1. Introduction
1.1. What is the Philosophy of Social Science?
1.2. A Tour of the Philosophical Neighborhood
2. Objectivity, Values, and the Possibility of a Social Science
2.1. The Ideal of Value-Freedom
2.2. Impartiality and Theory Choice
2.3. Essentially Contested Ideas
2.4. Wrap Up
3. Theories, Interpretations, and Concepts
3.1. Aggression, Violence, and Video Games
3.2. Defining Theoretical concepts
3.3. Interpretivism
3.4. Wrap Up
4. Interpretive Methodology
4.1. Evidence for Interpretation
4.2. Rationality, Explanation, and Interpretive Charity
4.3. Cognition, Evolution, and Interpretation
4.4. Wrap Up
5. Action and Agency
5.1. Explaining Action
5.2. The Games People Play
5.3. Agency
5.4. Wrap Up
6. Modeling and Explaining
6.1. Modeling Segregation
6.2. Learning From Models
6.3. The Explanation Paradox
6.4. Wrap Up
7. Reductionism: Structures, Agents, and Evolution
7.1. Explaining Revolutions
7.2. Social Theory and Social Ontology
7.3. Agents and Social Explanations
7.4. Evolutionary Explanations
7.5. Wrap Up
8. Race and Other Social Constructions
8.1. Race in the Social Sciences: A Brief History
8.2. Reductionism and the Social Construction of Race
8.3. Is Race Real? From Social Construction to Social Kinds
8.4. Wrap Up
9. Social Norms
9.1. Disenchanting the Social World
9.2. Norms and Rational Choices
9.3. Normativity and Practice
9.4. Is Unification Possible?
9.5. Wrap Up
10. Intentions, Institutions, and Collective Action
10.1. Agency and Collective Intentionality
10.2. Joint Intentionality
10.3. Intentions and Institutions
10.4. Wrap Up
11. Causality and Law in the Social World
11.1. The Democratic Peace Hypothesis
11.2. Are There Social Scientific Laws?
11.3. Causation and Law
11.4. Interventions, Capacities, and Mechanisms
11.5. Wrap Up
12. Methodologies of Causal Inference
12.1. Bayesian Networks and Causal Modeling
12.2. Case Studies and Causal Structure
12.3. Experimentation
12.4. Extrapolation and Social Engineering
12.5. Wrap Up
Biography
Mark Risjord is Professor of Philosophy at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, where he was awarded the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award and the Excellence in Teaching Award, and he has served as the Masse-Martin/NEH Distinguished Teaching Chair.
