Causal Mechanisms: In Social Theory Research Papers

Adaptive control in the face of uncertainty involves making online predictions about events in order to plan actions to reliably achieve desirable outcomes. However, we often face situations in which the effects of our actions are probabilistic (e.g., returns on our investments), and the environment itself is dynamic, - it can change irrespective of any action we decide to take, and in a relatively stable or unstable way (e.g., economic climate). Therefore, the problem of control concerns learning to isolate the effects that are generated directly by our actions, from those that occur independently of them. We face this problem in a host of uncertain dynamic environments: ecological (using fertilizers to increase crop yield), economic (investing in real estate), industrial (operating nuclear power plants), mechanical (driving cars) and medical (stemming outbreaks of disease). Thus far there has been little attempt at a synthesis of the amassing research directed towards understanding control in the face of uncertainty. The aim of this book is to bring together theoretical and empirical research from disparate disciplines spanning Social, Cognitive and Clinical Psychology, Human Factors and Neuroscience to Engineering and Machine learning. It serves as a round up of the different techniques used to examine issues concerning control (prediction, agency, causality, uncertainty) and unifies a substantial amount of disparate research. The general framework (Monitoring and control- MC framework) used to achieve this proposes two central ideas (agency, uncertainty) that have important ramifications across disciplines. In sum, control processes involve self-regulatory mechanisms that enable us to make subjective estimates of success, which helps to anchor our interpretation of uncertain events. In addition, these estimates are integrated with estimations of rates of change of the events in the environment which helps us track the outcomes we aim to control.

- by Magda Osman
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- Management, Engineering, Psychology, Cognitive Psychology

Настоящая, вторая книга «Философии и теории истории» посвящена широкому тема-тическому спектру: от фундаментальных проблем социальной онтологии и исторической динамики до детального анализа событийного слоя отдельных кризисов и революций. Выделены основные сдвиги в современном социально-историческом познании, сфор-мулированы соответствующие принципы. Выстроен концептуальный мост между уровнями макро-и микро-(structure и agency) с учетом их динамики и взаимовлияния. Построена об-щая теория трансформации политических отношений и режимов с приложением к динамике разнообразных неопатримониальных режимов. Главная идея книги-порядок в беспорядке-состоит в утверждении значимости универсальных закономерностей социального взаимодействия, свойств сознания и поведе-ния людей в самых острых кризисах, жестоких конфликтах и бурных революциях, которые обычно принято считать «иррациональной стихией» и «хаосом». С этих позиций проанализирована роль разного типа революций и революционных волн в контексте гуманистической версии смысла мировой истории в пяти автономных про-цессах модернизации. Особое внимание уделено причинам назревания кризисов и револю-ционных ситуаций, закономерностям государственного распада, механизмам конфликтной динамики, взаимосвязи макро-, мезо-, и микропроцессов в революционные периоды на ма-териале Большой Русской революции (1905-1930 гг.), хода политических конфликтов 1917 г., переломных дней Февраля в Петрограде и Евромайдана в Киеве, а также сравнения распадов Российской империи и Югославии. Обоснованы принципы и критерии легитимно-сти постреволюционных режимов. В приложениях рассмотрены причины и пределы ускорения истории, возможности приложения макросоциологических теорий Р. Коллинза к истории России, ее современной политике и перспективам. Книга предназначена для философов, социологов, политологов, историков, для иссле-дователей и преподавателей, для аспирантов и студентов, для политиков и интересующихся политикой, для всех, кого волнуют вопросы философского и научного осмысления истории, теории кризисной и революционной динамики. Заказ книги:

- by Nikolai Rozov
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- History, Revolutions, Philosophy of History, Protest

Die Begriffe Politikkonvergenz, Politikdiffusion und Politiktransfer werden in der Literatur nicht immer klar voneinander abgegrenzt. Die daraus resultierende begriffliche — und möglicherweise auch analytische —Unklarheit erschwert bislang die Synthese der unter den verschiedenen Begriffen erarbeiteten konzeptionellen Ansätze und empirischen Ergebnisse und damit die Herausbildung eines übergreifenden Forschungsprogramms (Holzinger/Knill 2005; Tews 2005; Holzinger/Jörgens/Knill im Erscheinen). Ziel dieses einleitenden Beitrags ist es daher, die verwandten Konzepte Diffusion, Transfer und Konvergenz zusammenzuführen und für einander fruchtbar zu machen.

The Coleman diagram is one of the most famous theoretical diagrams in sociology. The aim of this article is to provide a rational reconstruction of the diagram as a tool for social scientific theorizing. I will show how Coleman uses the diagram and how it can be employed as a tool for theoretical thinking. I will also demonstrate how it can be used to clarify the nature of the micro-macro challenge in social explanation. The structure of the article is as following. Section 2 will describe the diagram and its elements. Section 3 will show various ways in which Coleman used the diagram in his work. Section 4 discusses more systematically issues related to the interpretation of the diagram, and Section 5 will provide a diagnosis of some recent interpretations of the diagram. Finally, Section 6 focuses on some important limitations of the diagram.

- by Petri Ylikoski
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- Sociological Theory, Individualism, Microfoundations, James Coleman

During the past decade, social mechanisms and mechanism-based ex- planations have received considerable attention in the social sciences as well as in the philosophy of science. This article critically reviews the most important philosophical and social science contributions to the mechanism approach. The first part discusses the idea of mechanism- based explanation from the point of view of philosophy of science and relates it to causation and to the covering-law account of explanation. The second part focuses on how the idea of mechanisms has been used in the social sciences. The final part discusses recent developments in analytical sociology, covering the nature of sociological explananda, the role of theory of action in mechanism-based explanations, Merton’s idea of middle-range theory, and the role of agent-based simulations in the development of mechanism-based explanations.

The objective of the master thesis presented here is to chart a concept of causality adequate for a historical materialism at pace with the times, uncircumventable for grasping complex social phenomena and relationships, their reproduction and transformation following Marx’s materialist notion of social reality. Thereby the main focus does not lie on Marx’s notion of causality, which is not closer explicated by himself as causality. Rather this in general (systematically) relatively little theorized notion within Marxist discourses will be discussed alongside theoretical approaches which seem to be most fruitful for this enquiry: Structural Marxism, Political Marxism and Critical Realism. By means of a brief outline of the Marxian preface of 1859, which is central to many Marxist approaches, it will be attempted to es-tablish the main field under discussion in terms of a history of theory. With respect to an immanently critical and comparative method, the thesis henceforth expounds the aforementioned theories while taking their respective notions of causality as well as, among other things, the interrelated understanding of social structure in relation to agency, the specific effectivities of the involved entities and the notions of lawfulness into account. What is hereby striven for, is to contour though the critical and comparative exposition of the said theories a non-empiricist, non-teleological and non-determinist notion of causality appropriate to the complexity of social reality, without taking a recourse to theoretically restricted positivist or historico-philosophical patterns of explanation and interpretation. In the end the critical impetus of this thesis is to accentuate the importance of causality in a critical theory of society after Marx.

- by Ralph Pöchtrager
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- Critical Theory, Ontology, Social Philosophy, Critical Realism

Social mechanisms and mechanism-based explanation have attracted considerable attention in the social sciences and the philosophy of science during the past two decades. The idea of mechanistic explanation has proved to be a useful tool for criticizing existing research practices and meta-theoretical views on the nature of the social-scientific enterprise. Many definitions of social mechanisms have been articulated, and have been used to support a wide variety of methodological and theoretical claims. It is impossible to cover all of these in one chapter, so I will merely highlight some of the most prominent and philosophically interesting ideas.

- by Philip Gorski
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- Philosophy of Science, Pragmatism, Critical Realism, Logical Positivism
- by Philip Gorski
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- Philosophy of Science, Critical Realism, Philosophy of Social Science, Karl Popper

This paper crosses the borders of human geography to bring back two related bodies of work from experimental psychology that investigate, in an unusual and refreshingly precise way, long-standing human geographical concerns with tem-porality, place and subject formations, meaning-making and well-being. It is argued that the traffic of ideas and empirical findings between human geography and experimental psychology can be mutually profitable if, and only to the extent that, it encompasses a sustained epistemological, methodological and political critique of the disciplinary practices that have yielded those ideas and findings.

- by Dragos Simandan
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- Critical Theory, Landscape Ecology, Sociology, Cultural Studies

ABSTRACT: Wesley Salmon’s version of the ontic conception of explanation is a main historical root of contemporary work on mechanistic explanation. This paper examines and critiques the philosophical merits of Salmon’s version, and argues that his conception’s most fundamental construct is either fundamentally obscure, or else reduces to a non-ontic conception of explanation. Either way, the ontic conception is a misconception.

- by Cory Wright
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- Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science, History of Philosophy of Science, Causation

After a decade of intense debate about mechanisms, there is still no consensus characterization. In this paper we argue for a characterization that applies widely to mechanisms across the sciences. We examine and defend our disagreements with the major current contenders for characterizations of mechanisms. Ultimately, we indicate that the major contenders can all sign up to our characterization.

- by Phyllis Illari and +1
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- Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy of Biology, Causation

This theoretical paper introduces a conceptual framework for empirical study and comparison of collaborative civil society housing (CSH). We suggest that CSH communities satisfy four criteria to a lesser or higher extent: (1) autonomy, (2) participatory democracy, (3) internal solidarity and (4) external solidarity. Drawing primarily on empirical examples from the scholarly literature on co-operative housing, we claim that all CSH communities face challenges that may lead to the erosion of these civil society criteria. We argue that such challenges are general social mechanisms that manifest themselves in various types of situations, for instance, when apartments are transferred or refurbished.

The paper shows how error statistical theory can be deployed to grasp the deeper epistemic logic of the peer-review process. The intent is to provide the readers with a novel lens through which to make sense of the practices of academic... more

- by Dragos Simandan
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- Discourse Analysis, Sociology, Geography, Human Geography
- by A Georges L Romme
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- Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Research Methodology, Narrative

This book extends debates in the field of biographical research, arguing that causal explanations are not at odds with biographical research and that biographical research is in fact a valuable tool for explaining why things in social and personal lives are one way and not another. Bringing reconstructive biographical research into dialogue with critical realism, it explains how and why relational social ontology can become a unique theoretical ground for tapping emergent mechanisms and latent meaning structures. Through an account of the reasons for which reductionist epistemologies, rational action models and covering law explanations are not appropriate for biographical research, the authors develop the philosophical idea of singular causation as a means by which biographical researchers are able to forge causal hypotheses for the occurrence of events and offer guidance on the application of this methodological principle to concrete, empirical examples. As such, this volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in biographical research and social research methods.

- by Giorgos Tsiolis
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- Social Sciences, Critical Realism, Qualitative methodology, Qualitative Research

Today, mechanisms and mechanistic explanation are very popular in philosophy of science and are deemed a welcome alternative to laws of nature and deductive-nomological explanation. Starting from Mitchell’s pragmatic notion of laws, I cast doubt on their status as a genuine alternative. I argue that (1) all complex-systems mechanisms ontologically must rely on stable regularities, while (2) the reverse need not hold. Analogously, (3) models of mechanisms must incorporate pragmatic laws, while (4) such laws themselves need not always refer to underlying mechanisms. Finally, I show that Mitchell’s account is more encompassing than the mechanistic account.

- by Bert Leuridan
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- Laws of Nature, Causality, Laws of Nature (Philosophy), Genres

This article makes the case for process patterns as an alternative to causal mechanisms. Causal mechanisms are explanatory tools to unpack the " black boxes " separating the input and output of models. Unlike causal mechanisms, process patterns do not require such a black box. They refer to recurrent sequences of interaction observed across any number of empirical domains. Scholars can apply them across disciplines when similar processes occur in different domains. The article provides examples from International Relations where scholars have sometimes studied process patterns in all but name.

- by Antoine Roger and +1
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- Social Change, Social Movements, Social Theory, Field Theory

After The state and education policy, the most well-circulated work of Roger Dale is the 1999 published paper Specifying globalization effects on national policy: a focus on the mechanisms. This piece has contributed importantly to Dale's theoretical developments on globalization and education policy. As I argue in this chapter, Dale's focus on the mechanisms contributes to analyze changing education governance patterns from a multi-scalar perspective and through a more complex understanding of how structural forces and strategic action interact with meso variables in the production of educational policy change. Despite its many virtues, the mechanisms' paper can be misleading if viewed as a closed analytical framework. It rather needs to be read as an invitation to identify and understand the causal configurations behind educational transformations in increasingly globalized policy spaces.

- by Antoni Verger
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- Globalization, Global Governance, Education Policy, Mechanistic Explanation

A basic claim of this paper is that the foundational theoretical problem of the social sciences — the possibility of unconscious, unplanned forms of cooperation and intelligence among intentional agents (the very hard issue of the ‘invisible hand’, of the ‘spontaneous social order’ but also of ‘social functions’) — will eventually be clarified thanks to the contribution of AI (and, in particular, of cognitive Agent modelling, learning, and MAS) and its entering the social simulation domain. After introducing Multi-Agent-Based Social Simulation and its trends, the limits of the very popular notion of ‘emergence’ are discussed, Smith’s and Hayek’s view of ‘spontaneous social order’ are critically introduced, and serious contradictions in the theory of ‘social functions’ among intentional agents are pointed out. The problem is how to reconcile the ‘external’ teleology that orients the agent’s behaviour with the ‘internal’ teleology governing it. In order to account for the functional character of intentional action, we need a somewhat sophisticated model of intention, and a different view of layered cognitive architectures combining explicit beliefs and goals with association and conditioning. On such a basis we sketch a model of unknown functions impinging on intentional actions through a high level form of (MA) reinforcement learning. This model accounts for both eu-functions and dys-functions, autonomous and heteronomous functions. It is argued that, in order to reproduce some behaviour, its effects should not necessarily be ‘good’, i.e. useful for the goal of the agent or of some higher macro-system.  2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

- by Cristiano Castelfranchi
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- Genres, Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, Intentional Action

According to the dominant view, analytical sociology is largely incompatible with the deductive-nomological (D-N) model because the latter allows neither for accurate and precise explanations, nor for explanations that give individuals and their actions a privileged role. This view neglects two relevant facts about the D-N model as understood by Hempel and Popper and some of their precursors such as J. S. Mill and Weber. The first is the relationship between this model, situational analysis and the use of probabilistic laws in explanation. The second is that, from the standpoint of the D-N theory, it is possible to make sense of social mechanisms in terms of Weber’s ideal-typical models. Like these models, mechanisms are functional for the development of concrete empirical sociological hypotheses that, without covering generalizations, lack explanatory power.

- by Bianca Ruskowski
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- Socialization, Dispositions, Youth, Engagement

The recent literature on " complex contagions " challenges Granovetter's classic hypothesis on the strength of weak ties and argues that, when the actors' choice requires reinforcement from several sources, it is the structure of strong ties that really matters to sustain rapid and wide diffusion. The paper contributes to this debate by reporting on a small-N study that relies on a unique combination of ethnographic data, social network analysis, and computational models. In particular, we investigate two rural populations of Indian and Kenyan potters who have to decide whether to adopt new, objectively more efficient and economically more attractive, technical/stylistic options. Qualitative field data show that religious sub-communities within the Indian and Kenyan populations exhibit markedly different diffusion rates and speed over the last thirty years. To account for these differences, we first analyze empirically observed kinship networks and advice networks, and, then, we recreate the actual aggregate diffusion curves through a series of empirically calibrated agent-based simulations. Combining the two methods, we show that, while single exposure through heterophilious weak ties were sufficient to initiate the diffusion process, large bridges made of strong ties can in fact lead to faster or slower diffusion depending on the type of signals circulating in the network. We conclude that, even in presence of " complex contagions, " dense local ties cannot be regarded as a sufficient condition for faster diffusion.

This article aims contributing to the enlargement and qualification
of the research field on activism in Brazil by proposing an analytical
model that enable advances in the explanation of processes of activist
engagement. That is, the proposed model aims to explain forms of
socio-political activism that involve an ongoing action over time in
defense of some cause, which tend to be empirically expressed by an
organizational identification and participation. In order to achieve this
goal, the argumentation developed is oriented by a realist perspective,
aiming to identify which are the causal mechanisms that constitute
the processes of engagement. Based on a bibliography review
and empirical researches, four perspectives to explain the activist
engagement have been identified: dispositional, identity, relational, and
retribution. The proposed model is formulated by articulating arguments
from these perspectives.

- by Bianca Ruskowski and +1
- •
- Social Movements, Activism, Engagement, Militancy

Transitional justice and diaspora studies are interdisciplinary and expanding fields of study. Finding the right combination of mechanisms to forward transitional justice in post-conflict polities is an ongoing challenge for states and affected populations. Diasporas, as non-state actors with increased agency in homelands, host-lands, and other global locations, engage with their past from a distance, but their actions are little understood. This introductory article to a special issue develops a novel framework to study causal mechanisms and their underlying analytical rationales – emotional, cognitive, symbolic/value-based, strategic, and networks-based – linking diasporas and local actors in transitional justice. Mechanisms featured are: thin sympathetic response and chosen trauma, fear and hope, contact and framing, cooperation and coalition-building, brokerage, patronage, and connective action, among others. The contributors theorize about causal mechanisms and their sequences involving diasporas in multi-sited transitional justice processes and bring empirical evidence from various world regions.

- by Maria Koinova
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- Social Movements, Peace and Conflict Studies, Social Networks, Political Coalitions

he article seeks to offer a way forward in discussions about the status of securitization theory. In my reading, this debate has been inhibited by the difficulty of finding an appropriate version of ‘understanding/explanation’ that would be consistent with the meta-theoretical commitments of a post-structuralist theory.
By leaving ‘explanation’ and/or all versions of causality to the positivist other, the Copenhagen School also left its own explanatory status often implicit, or only negatively defined. Instead, the present article claims that the explanatory theory used in securitization research de facto relies on causal mechanisms that are nonpositivistically conceived. Using the appropriate methodological literature renders this explanatory
status explicit, exposing the theory’s non-positivist causality and thus, hopefully, enhancing its empirical theory.

- by Stefano Guzzini
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- International Relations, Social Sciences, Political Science, Security Studies

Today, complex-systems mechanisms and mechanistic explanation are very popular in philosophy of science and are deemed a welcome alternative to the decried laws of nature and to D-N explanation. However, starting from a relaxed, pragmatic notion of regularities and laws, I will cast doubt on their status as a genuine alternative. I will argue that (1) all complex-systems mechanisms ontologically must rely on stable regularities, while (2) it is not obvious that all such regularities must rely on an underlying mechanism. Analogously, (3) models of mechanisms must incorporate (and hence are epistemologically dependent on) pragmatic laws, while (4) such laws themselves needn’t always represent mechanisms. As valuable as the concepts of mechanism and mechanistic explanation are, they cannot replace regularities nor undermine their relevance regarding explanation.

- by Bert Leuridan
- •
- Philosophy, Laws of Nature, Causality, Laws of Nature (Philosophy)
- by Francisco J. Miguel Quesada and +1
- •
- Sociology, Rational Choice, Fiscal policy, Social Simulation
- by philippe huneman
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- Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Biology, Community Ecology, Causation

In this paper, we compare the mechanisms of protein synthesis and natural selection. We identify three core elements of mechanistic explanation: functional individuation, hierarchical nestedness or decomposition, and organization. These are now well understood elements of mechanistic explanation in fields such as protein synthesis, and widely accepted in the mechanisms literature. But Skipper and Millstein have argued (2005) that natural selection is neither decomposable nor organized. This would mean that much of the current mechanisms literature does not apply to the mechanism of natural selection. We take each element of mechanistic explanation in turn. Having appreciated the importance of functional individuation, we show how decomposition and organization should be better understood in these terms. We thereby show that mechanistic explanation by protein synthesis and natural selection are more closely analogous than they appear—both possess all three of these core elements of a mechanism widely recognized in the mechanisms literature.

- by Phyllis Illari and +1
- •
- Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Biology, Theory Of Mechanisms, Genres

In three experiments we investigated whether two procedures of acquiring knowledge about the same causal structure, predictive learning (from causes to effects) versus diagnostic learning (from effects to causes), would lead to different base rate use in diagnostic judgments. Results showed that learners are capable of incorporating base rate information in their judgments regardless of the direction in which the causal structure is learned. However, this only holds true for relatively simple scenarios. When complexity was increased, base rates were only used after diagnostic learning, but were largely neglected after predictive learning. It could be shown that this asymmetry is not due to a failure of encoding base rates in predictive learning because participants in all conditions were fairly good at reporting them. The findings present challenges for all theories of causal learning.

- by Ulf-Dietrich Reips
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- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Causal reasoning

Causal Mechanisms: In Social Theory Research Papers (original) (raw)