This Article Full Text (OnlineFirst PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Duus-Otterström, G. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Almost Pregnant: On Probabilism and Its Moral Uses in the Social Sciences

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: G.Duus-Otterstrom{at}warwick.ac.uk.

	Abstract

The turn from deterministic to probabilistic explanations has been used to argue that social science does not explain human action in ways that are incompatible with free will, since, according to some accounts of probabilism, causal factors merely influence actions without determining them. I argue that the notion of nondetermining causal influence is a multifaceted and problematic idea, which notably is unclear about whether the probability is objective or subjective, whether it applies to individual occurrences or merely to sets of occurrences, and whether it is possible for an occurrence to be "almost determined."

First published on May 19, 2009
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 2009, doi:10.1177/0048393109335958


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?