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Social Objects, Causality and Contingent Realism
Author(s) -
WILLIAMS MALCOLM
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal for the theory of social behaviour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.615
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5914
pISSN - 0021-8308
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5914.2008.00396.x
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , realism , causality (physics) , outcome (game theory) , epistemology , critical realism (philosophy of perception) , sociology , positive economics , social psychology , psychology , philosophy , economics , mathematical economics , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , quantum mechanics
This paper is a realist argument for the existence of “social objects”. Social objects, I argue, are the outcome states of a contingent causal process and in turn posses causal properties. This argument has consequences for what we can mean by realism and consequences for the development of a realist methodology. Realism should abandon the notion of natural necessity in favour of a view that the “real” nature of the social world is contingent and necessity is only revealed in outcome states. This, I argue, has both theoretical and methodological implications and I develop my argument through two case studies, of homelessness and ethnicity.