Systematic innovation and social philosophy

Corbett's “Europe and the Social Order”; makes two claims: that industrial societies are marked by “systematic innovation”; and that, as a consequence, our inherited social doctrines are obsolete and must be replaced. The first claim is true, but the second is false: it is not the case that social doctrines are “consistent”; only with certain kinds of social order: we cannot therefore say that innovating societies either preclude or compel any particular social doctrines. They do not invalidate a priori doctrine, though they undermine belief in it. It is therefore less important to attack such doctrine than to study innovation empirically.     

The stability of social categories

One important thesis Ásta defends in Categories We Live By is that social properties and categories are somehow dependent on our thoughts, attitudes, or practices—that they are inventions of the mind, projected onto the world. Another important aspect of her view is that the social properties are related to certain base properties; an individual is placed in a category when the relevant base properties are thought to hold of them. I see the relationship between the social and the base as connected to the problem of explaining how the social properties are sufficiently stable so as to be taken seriously, both in theoretical endeavors as well as in practical matters of how we relate to each other. In this light, I identify stability constraints for an adequate account of social categories. I argue that certain distinctive aspects of Ásta's conferralist view of social categories, such as the radical contextualism in her account of gender, undermine the stability of categories and are at odds with taking social categories seriously. I end with the suggestion that a distinctive “sheltered” form of normativity might help us do justice to Ásta's insights while avoiding some of the destabilizing elements of conferralism.     

Sztompka's philosophy of social Science

It is argued in this article that the concept of practice is one of the key concepts in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. It partly replaces his earlier talk about the inexpressible. ‘The practice has to speak for itself, as Wittgenstein succinctly puts it. The concept of practice not only points to the ways in which the unity of our concepts are underpinned, as Gordon Baker has it, it also comprises the skills involved in handling the conceptualized phenomena, our prereflective familiarity with them, expressed in the sureness in our behaviour towards them, and the judgmental power exercised in applying or withholding a given concept on a particular occasion. These factors are all relevant to the establishment of knowledge, but they cannot themselves be fully and straightforwardly articulated by verbal means. Nevertheless, they represent what we go by when we apply concepts and other types of rules. To follow a rule is what Wittgenstein calls a practice. The sketched analysis of this concept makes us understand better how it is possible to apply a rule without the support of another rule. It also makes us realize in what sense one is justified in talking about tacit knowledge in connection with the application of concepts and rule‐following in general. Quite a lot hangs on seeing the world aright at this point.     

What children infer from social categories

Children hold the belief that social categories have essences. We investigated what kinds of properties children feel licensed to infer about a person based on social category membership. Seventy-two 4-6-year-olds were introduced to novel social categories defined as having one internal - psychological or biological - and one external - behavioral or physical - property. For half of the participants, the internal property was described as causing the external one; for the others, no causal relationship between properties was mentioned. Children were asked to choose as a novel exemplar of a category one with only the internal or only the external property. Children inferred that exemplars had a psychological property irrespective of causal status, but they inferred the presence of a biological property only when described as causal. Children did not draw systematic inferences regarding either of the two external properties. These findings indicate that children treat psychological and causal properties as central - and perhaps essential - to human kinds.     

The cognitive structure of social categories

Support for the prototype theory of categorization was found in a study of the structure of social categories. Though occupational terms such as DOCTOR are socially defined, they do not have the classical structure their clear definitional origins would predict. Conceptions of social categories are richer and more complex than those of physical object categories and subjects agree upon them. Comparison of various instructions for eliciting attributes of categories showed that whether subjects are asked to define a term, give characteristics, or describe ways they recognize members of categories, the attributes they list contribute to a prototype structure. These data provide evidence against the view that prototype structure is relevant only to an identification procedure and not to the core of concepts, as has been suggested.     

From political philosophy to social theory

Critical accounts of the origins of sociology stress both continuity and change as they are related to previous styles of political and social thought. This article further extends these accounts. It analyzes substantive as well as formal continuities and changes in the transition from political to social conceptions of order. Both intellectual and societal factors are responsible for this theoretical transition. Explicitly political and social conceptions of order reflected two stages in the development of European society. But purely internal, intellectual factors, involving the refinement of empirical analysis, called into question political theories of society. Finally, the article makes explicit and defends the distinction between bourgeois and Marxist varieties of theoretical reflection with reference to the transition from political philosophy to social theory.     

Generalizing norms and preferences within social categories and individuals

Under what conditions will people generalize and remember observed social information? Preschool- (n = 44) and young school-age (n = 46) children and adults (n = 40) heard short vignettes describing characters' actions and motives on a single occasion. Characters were introduced using either proper names or category labels. Test questions asked for prediction and memory of motives for the same (individual) or a different (category member) person in a future event. Critical items contrasted behaviors motivated by psychological states with those motivated by normative obligations. The hypothesis was that norms would generalize across members of social categories. In contrast, psychological states would be generalized to the same individual across time. Results supported both these hypotheses and revealed some developmental differences. Preschool-age children seemed most attentive to normative properties of social categories. Young school-age children were most attentive to psychological properties of individuals. Such differences may reflect a shift from early focus on within-category similarities to a later focus on within-category differences.     

Biased allocation of faces to social categories

Three studies show that social categorization is biased at the level of category allocation. In all studies, participants categorized faces. In Studies 1 and 2, participants overallocated faces with criminal features--a stereotypical negative trait--to the stigmatized Moroccan category, especially if they were prejudiced. On the contrary, the stereotype-irrelevant negative trait stupid did not lead to overallocation to the Moroccan category. In Study 3, using the stigmatized category homosexual, the previously used negative trait criminal--irrelevant to the homosexual stereotype--did not lead to overallocation, but the stereotype-relevant positive trait femininity did. These results demonstrate that normative fit is higher for faces with stereotype-relevant features regardless of valence. Moreover, individual differences in implicit prejudice predicted the extent to which stereotype-relevant traits elicited overallocation: Whereas more negatively prejudiced people showed greater overallocation of faces associated with negative stereotype-relevant traits, they showed less overallocation of faces associated with positive stereotype-relevant traits. These results support our normative fit hypothesis: In general, normative fit is better for faces with stereotypical features. Moreover, normative fit is enhanced for prejudiced individuals when these features are evaluatively congruent. Social categorization thus may be biased in itself.     

Social anthropology and the philosophy of religion

The pursuit of linguistic analysis should mean that philosophers pay attention to the facts: in particular, the philosophy of religion cannot ignore the comparative study of religion, social anthropology, etc. A main aim should be to discover a ‘grammar’ of religious experience, which may help to illuminate the reasons for certain patterns of religious belief, etc. Here it is necessary to resist the functionalist views of some social anthropologists, stemming from the conviction that religion is an illusion and from a conflation of reasons and causes. But in so far as a functionalist approach applies, it can help to exhibit the accidental and ‘non‐religious’ features of a given religion.     

Young children's automatic encoding of social categories

The present research investigated young children's automatic encoding of two social categories that are highly relevant to adults: gender and race. Three‐ to 6‐year‐old participants learned facts about unfamiliar target children who varied in either gender or race and were asked to remember which facts went with which targets. When participants made mistakes, they were more likely to confuse targets of the same gender than targets of different genders, but they were equally likely to confuse targets within and across racial groups. However, a social preference measure indicated that participants were sensitive to both gender and race information. Participants with more racial diversity in their social environments were more likely to encode race, but did not have stronger racial preferences. These findings provide evidence that young children do not automatically encode all perceptible features of others. Further, gender may be a more fundamental social category than race.     

Political animals and social animals as biologically meaningful categories

This paper addresses itself to the question as to whether Homo is properly to be considered as a political animal, or whether Homo is best understood as merely a form of social animal which has evolved particularly complex survival stratagems. We will proceed primarily on the basis of the published work of the contemporary Swiss zoologist, Adolf Portmann, and argue for the view that there are solid grounds for distinguishing between social and political animals, and that Homo inhabits the realm of the political animal.