Todd Suomela's Library tagged positivism →  View Popular, Search in Google

"The point here is a fundamental one. The covering law model depends on a metaphysics that gives primacy to laws of nature. The framework of critical realism and its cousins depends on a view of the world as consisting of things and processes with real causal powers. This intellectual framework is applicable to the social world as well as to the natural world. And it provides a strong intellectual basis for postulating and investigating social causal mechanisms. Any conception of causal powers requires that we have an idea of the nature of the substrate of causation in various areas. And the social metaphysics of actor-centered sociology provide a strong candidate for such a framework in the case of social causation."

philosophy social-science epistemology law nomological explanation causation logical-positivism positivism realism

"Seventy years after Hempel's classic article, the covering law theory is now generally regarded as a fundamentally wrong-headed way of thinking about historical (and social) explanation. Logical positivism is not a convenient lens through which to examine the social and historical sciences. There is too much contingency in the social world. Rather than being the result of law-governed processes, social outcomes proceed from the contingent and historically variable features of the actors who make them. So the attention of many people interested in specifying the nature of historical and social explanation has focused on social mechanisms constituted and driven by common features of agency."

philosophy social-science epistemology law nomological explanation causation logical-positivism positivism

philosophy history intellectual positivism

"As a result, arguments about whether a given result is just above or just below an arbitrary and conventional threshold seems foolish. Doing the calculations wrong is still a major mistake, but whether they're done correctly or not, we should stop pretending that "statistically significant" is some kind of magic guarantee of quality."

science statistics significance meaning research results positivism methodology

encyclopedia reference philosophy communication post-positivism positivism science