Shan, Yafeng and Williamson, Jon (2021) Applying Evidential Pluralism to the social sciences. [Preprint]
 | There is a more recent version of this item available. |
|
Text
EPSocSci.pdf Download (403kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Evidential Pluralism maintains that in order to establish a causal claim one normally needs to establish the existence of an appropriate conditional correlation and the existence of an appropriate mechanism complex, so when assessing a causal claim one ought to consider both association studies and mechanistic studies. Hitherto, Evidential Pluralism has been applied to medicine, leading to the EBM+ programme, which recommends that evidence-based medicine should systematically evaluate mechanistic studies alongside clinical studies. This paper argues that Evidential Pluralism can also be fruitfully applied to the social sciences. In particular, Evidential Pluralism provides (i) a new approach to evidence-based policy; (ii) a new account of the evidential relationships in more theoretical research; and (iii) new philosophical motivation of mixed methods research. The application of Evidential Pluralism to the social sciences is also defended against two objections.
| Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
| Social Networking: |
| Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators: |
|
|||||||||
| Keywords: | Evidential Pluralism; Russo-Williamson Thesis; Evidence-based policy; Mixed methods research; Social science methodology; Causality; Causation | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation General Issues > Evidence Specific Sciences > Sociology |
|||||||||
| Depositing User: | Dr Yafeng Shan | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 29 Aug 2021 05:21 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 29 Aug 2021 05:21 | |||||||||
| Item ID: | 19499 | |||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | European Journal for Philosophy of Science | |||||||||
| Publisher: | Springer | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation General Issues > Evidence Specific Sciences > Sociology |
|||||||||
| Date: | 2021 | |||||||||
| ISSN: | 1879-4912 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/19499 |
Available Versions of this Item
- Applying Evidential Pluralism to the social sciences. (deposited 29 Aug 2021 05:21) [Currently Displayed]
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}