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New functionalism and the social and behavioral sciences
European Journal for Philosophy of Science ( IF 1.5 ) Pub Date : 2021-11-02 , DOI: 10.1007/s13194-021-00420-2
Lukas Beck 1 , James D. Grayot 2
Affiliation  

Functionalism about kinds is still the dominant style of thought in the special sciences, like economics, psychology, and biology. Generally construed, functionalism is the view that states or processes can be individuated based on what role they play rather than what they are constituted of or realized by. Recently, Weiskopf (2011a, 2011b) has posited a reformulation of functionalism on the model-based approach to explanation. We refer to this reformulation as ‘new functionalism’. In this paper, we seek to defend new functionalism and to recast it in light of the concrete explanatory aims of the special sciences. In particular, we argue that the assessment of the explanatory legitimacy of a functional kind needs to take into account the explanatory purpose of the model in which the functional kind is employed. We aim at demonstrating this by appealing to model-based explanations from the social and behavioral sciences. Specifically, we focus on preferences and signals as functional kinds. Our argument is intended to have the double impact of deflecting criticisms against new functionalism from the perspective of mechanistic decomposition while also expanding the scope of new functionalism to encompass the social and behavioral sciences.



中文翻译:

新功能主义与社会和行为科学

关于种类的功能主义仍然是经济学、心理学和生物学等特殊科学的主要思想风格。一般而言,功能主义认为状态或过程可以根据它们所扮演的角色而不是它们的构成或实现方式来个性化。最近,Weiskopf (2011a, 2011b) 在基于模型的解释方法上提出了功能主义的重新表述。我们将这种重新表述称为“新功能主义”。在本文中,我们力图捍卫新功能主义,并根据特殊科学的具体解释目标对其进行重新塑造。特别是,我们认为对功能类型的解释合法性的评估需要考虑使用功能类型的模型的解释目的。我们的目标是通过社会和行为科学中基于模型的解释来证明这一点。具体来说,我们将偏好和信号作为功能类型。我们的论点旨在产生双重影响,即从机械分解的角度转移对新功能主义的批评,同时扩大新功能主义的范围以涵盖社会和行为科学。

更新日期:2021-11-02
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