Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 1996) defends the prospects for a science of society and argues that behind the diverse methods of the natural sciences lies a common core of scientific rationality that the social sciences can and sometimes do achieve. It also argues that good social science must duly reflect large-scale social structures and processes and thus that methodological individualism is misguided. These theses are supported by a detailed discussion of actual social research, including theories of agrarian revolution, organizational ecology, social theories of depression, and supply and demand explanations in economics. Professor Kincaid provides a general picture of explanation and confirmation in the social sciences and discusses the nature of scientific rationality, functional explanation, optimality arguments, meaning, and interpretation; the place of microfoundations in social explanation; the status of neo-classical economics; the role of idealizations and non-experimental evidence; and other controversies in social research.

CONTENTS Preface Chapter 1: Issues and arguments 1.1 The naturalist and holist traditions and their detractors 1.2 An outline of the argument Chapter 2: Challenges to scientific rationality 2.1 Quine and the demise of positivism 2.2 Varieties of rationality 2.3 Kuhn and shifting standards 2.3.1 Incommensurability 2.3.2. Theory-laden data 2.3.3 Ambiguous criteria 2.4 Social constructivism and post-modernist rhetoric 2.5 The subtle invasion of values 2.6 The symptoms of good science Chapter 3: Causes, confirmation, and explanation 3.1 Some a priori objections 3.2 Confirmation and qualifications 3.2.1 How can ceteris paribus laws be confirmed and how can they explain? 3.2.2 Ceteris paribus in practice 3.3 Inferring causes from non-experimental data 3.4 Lawless explanations Chapter 4: Functionalism defended 4.1 Functionalism and its critics 4.2 What is functionalism? 4.3 Confirming functional explanations 4.4 Functionalist failures and successes 4.4.1 Optimal Eskimos and Himdu Cows 4.4.2 Marxist accounts of the state 4.4.3 The ecology of organizations 4.5 The critics answered Chapter 5: The failures of individualism 5.1 The prospects for reduction 5.1.1. Requirements for reduction 5.1.2 Conceptual arguments for and against reducibility 5.1.3 An empirical case against individualism 5.2 Claims about explanation and confirmation 5.2.1 Full explanation without reduction? 5.2.2 Is individualism the best explanation? 5.2.3 Are individualist mechanisms necessary? 5.2.4 Individualist evidence and heruristics 5.3 A question of ontology? 5.4 The truth in individualism Chapter 6: A science of interpretation? 6.1 Issues and presuppositions 6.2 The right-wing attack 6.3 Skeptical hermeneuts 6.4 Interpretive successes 6.5 Norms and symbols Chapter 7: Economics: A Test Case 7.1 How to think about economics 7.2 The supply-and-demand core 7.2.1 Confirming the laws of supply and demand 7.2.2 The central role of supply-and-demand arguments 7.3 Assessing neo-classical models 7.4 Reduction and microfoundations Chapter 8: Problems and prospects References Index

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