@article {4443718, title = {Social epistemology meets the philosophy of the humanities}, journal = {Foundations of science}, volume = {21 (1)}, year = {2016}, abstract = {

From time to time, when I explain to a new acquaintance that I’m a philosopher of science, my interlocutor will nod agreeably and remark that that surely means I’m interested in the ethical status of various kinds of scientific research, the impact that science has had on our values, or the role that the sciences play in contemporary democracies. Although this common response hardly corresponds to what professional philosophers of science have done for the past decades, or even centuries, it is perfectly comprehensible. For there are large questions of the kinds just indicated, questions that deserve to be posed and answered, and an intelligent person might well think that philosophers of science are the people who do the posing and the answering (Kitcher in Science, truth and democracy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. xi, 2001).

}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10699-014-9372-0}, author = {Froeyman, Anton and Kosolosky, Laszlo and Van Bouwel, Jeroen} } @book {3259615, title = {Scientific explanation}, year = {2013}, pages = {93}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, abstract = {

This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: (i) construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is u sed as a tool to make (ii) descriptive and (iii) normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to (i), but that they failed to give argume nts for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility of current philosoph ers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a cl ever way. We call this clever way the “pragmatic approach to scientific explanation.” We clarify wha t this approach consists in and defend it.

}, isbn = {9789400764453}, author = {Weber, Erik and Van Bouwel, Jeroen and De Vreese, Leen} } @incollection {152596, title = {Subject ingebed? {O}ver het methodologisch individualisme in de sociale wetenschappen.}, booktitle = {De terugkeer van het subject? {R}ecente Ontwikkelingen binnen de filosofie}, year = {2002}, pages = {169{\textendash}179}, publisher = {Universitaire Pers}, isbn = {90-5867-237-9}, author = {Van Bouwel, Jeroen and Verdonck, Barbara}, editor = {Devos, Rob and Braeckman, Antoon} } @article {152660, title = {Symposium on Explanation and Social Ontology 3: Can We Dispense with Structural Explanations of Social Facts?}, journal = {Economics and Philosophy}, volume = {18}, number = {2}, year = {2002}, pages = {259{\textendash}275}, abstract = {

Some social scientists and philosophers (e.g., James Coleman and Jon Elster) claim that all social facts are best explained by means of a micro-explanation. They defend a micro-reductionism in the social sciences: to explain is to provide a mechanism on the individual level. The first aim of this paper is to challenge this view and defend the view that it has to be substituted for an explanatory pluralism with two components: (1) structural explanations of P-, O- and T-contrasts between social facts are more efficient than the competing micro-explanations; and (2) whether a plain social fact (as opposed to a contrast) is best explained in a micro-explanation or a structural explanation depends on the explanatory interest. The second aim of the paper is to show how this explanatory pluralism is compatible with ontological individualism. This paper is motivated by our conviction that explanatory pluralism as defended by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit is on the right track, but must be further elaborated. We want to supplement their contribution, by (1) introducing the difference between explanations of facts and explanations of contrasts; (2) giving examples from the social sciences, instead of mainly from the natural sciences or common sense knowledge; and (3) emphasizing the pragmatic relevance of explanations on different levels –social, psychological, biological, etc. – which is insufficiently done by Jackson and Pettit.

}, issn = {0266-2671}, author = {Weber, Erik and Van Bouwel, Jeroen} }