Philosophy of the Social Sciences (9 credits)

Provisional Syllabus
Academic Year 2018-19

Lecturer: Professor Francesco Guala ([email protected])

Department of Philosophy, Via Festa del Perdono 7, Cortile Ghiacciaia, top floor.
Email: [email protected]

Course Description: What are human societies made of? Are social entities such as teams, universities, or
countries mere aggregates of individuals, or do they exist ‘over and above’ their members? Do the social
sciences answer these questions, and if so how? Can there be a science of society along the same lines as
physics, or should we aim at a different type of understanding of human behavior? This course will address
questions of this kind, with a particular emphasis on social ontology and the cognitive foundations of
society.
The students will learn to identify and distinguish the most prominent positions in debates concerning
individualism, reductionism, constructionism and realism. They will understand the theories that
philosophers, psychologists and economists have put forward to explain the emergence of institutions.
They will also know what kind of cognitive capacities allow human beings to engage in coordination and
cooperation, on a scale of complexity that is unknown in the natural world. Students will analyse and
critically assess the main arguments in favour and against the views presented in the literature, with the
aim of identifying the ways in which debates in the foundations of social science may be resolved.
Lectures: Monday 14.30-16.30 (Aula formazione), Wednesday 16.30-18.30 (M402), Thursday 8.30-10.30
(Sant’Antonio I), Spring term.

Assessment: the students who attend at least 70% of the lectures will be assessed on the basis of two
essays. Non-attending students will take a written exam in class.

Website (Ariel): https://fgualapss.ariel.ctu.unimi.it/

Textbooks and anthologies

There are several excellent textbooks, which may be useful as background reading and bibliographic
resources:

• Risjord, M. (2014) Philosophy of Social Science: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge.

• Rosenberg, A. (2012) Philosophy of Social Science. Westview/Routledge, 4th edition.
• Kincaid, H. (1996) Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press.
These anthologies collect classic papers on individualism, reduction, reflexivity, and more:

• Steel, D. & Guala, F. (eds. 2011) The Philosophy of Social Science Reader. Routledge. [S&G]
• Martin, M. and McIntyre, L. (eds. 1994) Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science. MIT Press.
[M&M]
The following volumes include a number of interesting papers on social ontology:

• Schmidt, F. F. (ed. 2003) Socializing Metaphysics. Rowman & Littlefield.

• Mantzavinos, C. (ed. 2009) Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/) is another valuable resource, see for
example the entries on “Social Ontology”, “Methodological Individualism”, “Methodological Holism in the
Social Sciences”, “Social Institutions”, “Naturalistic Approaches to Social Construction”, “Naturalism”,

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“Social Norms”, “Convention”, “Game Theory”, “Natural Kinds”, “Multiple Realizability”, “Collective
Intentionality”, and more.

Finally, you may find these handbooks particularly useful:

• Kincaid, H. (ed. 2012) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Social Science. Oxford University
Press.
• Cartwright, N. and Montuschi, E. (eds. 2014) Philosophy of Social Science. Oxford University Press.

The course syllabus will take shape as we proceed, and the final bibliography will be provided only at the
end of term. The following list of readings is only indicative and may well change.

Provisional programme and readings (the main readings are marked with a star *):

1. Methodological individualism: the classic debate

• * Watkins, J. W. (1957) “Historical explanation in the social sciences”, British Journal for the
Philosophy of Science 8: 104-117. [in electronic library, also in M&M]
• * Lukes, S. (1968) “Methodological Individualism Reconsidered”, British Journal of Sociology 19:
119-29 [library, M&M, S&G].
• Kincaid, H. (1986) “Reduction, explanation, and individualism”, Philosophy of Science 53: 492-513.
[library, M&M]
• Weber, M. (1921) “The Interpretive Understanding of Social Action”, in Readings in the Philosophy
of the Social Sciences, edited by M. Brodbeck. Macmillan, pp. 19-33. [in ariel]
• Durkheim, E. (1892) “What is a social fact?”, in The Rules of Sociological Method. Palgrave, 50-59.
[M&M]
2. Ontological individualism: Reduction and supervenience; Multiple realisability

• * Fodor, J. A. (1974) “Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)”,
Synthese 28: 97-115. [library, M&M]
• * Sawyer, K. (2002) “Nonreductive Individualism: Part I – Supervenience and Wild Disjunction”,
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 32: 537-59 [library, S&G].
• Epstein, B. (2009) “Ontological Individualism Reconsidered”, Synthese 166: 187-213. [library]
• Papineau, D. (2009) “Physicalism and the Human Sciences”, in Philosophy of the Social Sciences,
edited by C. Mantzavinos, Cambridge University Press, pp. 103-23. [free online]
3. Individualism in practice: Rational Choice Theory

• Schelling, T. C. (2010) “Game Theory: a Practitioner's Approach”, Economics & Philosophy 26: 27-
46. [library]
• Harsanyi, J. C. (1980) “Advances in Understanding Rational Behavior”. In Essays on ethics, social
behavior, and scientific explanation. Springer, 89-117 [S&G, ariel].
• * Guala, F. (2016) Understanding Institutions, Princeton University Press, Ch. 2 (“Games”) [ariel]
• Pettit, P. (1995) “The Virtual Reality of Homo Economicus”, The Monist 78: 308-329. [S&G, ariel]
4. Social conventions

• * Lewis, D. (1969) Convention: A Philosophical Study. Blackwell, Chs. 1 and 2. [S&G, ariel]
• Sugden, R. (1998) “The Role of Inductive Reasoning in the Evolution of Conventions”, Law and
Philosophy, 17: 377-410. [library]
• Alexander, J., & Skyrms, B. (1999) “Bargaining with Neighbors: Is Justice Contagious?” Journal of
Philosophy 96: 588-598. [library, S&G]

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5. Social norms

• Bicchieri, C. (2006) The Grammar of Society, Cambridge University Press, Ch. 1 (“The rules we live
by”). [S&G, ariel]
• Sugden, R. (1998) “Normative Expectations: the Simultaneous Evolution of Institutions and Norms”,
in Economics, values, and organization, ed. by A. Ben-Ner, & L. Putterman. Cambridge University
Press. [ariel]
• Southwood, N., & Eriksson, L. (2011) “Norms and Conventions”, Philosophical Explorations, 14: 195-
217. [library]
6. Collective intentionality

• *Gilbert, M. (2008) “Social Convention Revisited”. Topoi 27: 5–16. [library, S&G]
• Tuomela, R., & Miller, K. (1988) “We-intentions”, Philosophical Studies 53: 367-389. [library]
• * Searle, J. (1990) “Collective Intentions and Actions.” In Intentions in Communication, edited by P.
Cohen, J. Morgan, and M. E. Pollack. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 401–415. [ariel]
• Sugden, R. (2000) “Team Preferences”, Economics & Philosophy 16: 175-204. [library]
• Tomasello, M. & Rakoczy, H. (2003) “What Makes Human Cognition Unique? From Individual to
Shared to Collective Intentionality”, Mind & Language 18: 121-147. [library]
7. Institutions as constitutive rules

• * Searle, J. (2005) “What Is an Institution?”, Journal of Institutional Economics 1: 1-22 [library,

S&G].
• Searle, J. (1994) The Construction of Social Reality. Penguin/Oxford University Press.
• Turner, S. P. (1999) “Searle's Social Reality”, History and Theory 38: 211-231. [library]
• * Epstein, B. (2014) “What is Individualism in Social Ontology? Ontological Individualism vs. Anchor
Individualism”, in Rethinking the Individualism-Holism Debate, edited by J. Zahle & F. Collin. [free
online]
8. Institutions as rules in equilibrium

• * Hindriks, F. and Guala, F. (2015) “Institutions, Rules, and Equilibria: A Unified Theory”, Journal of
Institutional Economics 11: 459-480. [library]
• * Smit, J. P., Buekens, F., and du Plessis, S. (2011) “What is Money? An Alternative to Searle’s
Institutional Facts.” Economics and Philosophy 27: 1–22. [library]
• Greif, A. and Kingston, C. (2011) “Institutions: Rules or Equilibria?” In Political Economy of
Institutions, Democracy and Voting, edited by N. Schofield and G. Caballero. Springer, pp. 13–43.
[free online]
• Commentaries by Aoki, Binmore, Hodgson, Searle, Smith, and Sugden in the Journal of Institutional
Economics 11 (2015). [library]
9. Reflexivity and mind-dependence

• * Hacking, I. (1995) “The Looping Effect of Human Kinds”, in Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary
Debate, edited by A. Premack. Clarendon Press, pp. 351-83 [S&G, ariel].
• Cooper, R. (2004) “Why Hacking is Wrong about Human Kinds”, British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science 55: 73-85. [library]
• * Mallon, R. (2003) “Social Construction, Social Roles, and Stability.” In Socializing Metaphysics,
edited by F. F. Schmidt. Rowman and & Littlefield, pp. 327–353. [ariel]
• Guala, F. (2013) “Reflexivity and Equilibria”, Journal of Economic Methodology 20: 397-405. [ariel]

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10. Realism and mind-dependence

• * Thomasson, A. (2003) “Realism and Human Kinds”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
68: 580-609. [library]
• Ruben, D.-H. (1989) “Realism in the Social Sciences.” In Dismantling Truth, edited by H. Lawson and
L. Appignanesi. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 58–75. [ariel]
• Khalidi, M. A. (2016) “Mind-Dependent Kinds”, Journal of Social Ontology 2: 223-246. [free online]
• Guala, F. (2016) “Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Naturalism and Anti-Naturalism”, in Oxford
Handbook of Philosophy of Science, edited by Paul Humphreys. Oxford University Press. [ariel]