Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour最新文献

To a naïve falsificationist, one theory-refuting finding falsifies a theory. In contrast, sophisticated science philosophers have emphasised larger research systems that include theories and auxiliary assumptions. Theory-refuting findings can be accommodated by blaming poor auxiliary assumptions, refining theories, improving auxiliary assumptions, or pronouncing that the benefits of the research system render theory-refuting findings unimportant. Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan have proposed research systems, with many disagreements between them. The present thesis is that each proposal is subject to two caveats. None of these philosophers sufficiently considered the opportunity costs associated with ignoring theory-refuting findings. Secondly, it is not clear that previous pronouncements about how research systems work in the hard sciences necessarily apply well to modern psychological science. The interaction of these issues suggests that theory-refuting findings may have more potential for mattering in modern psychology than would seem apparent from sophisticated research system perspectives.

This article begins with a summary of the four major theoretical and methodological models of social representations—the sociogenetic, structural, sociodynamic and dialogical models—and then explores new and original approaches to integrating these frameworks. The aim is to move beyond the mere accumulation or juxtaposition usually used in presenting these models and to propose methods for imbricating and interweaving them from three perspectives: conceptual innovation, methodological innovation and the temporal logic of research. We demonstrate how these imbrications—though still requiring extensive empirical research—facilitate a better understanding of how individuals and groups represent the objects in their environment.

This paper proposes a theoretical framework of collective action that integrates three aspects of identity—social identity, moral convictions, and self-esteem. The paper explains how these identity aspects relate to each other and how they affect collective action or inaction. The paper presents a framework that returns to and focuses on the underlying cognitive motivations to engage in collective action while paying special attention to the mechanism of maintaining positive self-esteem and the benefits that people may gain from participation in collective action. These benefits explain both the personal incentives for action or inaction and the positive feedback loops of action on self-esteem which reinforce additional mobilization and explain why some individuals participate more than their peers. The framework draws from existing theories and empirical studies to formulate testable hypotheses and stresses the importance of studying both participants and non-participants of the same affected social group.

Much of Charles S. Peirce's philosophy hinges on his “universal categories” of Firstness (qualities, potentialities), Secondness (action, otherness) and Thirdness (relationship, rule-boundedness). Despite their abstractness, the categories have concrete applications and shed light on several critical realist theories, such as its ontological domains, its social ontology and its more nascent semiotics. Using Peirce's categories this way requires building on his effectively non-deterministic materialist arguments and extricating his ontology from his better-known phenomenology. Peirce's universal categories, which are stratified and emergent, unearth a systematic pattern unifying critical realist ontologies and address certain problems elsewhere in critical realist philosophy. Most significantly, Peirce's semiotics provides critical realism with the mechanism connecting epistemology to ontology and grounds a case for reconceptualizing critical realism's empirical domain as the semiosic domain.

Contemporary ontological constructivism often rests on the belief that social reality emerges from tacit agreements, underpinning mutual expectations and trust. In social theory, the concept of agreement has evolved from explicit social contracts to normative consensus and the idea of tacit knowledge that subtly binds social actors. This article challenges this prevailing approach by dissecting various constructivist positions and exposing the implications of agreement-based ontological constructivism on our understanding of culture, norms, and society. The author revisits an alternative perspective, claiming that human society is equally a structure of disagreement. Emphasizing disagreement advocates for a realistic social theory and highlights the vital role of fiction in shaping social life.

Truth is a thorny issue for the sociology of knowledge. In emphasizing social influence on knowledge production, sociologists tend to disavow the objectivity of truth and slide down the slope of the consensus theory and the nihilism of post-truth. In fighting science denial, on the other hand, sociologists often find themselves aligning with the correspondence theory and the naïve notion of naked truth. The aim of this article is to advance a position that recognizes social influence on knowledge attainment without obviating the objectivity in truth. The key to this argument lies in the concept of existential embedment that unifies objectivity and subjectivity in human struggles for survival and prosperity, from which truth originates and to which truth contributes. Existential embedment also anchors knowledge by providing the foundation for truth validation. Depending on the modalities of knowledge attainment, truth is divided into four types with varying degrees of veridical certitude, each having its own criterion for validity assessment. Knowledge that passes the validation test is accepted as truth within the horizon of the given realm of existential embedment, which may change as the existential activity of the knower changes.