicly represent and work with their objects of inquiry—and what's thereby assumed about them and about the world. I argue that these implicit or explicit assumptions are a distinct type of explanandum, whose distinctiveness sociology hasn't adequately appreciated and taken advantage of. I think it should and I hope it will.
How should neuroscience research about social-psychological phenomena identify its objects of inq... more How should neuroscience research about social-psychological phenomena identify its objects of inquiry, so as to develop adequate experimental paradigms and tasks to elicit them, and then look for their neural correlates? How should it go about conceptualizing objects such as morality, empathy, art, love, creativity, or religious belief? If a neuroscientist is after the neural correlates of X, how can she tell X from non-X? This is an important methodological problem, to which neuroscience hasn’t given enough thought. I argue that it actually consists of two distinct questions: first, what counts as object X; and second, how to tell what counts as object X. At neither level can neuroscientists avoid taking sides in philosophical and social science controversies. I further argue that they can therefore benefit from the relevant literatures in philosophy, social science, and the humanities. These literatures can help neuroscience studies better conceptualize and operationalize the social-psychological phenomena they are interested in—and thus better get at them, specify how experimental results might speak to the real social world, and clarify what exactly neural correlates are neural correlates of.
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