Download or read book The Logical Foundations of Social Theory written by Gert H. Mueller and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2014-08-20 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Logical Foundations of Social Theory describes Gert Mueller’s argument that physical, biological, social, moral, and cultural reality form an asymmetrical hierarchy of founding and controlling relationships that condition social reality rather than mechanically determining it. This book analyzes social stratification as labor, wealth and power, the moral order as solidarity, ideology and morality, and culture systems as art, science, and religion.
Download or read book The Logic of Social Science written by James Mahoney and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mahoney's starting point is the problem of essentialism in social science. Essentialism--the belief that the members of a category possess hidden properties ("essences") that make them members of the category and that endow them with a certain nature--is appropriate for scientific categories ("atoms", for instance) but not for human ones ("revolutions," for instance). Despite this, much social science research takes place from within an essentialist orientation; those who reject this assumption goes so far in the other direction as to reject the idea of an external reality, independent of human beings, altogether. Mahoney proposes an alternative approach that aspires to bridge this enduring rift in the social sciences between those who take a scientific approach and assume that social science categories correspond to external reality (and thus believe that the methods used in the natural sciences are generally appropriate for the social sciences) and those who take a constructivist approach and believe that because the categories used to understand the social world are humanly-constructed, they cannot possibly follow the science of the natural world. As the name suggests, scientific constructivism brings in aspects of both views and attempts to unite them. Drawing from cognitive science, it focuses on using the rational parts of our brain machinery to overcome the limitations and deeply seated biases (such as essentialism) of our evolved minds. Specifically, Mahoney puts forth a "set-theoretic analysis" that focuses on "sets" of categories as they exist in the mind that are also subject to the mathematical logic of set-theory. He spends the first four chapters of the book establishing the foundations and methods for set-theoretic analysis, the next four chapters looking and how this analysis fits with the existing tools of social science, and the final four chapters focusing on how this approach can be used to study and understand cases"--
Download or read book Foundations of the Logical Theory of Scientific Knowledge Complex Logic written by A.A. Zinov'ev and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science are devoted to symposia, con gresses, colloquia, monographs and collected papers on the philosophical foundations of the sciences. It is now our pleasure to include A. A. Zi nov'ev's treatise on complex logic among these volumes. Zinov'ev is one of the most creative of modern Soviet logicians, and at the same time an innovative worker on the methodological foundations of science. More over, Zinov'ev, although still a developing scholar, has exerted a sub stantial and stimulating influence upon his colleagues and students in Moscow and within other philosophical and logical circles of the Soviet Union. Hence it may be helpful, in bringing this present work to an English-reading audience, to review briefly some contemporary Soviet investigations into scientific methodology. During the 1950's, a vigorous new research program in logic was under taken, and the initial published work -characteristic of most Soviet pub lications in the logic and methodology of the sciences - was a collection of essays, Logical Investigations (Moscow, 1959). Among the authors, in addition to Zinov'ev himself, were the philosophers A. Kol'man and P. V. Tavanec, and the mathematicians and linguists, S. A. Janovskaja, A. S. Esenin-Vol'pin, S. K. Saumjan, G. N. Povarov.
Download or read book Logical Foundations of Computer Science written by Sergei Artemov and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-14 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Symposium on Logical Foundations of Computer Science, LFCS 2016, held in Deerfield Beach, FL, USA in January 2016. The 27 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 46 submissions. The scope of the Symposium is broad and includes constructive mathematics and type theory; homotopy type theory; logic, automata, and automatic structures; computability and randomness; logical foundations of programming; logical aspects of computational complexity; parameterized complexity; logic programming and constraints; automated deduction and interactive theorem proving; logical methods in protocol and program verification; logical methods in program specification and extraction; domain theory logics; logical foundations of database theory; equational logic and term rewriting; lambda and combinatory calculi; categorical logic and topological semantics; linear logic; epistemic and temporal logics; intelligent and multiple-agent system logics; logics of proof and justification; non-monotonic reasoning; logic in game theory and social software; logic of hybrid systems; distributed system logics; mathematical fuzzy logic; system design logics; and other logics in computer science.
Download or read book Social Theory Today written by Anthony Giddens and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social theory has undergone dramatic changes over the past fifteen years. The aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive survey of those changes, and an authoritative statement on current trends of development in social thought. The contents of the book range in a systematic way across the major traditions of social theory prominent today. Among the topics covered are the relationships between modern social theory and the 'classics' of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the connections between social theory and mathematical social science; and the logical status of generalizations in the social sciences. Traditions of thought discussed include: behaviourism; symbolic interactionism; Parsonian theory; analytical theory; structuralism and post-structuralism; ethnomethodology; structuration theory; world systems theory; Marxism and critical theory.
Download or read book Culture and Social Theory written by Aaron Wildavsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aaron Wildavsky, along with Mary Douglas, identified what they called grid-group theory. Wildavsky began calling this "cultural theory," and applied it to an astounding array of subjects. The essays in this volume exemplify the theory's potential contributions to three seemingly disparate, but related, areas: the social construction of meaning, normative/analytic political philosophy, and a theory of rational choices. This book is the first in a series of Aaron Wildavsky's collected writings being published posthumously by Transaction. Wildavsky selected, sequenced, and grouped all but three of the essays included in Culture and Social Theory prior to his death. Some are presented here for the first time. Wildavsky's cultural theory provides ways to organize and interpret the world. In the first section, he shows how social scientists, particularly economists and sociologists, apply the theory. Wildavsky argues that concepts such as externalities, public goods, altruism, and even risk and rape are tools of rival, ubiquitous cultures engaged in perpetual struggle with one another. The second section deals with cultural theory as a way to interpret the works of normative and analytic political philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes and John Stuart Mill, on competing human objectives. Wildavsky argues that particular types of interaction among a society's cultures are necessary for effective realization of basic concepts such as democracy. In the third section, Wildavsky applies cultural theory in conjunction with instrumental rationality, the former as a theory of preference formation, the latter as a device for realizing preferences efficiently. High-priority objectives, and thus the character of norms and rational action, shift across cultures. The world and its various elements comprise a complex, frequently changing, and thus ambiguous reality, nowhere more so than in the dynamic contours of the United States. For cultural theory, individualistic, hierarchical, and egalitarian interpretations of the world are the only ones capable of forming and sustaining institutions and related patterns of social relations that will support human social groups. Wildavsky's central objective is to strip away the camouflage and to reveal varying domains of social life as fields of cultural competition. Culture and Social Theory will be a necessary addition to the libraries of political scientists, economists, and policymakers, not to mention all those who admire Aaron Wildavsky and his work.
Download or read book Hegel s Ontology of Power written by Arash Abazari and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-30 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent attempts to revitalize Hegel's social and political philosophy have tended to be doubly constrained: firstly, by their focus on Hegel's Philosophy of Right; and secondly, by their broadly liberal interpretive framework. Challenging that trend, Arash Abazari shows that the locus of Hegel's genuine critical social theory is to be sought in his ontology – specifically in the 'logic of essence' of the Science of Logic. Mobilizing ideas from Marx and Adorno, Abazari unveils the hidden critical import of Hegel's logic. He argues that social domination in capitalism obtains by virtue of the illusion of equality and freedom; shows how relations of opposition underlie the seeming pluralism in capitalism; and elaborates on the deepest ground of domination, i.e. the totality of capitalist social relations. Overall, his book demonstrates that Hegel's logic can and should be read politically.
Download or read book Marxist Ethical Theory in the Soviet Union written by P.T. Grier and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of the intellectual history of Marxism through its several phases and various national adaptations suggests, for any of at least three reasons, that the attempt to provide a widely acceptable summary of 'Marxist ethics' must be an enterprise with little prospect of success. First, a number of prominent Marxists have insisted that Marxism can have no ethics because its status as a science precludes bias toward, or the assumption of, any particular ethical standpoint. On this view it would be no more reasonable to expect an ethics of Marxism than of any other form of social science. Second, basing themselves on the opposite assumption, an equally prominent assortment of Marxist intellectuals have lamented the absence of a coherently developed Maryist ethics as a deficiency which must be remedied. ! Third, less com monly, Marxism is sometimes alleged to possess no developed ethical theory because it is exclusively committed to advocacy of class egoism on behalf 2 of the proletariat, and is thus rooted in a prudential, not a moral standpoint. The advocacy of proletarian class egoism - or 'revolutionary morality- may, strictly speaking, constitute an ethical standpoint, but it might be regarded as a peculiar waste of time for a convinced and consistent class egoist to develop precise formulations of his ethical views for the sake of convincing an abstract audience of classless and impartial rational observers which does not happen to exist at present.
Download or read book Social Theory and Social Movements written by Jochen Roose and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social movements are not only a potential challenge to societies, they also challenge social theory. This volume looks at social movements and social movement research through the lens of different social theories. What can social movement studies learn from these theories? And: What can these theories learn from the analysis of social movements? From this double vantage point, the book discusses the theories of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Niklas Luhmann, Jeffrey Alexander, and Judith Butler, as well as rational choice theory, relational sociology, and organizational neo-institutionalism.
Download or read book Modern Social Contract Theory written by Albert Weale and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an exposition and evaluation of major work in social contract theory from 1950 to the present.
Download or read book The Calculus of Consent written by James M. Buchanan and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1965 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scientific study of the political and economic factors influencing democratic decision making
Download or read book Philosophical Foundations of Quality of Life written by Alex C. Michalos and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first volume has as its main focus the philosophical foundations of Michalos’ work and describes it in the broad context of the study of logic, the philosophy of social sciences, and a general theory of value. After distinguishing things that have value from the value that things might have, it describes the foundations of a pragmatic theory of value. This theory plays a key role in the author’s research on the quality of life and connects his empirical research to the philosophical tradition of the American pragmatists William James, Ralph Barton Perry, John Dewey and Clarence Irving Lewis. The volume addresses various aspects and issues concerning decision making, including decision procedures used in committees, used for assessing the acceptability of scientific theories and new technologies, procedures for a science court, ethical issues involved in the formation of beliefs, some limitations of classical economists’ alleged postulates of rational preference, and the importance of analytic guides to decision making. Finally, it describes the organization of the Social Sciences Federation of Canada and a formal accounting system for scientific research.
Download or read book Thinking Through Theory written by John Levi Martin and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Social Theory for Old and New Modernities written by Ferrarotti and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 1955-01-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franco Ferrarotti is widely regarded as the founder of postwar Italian sociology. Along with such figures as Leo Strauss, Edward Shils, David Riesman, Robert Merton, and Ralf Dahrendorf, he established the terms and texts of contemporary sociology after the Second World War.Social Theory for Old and New Modernities is a collection of Ferrarotti's essays that brings his work back into the forefront of sociology. His writings, on theory and ethnographic research, on immigration and multiculturalism, on religion and secularization, speak directly to today's social and political dilemmas and crises and offer sociologists a critical and enlivened vision of their discipline. Maria Macioti's Introduction locates Franco Ferrarotti's work within his remarkable life, that of a politician, intellectual, and social scientist living amidst the social and political changes of the last half of the twentieth century, anticipating the changes and challenges of the twenty-first. E. Doyle McCarthy is the editor of this collection.
Download or read book Theoretical Logic in Sociology written by Jeffrey C. Alexander and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 1669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This four volume work, originally published in the 1980s and out of print for some years, represents a major attempt to redirect the course of contemporary sociological thought. Jeffrey Alexander analyses the most general and fundamental elements of sociological thinking about action and order and their ramifications for empirical study. He insists that sociological thought need not choose between voluntary action and social constraint. The four volumes can be read independently of one another as each presents a distinctive theoretical argument in its own right. The first volume is directed at contemporary problems and controversies, not only in ‘theory’ but in the philosophy and sociology of science. The last three volumes make interpretations, confronting the individual theorists, and the secondary literature, on their own terms.
Download or read book Foundations and Applications of Decision Theory written by C.A. Hooker and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1. INTRODUCTION In the Spring of 1975 we held an international workshop on the Foundations and Application of Decision Theory at the University of Western Ontario. To help structure the workshop into ordered and manageable sessions we distri buted the following statement of our goals to all invited participants. They in turn responded with useful revisions and suggested their own areas of interest. Since this procedure provided the eventual format of the sessions, we include it here as the most appropriate introduction to these collected papers result ing from the workshop. The reader can readily gauge the approximation to our mutual goals. 2. STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES AND RATIONALE (Attached to this statement is a bibliography; names of persons cited in the statement and writing in this century will be found referenced in the biblio graphy - certain 'classics' aSide. ) 2. 1. Preamble We understand in the following the Theory of Decisions in a broader sense than is presently customary, construing it to embrace a general theory of decision-making, including social, political and economic theory and applica tions. Thus, we subsume the Theory of Games under the head of Decision Theory, regarding it as a particularly clearly formulated version of part of the general theory of decision-making.
Download or read book Analytical Sociology written by Joseph R. Pearce and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 1994 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The focus on this volume is on logic and how the logic of foundational hierarchies may be applied to clarify the relationship between sociological theory and empirical research. The author articulates a logical calculus as a method for theory construction. Contents: Introduction; The Logical Foundations of Analytical Theory; Ontology and Analytical Sociological Theory; The Social Order and Social Structure; Neo-Marxist Theories of the State; An Application of Analytical Theory to Gramsci's and Althusser's Theories of the State; The Relationship Between Theory and Empirical Research; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
