Forms of Explanation. Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory

Cover page
......Page 1
Copyright
......Page 2
Contents
......Page 7
Preface
......Page 9
Explanations in Conflict
......Page 10
Whatever Happened to Neurasthenia?
......Page 12
Answers and Questions
......Page 15
Questions and Purposes
......Page 18
Questions and Objects
......Page 20
Individualism
......Page 24
Wanted A Philosophy of Explanation
......Page 27
1. Explanatory Relativity
......Page 29
The Algebra of Explanations
......Page 33
Presuppositions of Explanations
......Page 36
Explanatory Relativity and the Philosophy of Explanation
......Page 45
Structural Presuppositions
......Page 49
Reduction
......Page 57
Microreduction The Whole and Its Parts
......Page 59
Explanation Seeks Its Own Level
......Page 67
Against Reduction
......Page 70
Atomism
......Page 74
Economic Individualism
......Page 83
Theories of the Market
......Page 85
Markets and Individual Rights
......Page 88
The Object of Market Explanations
......Page 96
Do Markets Deliver the Goods? To Whom?
......Page 100
A Structural Explanation of the Distribution of Income
......Page 103
A Note on Political Individualism
......Page 106
The Model of Individual Differences Social Darwinism
......Page 113
Genetics and Social Causality
......Page 124
How to Explain Social Stratification Structurally
......Page 128
Human Nature Biology and Philosophical Anthropology
......Page 133
Value Free Social Science
......Page 142
Partial Causality
......Page 146
Are There Complete, Presuppositionless Explanations?
......Page 151
Laws in Explanations and How They Are Value Laden
......Page 155
Individualistic versus Structural Explanations in Social Theory
......Page 159
Does Explanatory Relativity Imply Relativism?
......Page 164
Relativizing Explanation
......Page 167
The Proper Objects of Explanation
......Page 172
Stability
......Page 177
The Pragmatics of Explanation
......Page 180
Structural Explanation
......Page 185
Index
......Page 193