bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Rationality and cultural relativism
Authors: Simon Lawrence H. 
Published: September 2018

Under what conditions may we judge the practices or beliefs of another culture to be rationally deficient? Is it possible that cultures can differ so radically as to embody different and even incommensurable modes of reasoning? Are norms of rationality culturally relative, or are there culture-independent norms of rationality that can be used to judge the beliefs and practices of all human cultures?
In order to be in a position to make judgments about the rationality of another culture, we must first understand it. Understanding a very different culture itself raises philosophical difficulties. How do we acquire the initial translation of the language of the culture? Can we use our categories to understand the social practices of another culture, for instance, our categories of science, magic and religion? Or would the mapping of our categories on to the practices of culturally distant societies yield a distorted picture of how they construct social practices and institutions?
A lively debate has revolved around these questions. Part of the debate involves clarifying the difficult concepts of rationality and relativism. What sort of judgments of rationality are appropriate? Judgments about how agents’ reasons relate to their actions? Judgments about how well agents’ actions and social practices conform to the norms of their culture? Or judgments about the norms of rationality of cultures as such? Can relativism be given a coherent formulation that preserves the apparent disagreements for which it is meant to account?
Can there be incommensurable cultures, such that one culture could not understand the other? According to Donald Davidson’s theory of interpretation, radical translation requires the use of a principle of charity that in effect rules out the possibility of incommensurable cultures. If this result is accepted, then a strong form of cultural relativism concerning norms of rationality is also ruled out.
Davidson’s theory, some argue, does not eliminate the possibility of attributing irrational beliefs and practices to agents in other cultures, and thus still leaves some room for debate about how to understand and evaluate such beliefs and practices. Three positions frame the debate. The intellectualist position holds that judgments of rationality are in order across cultures. The symbolist and functionalist positions, here taken together, try to avoid such judgments by attributing functions or symbolic meanings to cultural practices that are generally not understood as such by the agents. The fideist position, wary of too easily being ethnocentric, assumes a more relativist stance with regard to cross-cultural judgments of rationality.
Sociology, theories of
Authors: Alexander Jeffrey C. 
Published: September 2018

Throughout the history of sociology, three types of theorizing have co-existed, sometimes uneasily. ‘Theories of’ provide abstract models of empirical processes; they function both as guides for sociological research and as sources for covering laws whose falsification or validation is intended to provide the basis for a cumulative science. ‘Presuppositional studies’ abstract away from particular empirical processes, seeking instead to articulate the fundamental properties of social action and order; meta-methodological warrants for the scientific investigation of societies; and normative foundations for moral evaluations of contemporary social life. ‘Hermeneutical theory’ addresses these basic sociological questions more indirectly, by interpreting the meanings and intentions of classical texts.
The relation between these three forms of theorizing varies historically. In the post-war period, under the institutional and intellectual influence of US sociologists like Parsons and Merton, presuppositional and hermeneutical issues seemed to be settled; ‘theories of’ proliferated and prospects seemed bright for a cumulative, theoretically-organized science of society. Subsequent social and intellectual developments undermined this brief period of relative consensus. In the midst of the crises of the 1960s and 1970s, presuppositional and hermeneutical studies gained much greater importance, and became increasingly disarticulated from empirical ‘theories of’. Confronting the prospect of growing fragmentation, in the late 1970s and early 1980s there appeared a series of ambitious, synthetical works that sought to reground the discipline by providing coherent examples of how the different forms of sociological theory could once again be intertwined. While widely read inside and outside the discipline, these efforts failed in their foundational ambitions.
As a result of this failure, over the last decade sociological theory has had diminishing influence both inside the discipline and without. Inside social science, economic and anthropological theories have been much more influential. In the broader intellectual arena, the most important presuppositional and hermeneutical debates have occurred in philosophy and literary studies. Sociological theorists are now participating in these extra-disciplinary debates even as they have returned to the task of developing ‘theories of’ particular institutional domains. The future of specifically sociological theory depends on reviving coherent relationships between these different theoretical domains.
Statistics and social science
Authors: Spirtes Peter 
Published: September 2018

There are a number of distinct uses for statistics in the social sciences. One use is simply to provide a summary description of complicated features in a population.
A second use of statistics is to predict (some) features of a unit or group in a population, given other features of the unit or group. For example, a company may charge lower health insurance rates for people who do not smoke, because smokers have a lower risk of lung cancer. Some companies could also charge lower health insurance rates for people who do not have a heavy cough, because the probability of having lung cancer is lower for such people. Predictions can be made by developing a probabilistic model of the joint distribution of incidence of smoking, lung cancer, and incidence of heavy coughs in the population.
A third use of statistics is to help predict the probable effects of adopting different policies. For example, the government may consider a number of alternative policies for reducing the rate of lung cancer. One policy would ban smoking. Another policy would make everyone who coughs take cough medicine. Both smoking and coughing are predictors of lung cancer. But because smoking is a cause of lung cancer, while coughing is an effect of lung cancer, the first policy seems as if it might achieve the desired effect, while the second does not. In order to answer policy questions we need to know not only how the variables are distributed in the actual population, but also how they are causally related. A causal model specifies the causal relations between features in a population, as well as specifying a probability distribution of the features. Statistical information together with causal information can be used to predict the effects of adopting a certain policy.
A fourth use of statistics is in helping decide which policies should be adopted in order to achieve specific goals. Such decisions are based not only on the probable effects of each policy, but also on assigning different utilities to each possible outcome. This use of statistics is a branch of decision theory.
Symbolic interactionism
Authors: Brittan Arthur 
Published: September 2018

Symbolic interactionism is in the main a US sociological and social psychological perspective that has focused on the reciprocal relationship between language, identity and society. Philosophically it has largely been associated with pragmatists such as James (1907), Mead (1934), Dewey (1922) and Pierce (1958), although in the European context it has affinities with hermeneutics and phenomenology. In addition, it has links with various ‘dramaturgical’ approaches to communication that emphasize the interactive processes underpinning the construction, negotiation, presentation and affirmation of the self. In brief, symbolic interactionism is premised on the supposition that human beings are ‘active’ and not ‘reactive’.
Although it is not easy to spell out the central propositions of Symbolic Interactionism in a systematic way, nevertheless, most of its proponents are committed to an interactive view of self and society, that is, they take issue with those views that see the social world as a seamless unity that completely encapsulates and determines individual conduct.
Weber, Max (1864–1920)
Authors: Turner Stephen P. , Factor Regis A. 
Published: September 2018

Max Weber, German economist, historian, sociologist, methodologist, and political thinker, is of philosophical significance for his attempted reconciliation of historical relativism with the possibility of a causal social science; his notion of a verstehende (understanding) sociology; his formulation, use and epistemic account of the concept of ‘ideal types’; his views on the rational irreconcilability of ultimate value choices, and particularly his formulation of the implications for ethical political action of the conflict between ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility; and his sociological account of the causes and uniqueness of the western rationalization of life.
These topics are closely related: Weber argued that the explanatory interests of the historian and social scientist vary historically and that the objects of their interest were constituted in terms of cultural points of view, and that consequently their categories are ultimately rooted in evaluations, and hence subjective. But he also argued that social science cannot dispense with causality, and that once the categories were chosen, judgments of causality were objective. The explanatory interests of the sociologist, as he defined sociology, were in understanding intentional action causally, but in terms of categories that were culturally significant, such as ‘rational action’. Much of his influence flowed from his formulation of the cultural situation of the day, especially the idea that the fate of the time was to recognize that evaluations were inescapably subjective and that the world had no inherent ‘meaning’. The existential implications of this novel situation for politics and learning were strikingly formulated by him: science could not tell us how to live; politics was as a choice between warring Gods. Weber’s scholarly work and his politics served as a model for Karl Jaspers, and a subject of criticism and analysis for other philosophers, such as Karl Löwith, Max Scheler, and the Frankfurt School.
Anarchism
Authors: Crowder George 
Published: September 2018

Anarchism is the view that a society without the state, or government, is both possible and desirable. Although there have been intimations of the anarchist outlook throughout history, anarchist ideas emerged in their modern form in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the wake of the French and Industrial Revolutions.
All anarchists support some version of each of the following broad claims: (1) people have no general obligation to obey the commands of the state; (2) the state ought to be abolished; (3) some kind of stateless society is possible and desirable; (4) the transition from state to anarchy is a realistic prospect
Within this broad framework there is a rich variety of anarchist thought. The main political division is between the ‘classical’ or socialist school, which tends to reject or restrict private property, and the ‘individualist’ or libertarian tradition, which defends private acquisition and looks to free market exchange as a model for the desirable society. Philosophical differences follow this division to some extent, the classical school appealing principally to natural law and perfectionist ethics, and the individualists to natural rights and egoism. Another possible distinction is between the ‘old’ anarchism of the nineteenth century (including both the classical and individualist traditions) and the ‘new’ anarchist thought that has developed since the Second World War, which applies the insights of such recent ethical currents as feminism, ecology and postmodernism.
Anarchists have produced powerful arguments denying any general obligation to obey the state and pointing out the ill effects of state power. More open to question are their claims that states ought to be abolished, that social order is possible without the state and that a transition to anarchy is a realistic possibility.
Civil disobedience
Authors: Greenawalt Kent 
Published: September 2018

According to common definitions, civil disobedience involves a public and nonviolent breach of law that is committed in order to change a law or policy, and in order to better society. More, those classed as civilly disobedient must be willing to accept punishment. Why is the categorization of what counts as civil disobedience of practical importance? The usual assumption is that acts of civil disobedience are easier to justify morally than other illegal acts. Acts of civil disobedience, such as those committed by abolitionists, by followers of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr and by opponents of the Vietnam War, have been an important form of social protest.
The decision as to what exactly should count as civil disobedience should be guided both by an ordinary understanding of what the term conveys and by what factors are relevant for moral justification. For justification, nonviolence and publicness matter because they reduce the damage of violating the law. Tactics should be proportionate to the evil against which civil disobedience is aimed; someone who assesses the morality of a particular act of civil disobedience should distinguish an evaluation of tactics from an evaluation of objectives.
Corruption
Authors: Philp Mark 
Published: September 2018

Corruption denotes decay or perversion. The term implies that there is a natural or normal standard of functioning or conduct from which the corrupt state of affairs or action deviates. When we talk of a person becoming corrupt, we mean not just that they have broken a rule, but that the basic norms of ethical conduct no longer have any force for them. Corruption strikes at the root of a thing.
Political corruption involves the decay or perversion of political rule. Broadly, this occurs when a group or individual subverts a society’s publicly endorsed practices for conciliating conflicts and pursuing the common good so as to gain illegitimate advantage for their interests in the political process. The precise specification of the nature and dynamics of corruption is inherently controversial. Classical accounts associate it with a collapse of civic virtue and the eventual destruction of the state. Modern theories focus more narrowly on the misuse of public office for private gain.
Economics and ethics
Authors: Hausman Daniel , McPherson Michael S. 
Published: September 2018

Unlike many other sciences, economics is linked both to ethics and to the theory of rationality. Although many economists regard economics as a ‘positive’ science of one sort of social phenomena, economics is built around a normative theory of rationality, and has a special relevance to policy making and the criticism of social institutions. Economics complements and intersects with moral philosophy in both the concepts it has constructed and in its treatment of normative problems.
Fundamental to modern economics is its conception of human beings as rational agents, whose choices are determined by complete and transitive preferences. Although economists stress the usefulness of this notion of rationality in explaining human behaviour, rationality is clearly also a normative notion. The mathematical tools economists have developed to represent and study the implications of rational action in collective and interactive contexts are thus of immediate relevance to moral philosophers.
Also of interest to moral philosophy is the problematic attempt in welfare economics to fashion a normative theory of economic institutions and policies around the goal of helping people satisfy their subjective preferences. This project relies, controversially, on equating people’s wellbeing with the degree of satisfaction of their subjective preferences; an individual’s ‘utility’ on this view is no more than an index of how well their subjective preferences are satisfied. Furthermore, since most welfare economists assume that there is no meaningful way to compare degrees of preference satisfaction across people, the project also requires a scheme for weighing the effectiveness of alternative economic arrangements in satisfying preferences without weighing the comparative satisfaction levels of different individuals. Central to the project is Pareto optimality – the notion of an ‘efficient’ arrangement as one in which no individual can achieve higher preference satisfaction without someone else undergoing a reduction in their satisfaction level.
Economic policies and institutions can be appraised in terms of a variety of values other than efficiency. Notable both in historical and contemporary discussions are the values of liberty, justice and equality. Since a large part of economics is carried out with a view to its possible application to policy, ethics has a significant part to play in economics. By the same token, economics may be of great importance to ethics, both through its exploration of consequences and through the development of mathematical and conceptual tools.
Freedom and liberty
Authors: Feinberg Joel 
Published: September 2018

There are at least two basic ideas in the conceptual complex we call ‘freedom’; namely, rightful self-government (autonomy), and the overall ability to do, choose or achieve things, which can be called ‘optionality’ and defined as the possession of open options. To be autonomous is to be free in the sense of ‘self-governing’ and ‘independent’, in a manner analogous to that in which sovereign nation states are free. Optionality is when a person has an open option in respect to some possible action, x, when nothing in the objective circumstances prevents them from doing x should they choose to do so, and nothing requires them to do x should they choose not to. One has freedom of action when one can do what one wills, but in order to have the full benefit of optionality, it must be supplemented by freedom of choice (free will), which consists in being able to will what one wants to will, free of internal psychological impediments. Autonomy and optionality can vary independently of one another. A great deal of one can coexist with very little of the other.
Perhaps the most controversial philosophical question about the analysis of freedom concerns its relation to wants or desires. Some philosophers maintain that only the actual wants that a person has at a given time are relevant to their freedom, and that a person is free to the extent that they can do what they want, even if they can do very little else. Other philosophers, urging that the function of freedom is to provide ‘breathing space’, insist that freedom is a function of a person’s ability to satisfy possible (hypothetical) as well as actual wants. A third group consists of those who hold a ‘value-oriented’ theory according to which freedom is not merely the power of doing what one wants or may come to want, rather it is the capacity of doing something ‘worth doing or enjoying’, something that is important or significant to the person said to be free, or to others.
Justice
Authors: Barry Brian , Matravers Matt 
Published: September 2018

The idea of justice lies at the heart of moral and political philosophy. It is a necessary virtue of individuals in their interactions with others, and the principal virtue of social institutions, although not the only one. Just as an individual can display qualities such as integrity, charity and loyalty, so a society can also be more or less economically prosperous, artistically cultivated, and so on. Traditionally defined by the Latin tag ‘suum cuique tribuere’ - to allocate to each his own - justice has always been closely connected to the ideas of desert and equality. Rewards and punishments are justly distributed if they go to those who deserve them. But in the absence of different desert claims, justice demands equal treatment.
One division of justice concerns compensation for the infliction of damage and the punishment for the commission of crimes. The other concerns the content of just principles for the distribution of benefits and (non-punitive) burdens. Conventionalists claim that what is due to each person is given by the laws, customs and shared understandings of the community of which the person is a member. Teleologists believe that an account can be given of the good for human beings and that justice is the ordering principle through which a society (or humanity) pursues that good. Justice as mutual advantage proposes that the rules of justice can be derived from the rational agreement of each agent to cooperate with others to further their own self-interest.
Legitimacy
Authors: Beetham David 
Published: September 2018

Legitimacy refers to the rightfulness of a powerholder or system of rule. The term originated in controversies over property and succession, and was used to differentiate children born of a lawful marriage from those who were ‘illegitimate’. From thence the term entered political discourse via controversies over the rightful succession to the restored French throne after the Napoleonic period. However, questions about what makes government rightful have been a central issue of philosophical debate since the ancient Greeks, and in this sense the concept, if not the term, ‘legitimacy’ is as old as political philosophy itself. Its significance lies in the moral, as opposed to merely prudential, grounds for obedience which follow for subjects where power is rightfully acquired and exercised, and in the depth of allegiance which such political authorities can call upon in times of difficulty.
What, then, makes government legitimate? Most thinkers agree that a necessary condition is that power should be acquired and exercised according to established rules, whether these are conventionally or legally defined. However, legal validity cannot be a sufficient condition of legitimacy, since both the rules and the power exercised under them also have to be morally justifiable. Two broad criteria for moral justifiability can be distinguished: (1) political power should derive from a rightful source of authority; (2) it should satisfy the rightful ends or purposes of government. Most philosophical disputes about legitimacy take place either within or between these two broad positions; any adequate account of it must embrace both however.