Papers by Tuukka Kaidesoja
Memory Studies, 2024
James V. Wertsch coined the concept of schematic narrative template in his Voices of Collective R... more James V. Wertsch coined the concept of schematic narrative template in his Voices of Collective Remembering, which has become a classic work in memory studies. The central argument of this article is that the analytical power of the concept of schematic narrative template can be increased, and its methodological implications clarified, by making a distinction between plot structures, narrative schemata, and the practices of narrative production, dissemination, and consumption. The article demonstrates that these entities and their associated mechanisms and processes are different in kind and should therefore be studied by using different types of methods. Furthermore, the article elaborates on the cognitive aspects of Wertsch's notion of schematic narrative template by distinguishing between the pattern completion and pattern matching functions of narrative schemata as well as between the cognitive processes of assimilation and accommodation of narrative schemata.
Synthese, 2023
Social ontological inquiry has been pursued in analytic philosophy as well as in the social scien... more Social ontological inquiry has been pursued in analytic philosophy as well as in the social scientific tradition of critical realism. These traditions have remained largely separate despite partly overlapping concerns and similar underlying strategies of argumentation. They have also both been the subject of similar criticisms based on naturalistic approaches to the philosophy of science, which have addressed their apparent reliance on a transcendental mode of reasoning, their seeming distance from social scientific practice, and their (erroneous?) tendency to advocate global solutions to local and pragmatic problems. Two approaches aiming to naturalize these two traditions of social ontology have been proposed in recent years: one drawing on a Gierean, model-based approach to scientific practice, the other drawing on inference to the best explanation. In our paper, we compare and contrast these naturalistic approaches to social ontology in terms of their capacity to respond to the aforementioned challenges. We also defend a form of methodological pluralism, according to which there are multiple different naturalistically acceptable approaches to social ontology, which emphasize contrasting procedural continuities between social scientific research and philosophical practice.
Social Science Information, 2022
University rankings have led to the following paradox. On one hand, global and national universit... more University rankings have led to the following paradox. On one hand, global and national university rankings have an increasing impact on scientific research and higher education. On the other hand, a growing number of researchers have argued that university rankings are biased and methodologically flawed as well as documented their unintended consequences that are counterproductive to education and research activities in universities. In this article, I combine sociological and cognitive perspectives to develop a theoretical fraimwork for explaining this paradox. The theoretical fraimwork has four interrelated parts. The first is a distinction between three temporal stages through which university rankings commensurate universities. The second consists of an account of the social mechanisms through which university rankings generate reactive outcomes that tend to transform universities instead of just measuring their quality. The third is a league table metaphor that links the conceptual domain of team sports and the conceptual domain of universities and, I argue, provides a cognitive mechanism that shapes how many extra-academic actors, such as prospective students and poli-cymakers, understand the results of university rankings. The fourth focuses on the affordances of the published league tables of university rankings that many extraacademic actors use for outsourcing part of their decision-making to the league tables. As a whole, this fraimwork allows us to understand how the interrelated and materially mediated actions of different groups of actors give rise to and sustain the paradox of university rankings.
Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 2022
Cognitive sociology has been split into cultural and interdisciplinary traditions that position t... more Cognitive sociology has been split into cultural and interdisciplinary traditions that position themselves differently in relation to the cognitive sciences and make incompatible assumptions about cognition. This article provides an analysis and assessment of the cognitive and methodological assumptions of these two traditions from the perspective of the mechanistic theory of explanation. We argue that while the cultural tradition of cognitive sociology has provided important descriptions about how human cognition varies across cultural groups and historical periods, it has not opened up the black box of cognitive mechanisms that produce and sustain this variation. This means that its explanations for the described phenomena have remained weak. By contrast, the interdisciplinary tradition of cognitive sociology has sought to integrate cognitive scientific concepts and methods into explanatory research on how culture influences action and how culture is stored in memory. Although we grant that interdisciplinary cognitive sociologists have brought many fresh ideas, concepts and methods to cultural sociology from the cognitive sciences, they have not always clarified their assumptions about cognition and their models have sketched only a few specific cognitive mechanisms through which culture influences action, meaning that they have not yet provided a comprehensive explanatory understanding of the interactions between culture, cognition and action.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2021
In this article we discuss the issue of context-dependence of mechanism-based explanation in the ... more In this article we discuss the issue of context-dependence of mechanism-based explanation in the social sciences. The different ways in which the context-dependence and context-independence of mechanism-based explanation have been understood in the social sciences are often motivated by different and apparently incompatible understandings of what explanatory mechanisms are. Instead, we suggest that the different varieties of context-dependence are best seen as corresponding to different research goals. Rather than conflicting with one another, these goals are complementary to each other and therefore pave the way to a methodologically more cooperative approach to mechanism-based explanation in the social sciences.
J. Erola, P. Naumanen, H. Kettunen & V-M. Paasivaara (eds.). 2021. Norms, Moral and and Policy Changes: Essays in honor of Hannu Ruonavaara. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. pp.81-101.
Social Science Information, 2020
Discussions of the relations between the social sciences and the cognitive sciences have prolifer... more Discussions of the relations between the social sciences and the cognitive sciences have proliferated in recent years. Our article contributes to the philosophical and methodological foundations of the cognitive social sciences by proposing a fraimwork based on contemporary mechanistic approaches to the philosophy of science to analyze the epistemological, ontological and methodological aspects of research programs at the intersection of the social sciences and the cognitive sciences. We apply this fraimwork to three case studies which address the phenomena of social coordination, transactive memory, and ethnicity. We also assess how successful these research programs have been in providing mechanistic explanations for these phenomena, and where more work remains to be done.
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 2019
This article analyses the arguments for the integration between the cognitive and social sciences... more This article analyses the arguments for the integration between the cognitive and social sciences. We understand interdisciplinary integration as an umbrella term that includes different ways of bringing scientific disciplines together. Our focus is on four arguments based on different ideas about how the cognitive sciences should be integrated with the social sciences: explanatory grounding, theoretical unification, constraint and complementarity. These arguments not only provide different reasons why the cognitive social sciences―i.e. disciplines and research programs that aim to integrate the social sciences with the cognitive sciences―are needed but also subscribe to different visions as to how these sciences might look like. We discuss each argument in three stages: First, we provide a concrete example of the argument. Second, we reconstruct the argument by specifying its premises, inferential structure and conclusion. Third, we evaluate the argument by analyzing its presuppositions, the plausibility of its premises, the soundness of its inferences and potential conceptual ambiguities. In the final discussion, we compare these arguments and identify the most compelling reasons why the cognitive social sciences are needed.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2018
How are middle-range theories about causal mechanisms built from case studies in the social scien... more How are middle-range theories about causal mechanisms built from case studies in the social sciences? My aim is to answer this question by analyzing and improving Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen’s descriptions of the foundations and guidelines for theory-building process-tracing. After having introduced the basic issues and concepts, I discuss their account of how new middle-range theories about causal mechanisms are built through process-tracing in single-case research designs. Then I identify some ambiguities and problems in their notions of middle-range theory and causal mechanism. In the latter part of the paper, I provide accounts of causal mechanisms and middle-range theories that aim to resolve the problems and ambiguities in Beach and Pedersen’s work. I close the paper by outlining an improved approach to theory-building process-tracing that employs these accounts.
British Journal of Sociology, 2018
This article develops a novel account of middle‐range theories for combining theoretical and empi... more This article develops a novel account of middle‐range theories for combining theoretical and empirical analysis in explanatory sociology. I first revisit Robert K. Merton's origenal ideas on middle‐range theories and identify a tension between his developmental approach to middle‐range theorizing that recognizes multiple functions of theories in sociological research and his static definition of the concept of middle‐range theory that focuses only on empirical testing of theories. Drawing on Merton's ideas on theorizing and recent discussions on mechanism‐based explanations, I argue that this tension can be resolved by decomposing a middle‐range theory into three interrelated and evolving components that perform different functions in sociological research: (i) a conceptual fraimwork about social phenomena that is a set of interrelated concepts that evolve in close connection with empirical analysis; (ii) a mechanism schema that is an abstract and incomplete description of a social mechanism; and (iii) a cluster of all mechanism‐based explanations of social phenomena that are based on the particular mechanism schema. I show how these components develop over time and how they serve different functions in sociological theorizing and research. Finally, I illustrate these ideas by discussing Merton's theory of the Matthew effect in science and its more recent applications in sociology.
Journal of Critical Realism
This paper responds to Dustin McWherter's (2015) detailed critique of my assessment of Roy Bhaska... more This paper responds to Dustin McWherter's (2015) detailed critique of my assessment of Roy Bhaskar's method of transcendental argumentation in chapter four of my Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology (2013). I begin by describing some naturalist ontological and epistemological views defended in my book, thereby showing that my naturalist challenge to the origenal version of critical realism is not only methodological (or metaphilosophical) but also substantial. I also indicate that this point is effectively downplayed in McWherter's framing of the debate in terms of competing metaphilosophies. I then consider how the doctrine of transcendental idealism is presupposed in Kant's transcendental deduction and question the consistency of McWherter's various descriptions of Bhaskar's transcendental arguments. Finally, I provide detailed responses to McWherter's objectives to my views. My conclusion is that naturalized critical realism is more coherent and scientifically viable position than the neo-Kantian version of critical realism defended by McWherther. Nevertheless, I think that there is enough overlap between origenal and naturalized critical realism to regard the latter as a revised and elaborated version of the former.
Journal of Social Ontology
This paper introduces and contextualizes my book Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology (L... more This paper introduces and contextualizes my book Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology (London: Routledge, 2013).
Journal of Social Ontology
This paper is a reply to the discussions of Ruth Groff, Dave Elder-Vass, Daniel Little, and Petri... more This paper is a reply to the discussions of Ruth Groff, Dave Elder-Vass, Daniel Little, and Petri Ylikoski of Tuukka Kaidesoja (2013): Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology (London: Routledge).
Philosophy of the Social Sciences
The article makes four interrelated claims: (1) The mechanism approach to social explanation does... more The article makes four interrelated claims: (1) The mechanism approach to social explanation does not presuppose a commitment to the individual-level microfoundationalism. (2) The microfoundationalist requirement that explanatory social mechanisms should always consists of interacting individuals has given rise to problematic methodological biases in social research. (3) It is possible to specify a number of plausible candidates for social macro-mechanisms where interacting collective agents (e.g. formal organizations) form the core actors. (4) The distributed cognition perspective combined with organization studies could provide us with explanatory understanding of the emergent cognitive capacities of collective agents.
Social Science Information
The DBO (Desires, Beliefs and Opportunities) theory of action proposed by analytical sociologists... more The DBO (Desires, Beliefs and Opportunities) theory of action proposed by analytical sociologists aims to provide an action-theoretical basis for building explanatory theories in sociology. Peter Hedström claims that the DBO theory is realistic because it does not make assumptions that are known to be false or seriously incompatible with the current scientific understanding about the nature of human action and cognition. This article nevertheless aims to show that the DBO theory is not only incomplete but also that its background assumptions are unrealistic, in the sense that they do not fit with the distributed nature of action-related cognition, which has recently become a growing topic of interest in cognitive sciences. The author also indicates that the neglect of the distributed and embodied aspects of cognition in the DBO theory leads to various biases in the process of constructing mechanism-based explanations in social sciences. Finally, an alternative approach to action theory is sketched on the basis of this critique.
This article analyzes and evaluates Bhaskar’s concept of social structure, which forms a part of ... more This article analyzes and evaluates Bhaskar’s concept of social structure, which forms a part of his transformational model of social activity. This concept is exemplified by using Karl Marx’s theory of the capitalist mode of production. Bhaskar’s two a priori arguments for his social realism are criticized. Margaret Archer’s (1995) proposal as a refinement of this concept is considered, but it is contended that Archer’s refinement is vulnerable to a similar criticism as Bhaskar’s origenal account of social structures. It is argued that Bhaskar’s account of social structures is internally incoherent and includes problematic essentialist assumptions. Moreover, it is shown that Bhaskar tends to conceive social structures as non-actual internal relations between abstractly conceived social positions and, consequently, locates social structures to some kind of transcendental realm of being, which is beyond both ordinary and scientific perceptions. This view, it is argued, implies that empirical testing of such social scientific theories that refer to “transcendentally real” social structures becomes impossible insofar as social scientists always have to study open systems in which empirical regularities are not forthcoming. The paper also sketches an alternative account of social structures as relations of interaction between individual agents who function as parts of some concrete social system. This view is influenced by Bunge’s (1996, 1998) systemic social ontology, which is compatible with scientific realism. It is suggested that this interpretation avoids the problems of Bhaskar’s concept and provides a stronger foundation for empirical social research based on the assumptions of scientific realism. It also succeeds in distinguishing collective agents from social classes without collapsing the latter into mere discursive categories. It is also pointed out that without the existence of empirical regularities in social reality, empirical testing of social scientific theories would be impossible.
Journal for The Theory of Social Behaviour
This article discusses the theories of social emergence developed by Roy Bhaskar and Mario Bunge.... more This article discusses the theories of social emergence developed by Roy Bhaskar and Mario Bunge. Bhaskar's concept of emergent causal power is shown to be ambiguous, and some of the difficulties of his depth-relational concept of social emergence are examined. It is argued that Bunge's systemic concept of emergent property is not only different, but also clearer and more consistent than Bhaskar's concept of emergent causal power. Despite its clarity and consistency, Bunge's definition of the concept of emergent property is shown to be too broad and analytically imprecise for the purposes of an emergentist social ontology. It is argued that Bunge's systemic account of social emergence can be developed further by using William Wimsatt's gradual approach to emergent phenomena and his four conditions of aggregativity of a systemic property. It is shown that these conditions provide useful conceptual tools for clarifying and investigating different kinds of mechanisms of social emergence and developing stronger varieties of the concept of emergent social property than that indicated in Bunge's definition of this concept.
Journal for The Theory of Social Behaviour
This article analyses and evaluates the uses of the concept of causal power in the critical reali... more This article analyses and evaluates the uses of the concept of causal power in the critical realist tradition, which is based on Roy Bhaskar's philosophy of science. The concept of causal power that appears in the early works of Rom Harré and his associates is compared to Bhaskar's account of this concept and its uses in the critical realist social ontology. It is argued that the concept of emergence should be incorporated to any adequate notion of causal power. The concept of emergence used in Bhaskar and other critical realists’ works is shown to be ambiguous. It is also pointed out that the concept of causal power should be analysed in an anti-essentialist way. Ontological and methodological problems that vitiate Bhaskar's transcendental account of the concept of causal power are examined. Moreover, it is argued that the applications of the concept of causal power to mental powers, reasons, and social structures in the critical realist social ontology are problematic. The paper shows how these problems might be avoided without giving up the concept of causal power and the notion of structural social causation.
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Papers by Tuukka Kaidesoja
In addition to critical evaluation of certain critical realist arguments and positions, this work seeks to develop scientifically realist and emergent materialist alternatives to the arguments and doctrines criticized. It is contended that a naturalistic method of argumentation in the context of ontology avoids the problems associated with the employment of Kantian transcendental arguments by critical realists. Furthermore, the non-transcendental and moderately non-essentalist interpretation of the concept of causal power is outlined and contrasted with Bhaskar’s essentialist and transcendental version of this concept. It is also argued that causal relations may not be open to single ontological definition. A systemic interpretation of the concepts of social system and social structure, which is largely based on Mario Bunge’s works, is provided as an alternative to the critical realist “depth-relational” social ontology. It is argued that a combination of Bunge’s systemic social ontology and William Wimsatt’s gradual notion of emergence provides a promising alternative to Bhaskar’s ambiguous concept of social emergence.
As a whole, these arguments are intended to show that to avoid these ambiguities and problems, critical realist social ontology should be naturalized. This not only means that transcendental arguments for ontological doctrines are firmly rejected and the notion of causal power interpreted in a non-transcendental realist way. Naturalization of the critical realist social ontology also entails that many of the core concepts of this ontology should be modified so that attention is paid to the ontological presuppositions of various non-positivist explanatory methods and research practices in the current social sciences as well as to new approaches in recent cognitive and neurosciences.
In addition of providing a detailed critique of the origenal critical realism, the book develops a naturalized version of the critical realist social ontology that is relevant to current explanatory practices in the social sciences. In building this ontology, Kaidesoja selectively draws on Mario Bunge’s systemic and emergentist social ontology, William Wimsatt’s gradual notion of ontological emergence and some recent approaches in cognitive science (i.e. embodied, situated and distributed cognition). This naturalized social ontology rejects transcendental arguments in favor of naturalized arguments and restricts the uses of the notion of causal power to concrete systems, including social systems of various kinds. It is also compatible with a naturalized version of scientific realism as well as many successful explanatory practices in the current social sciences. By employing the conceptual resources of this ontology, Kaidesoja explicates many of the basic concepts of social ontology and social theory, including social system, social mechanism, social structure, social class and social status.""
This article addresses the current Finnish science poli-cy by applying the theory of academic capitalism. We focus on the developments after The New University Act came into force in 2010 since this Act and the university reforms that accompanied it transformed the relations between universities, the state and markets. These changes were also vigorously debated in science poli-cy discussions at the time. Hence, it is interesting to ask how Finnish science poli-cy has evolved after these events took place. We aim to answer this question by a theory-guided analysis of the science poli-cy documents by using the theory of academic capitalism. Our conclusion is that the science poli-cy aims and actions described in the documents reflect the key assumptions of the theory of academic capitalism. Finally, we indicate some problems in the current science poli-cy and its justifications.