Explanatory Pluralism in the Social Sciences.
Period | 01-10-2003 to 30-09-2004 |
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Type | Postdoctoral Fellowship |
Fellow | Dr. Jeroen Van Bouwel |
Funding agency | Special Research Fund of Ghent University (BOF) |
Understanding explanatory pluralism in the social sciences demands for an analysis of the role of pragmatic factors and epistemic motivations in providing explanations. Where I discussed pluralism qua explanations of social facts in my Ph.D.-thesis, this project will scrutinize explanations of causal relations and mechanisms in the social sciences, and analyze whether the framework for pluralism I have developed for explanations of social facts, works as well for these explanations. My account will be compared with accounts of critical realism and non-reductionist physicalism.