Objective Knowledge in Social Sciences and Humanities: Karl Popper and Beyond

This collection of papers addresses the issue of ‘objective vs. subjective’ knowledge in the social sciences and humanities: how we may get ‘objective’ knowledge out of ‘subjective’ perceptions; how ‘induction’ and ‘deduction’ should interact; how we can make policies or legal recommendations based on ‘objective knowledge’; how social agents’ knowledge should be modelled. Drawing on the structure of the conference, the papers are organized in sections which address a set of interrelated questions, against a common thematic background provided by Popper’s contribution on objective knowledge in the social sciences and humanities: the ‘induction problem’ and the accumulation of ‘subjective’ knowledge out of ‘objective’ knowledge; ‘objectivity’ of the law and of social policies; objectivity of facts and causal relations in the social sciences and humanities; the objective/subjective rationality of social agents.Foreword Ramon Marimon 1 Introduction Chiara Valentini 3 Section I From ‘Subjective’ To ‘Objective Knowledge’: The ‘Induction Problem’ Revisited Simon Blackburn: Popper and His Successors 9 Carol Cleland: Common Cause Explanation and the Asymmetry of Overdetermination 17 Section II Objectivity of The Law and of Social Policies Gerald Postema: Hayek and Popper on the Evolution of Rules and Mind 33 Section III Objectivity of Facts and Causal Relations in the Social Sciences and Humanities Harry Collins: Demarcation Criteria and Elective Modernism 55 Justin Cruikshank: The Importance of Nominal Problems 61 Section IV Modeling Individual and Social Agents as Objective/Subjective ‘Rational’ Agents’ Frédéric Vandenberghe: Falsification Falsified. A Swansong for Lord Popper 7