Evidential Pluralism in the Social Sciences

Yafeng Shan is Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is the author of Doing Integrated History and Philosophy of Science: A Case Study of the Origin of Genetics and the editor of New Philosophical Perspectives on Scientific Progress.Jon Williamson is Professor of Reasoning, Inference, and Scientific Method at the University of Kent, UK. His books include Evaluating Evidence of Mechanisms in Medicine, Lectures on Inductive Logic, Probabilistic Logics and Probabilistic Networks, In Defence of Objective Bayesianism and Bayesian Nets and Causality.

• I Philosophical Framework 1 Evidential Pluralism §1. What is Evidential Pluralism? §2. Why is Evidential Pluralism Plausible?§3. Evidential Pluralism and EBM+ §4. Controversies and Clarifications §5. Evidential Pluralism and Epistemic Causality§6. Applying Evidential Pluralism to the Social Sciences2 Historical Roots§7. Bernard §8. Weldon §9. Goldthorpe §10. How does Evidential Pluralism differ?II Consequences and Concerns 3 Evidence-Based Policy: EBP+ §11. EBM and EBP §12. EBP+ Evaluation Procedures §13. EBP+ in Comparison to Existing Approaches 4 Mixed Methods Research §14. The Context of the Origins of Mixed Methods Research§15. Mixed Methods Research and its Philosophical Foundations §16. A Critical Analysis§17. Evidential Pluralism and Mixed Methods Research5 Objections and Responses §18. Objection 1: The Problem of Sufficiency§19. Objection 2: The Problem of Necessity§20. Objection 3: The Problem of Causal Monism §21. Objection 4: The Problem of Defining Mechanisms III Particular Social Sciences 6 Sociology §22. Causal Enquiry in Sociology§23. Sociologists’ Methodological Reflections on Causal Enquiry7 Economics §24. Causal Enquiry in Economics §25. Benefits of Evidential Pluralism in Economics§26. Mechanisms and Theory in Economics§27. Causal and Methodological Pluralism in Economics8 Political Science§28. The Need for Methodological Diversity in Political Science §29. Case Study: Resource Wealth and Violence in Rebellions §30. Understanding Causal Enquiry in Political Science 9 Law§31. The Bifurcation Approach to Causation in the Law §32. The Bifurcation Approach and Evidential Pluralism §33. Liability-Tracing Mechanisms §34. Against Causal Autonomy in the Law 10 The Scope of Evidential Pluralism in the Social Sciences§35. Across the social sciences §36. Where we standBibliography