作者:
Jon Elster 出版社: Cambridge University Press 副标题: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences 出版年: 2015-8 定价: USD 110.00 装帧: Hardcover ISBN: 9781107071186
In this new edition of his critically acclaimed book, Jon Elster examines the nature of social behavior, proposing choice as the central concept of the social sciences. Extensively revised throughout, the book offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms, drawing on many case studies and experiments to explore the nature of explanation in the social sciences; an analysis of...
In this new edition of his critically acclaimed book, Jon Elster examines the nature of social behavior, proposing choice as the central concept of the social sciences. Extensively revised throughout, the book offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms, drawing on many case studies and experiments to explore the nature of explanation in the social sciences; an analysis of the mental states - beliefs, desires, and emotions - that are precursors to action; a systematic comparison of rational-choice models of behavior with alternative accounts, and a review of mechanisms of social interaction ranging from strategic behavior to collective decision making. A wholly new chapter includes an exploration of classical moralists and Proust in charting mental mechanisms operating 'behind the back' of the agent, and a new conclusion points to the pitfalls and fallacies in current ways of doing social science, proposing guidelines for more modest and more robust procedures.
作者简介
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Jon Elster is Robert K. Merton Professor of the Social Sciences at Columbia University and Professeur Honoraire at the Collège de France. He is the author or editor of thirty-four books, most recently Agir contre soi: La faiblesse de volonté (2007), Le désintéressement: Traité critique de l'homme économique (2009), Alexis de Tocqueville: The First Social Scientist (Cambridge Un...
Jon Elster is Robert K. Merton Professor of the Social Sciences at Columbia University and Professeur Honoraire at the Collège de France. He is the author or editor of thirty-four books, most recently Agir contre soi: La faiblesse de volonté (2007), Le désintéressement: Traité critique de l'homme économique (2009), Alexis de Tocqueville: The First Social Scientist (Cambridge University Press, 2009), L'irrationalité (2010) and Securities against Misrule: Juries, Assemblies, Elections (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
原文摘录
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The natural sciences, especially physics and chemistry, offer explanations by law. Laws are general propositions that allow us to infer the truth of one statement at one time from the truth of another statement at some earlier time. This kind of explanation is deterministic: given the antecedents, only one consequent (or antecedent) is possible. The social sciences offer few if any law-like explanations of this kind. The relation between explanans and explanandum is not one-one or many-one, but one-many or many-many. Many social scientists try to model this relation by using statistical methods. Statistical explanations are incomplete by themselves, however, since they ultimately have to rely on intuitions about plausible causal mechnisms. (查看原文)
0 有用 James 2018-03-08 12:57:35
"All explanation is causal."