Slides and abstract from invited talk at Gronigen on "The Scandal of Generic Models in the Social Sciences"

The Scandal of Generic Models in the Social Sciences

Bruce Edmonds

Abstract: Despite overwhelming evidence that many aspects of human cognition are highly context-dependent, generic (that is models that are supposed to hold across different contexts) abound, including: most models of rationality and decision making, and most models that are based on statistically fitting equations to data.  Context itself, especially social context, has been systematically by-passed by both quantitative and qualitative researchers.  Quantitative researchers claim to be only interested in those patterns that are cross-context.  Qualitative researchers only deal with accounts within context.  Neither tackle the nature of context itself: how it works, in what ways it impacts upon behaviour.

Dealing with context is notoriously hard: the concept is slippery and its effects hard to identify.  However, I claim it is not impossible to research.  A combination of rich datasets and newer computational methods could help (a) identify some social contexts and (b) relate what happens within a context to how contexts are collectively constructed.  Such a step could help relate quantitative and qualitative evidence in a way that is better founded and hence, perhaps, open the way to the unification of the social sciences as a coherent discipline.

Slides available at: http://www.slideshare.net/BruceEdmonds/scandal-of-generic-models-gronigen-v3