Mechanistic explanations and components of social mechanisms
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(2020) 10:35
PAPER IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
Mechanistic explanations and components of social mechanisms Saúl Pérez-González 1 Received: 20 August 2019 / Accepted: 1 July 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The past two decades have witnessed an increase in interest in social mechanisms and mechanistic explanations of social macro-phenomena. This paper addresses the question of what the components of social mechanisms in mechanistic explanations of social macro-phenomena must be. Analytical sociology’s initial position and the main new proposals by analytical sociologists are discussed. It is argued that all of them are faced with outstanding difficulties. Subsequently, a minimal requirement regarding the components of social mechanisms is introduced. It is held that a component of a social mechanism in a mechanistic explanation of a social macro-phenomenon must not have the explanandum phenomenon as a part of it. Keywords Mechanism . Scientific explanation . Analytical sociology . Structural
individualism
1 Introduction The past two decades have witnessed an increase in interest in social mechanisms (i.e. mechanisms for social macro-phenomena) and mechanistic explanations of social macro-phenomena. This increase has been related with the development of analytical sociology.1 Analytical sociology is a methodological movement within sociology that underlines the relevance of social mechanisms (Elster 1989, 2007; Hedström 2005;
1
In this paper, I will focus on analytical sociology, which is the main approach in the discourse on social mechanisms and mechanistic explanations in social science. Nevertheless, it should be noted that there are several authors who have addressed those issues from alternative perspectives (see Bunge 1997, 2004; Tilly 2000, 2001, 2004; Abbott 2007; Gross 2009).
* Saúl Pérez-González [email protected]
1
Departament de Filosofia, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain
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Hedström and Bearman 2009b; Hedström and Ylikoski 2010).2 Analytical sociologists claim that the main aim of sociology should be to explain social macro-phenomena (e.g. racial segregated neighbourhoods) by means of the mechanisms that are responsible for them (Hedström 2005). They also consider that the notion of mechanism is helpful for addressing other issues such as causation and scientific knowledge growth (Hedström and Ylikoski 2011). The aim of this paper is to address the question of what the components of social mechanisms in mechanistic explanations of social macro-phenomena must be (henceforth, “the question of components”). Addressing this question is crucial for the development of the mechanistic account of scientific explanation in social science. Mechanistic explanations must specify the mechanisms responsible for the explanandum phenomena, which requires identifying their components. In that kind of explanations, it is fundamental to detail how the components of the mechanism together give
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