PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE.
Computational social science is an emerging field at the intersection of statistics, computer science, and the social sciences. This paper addresses the philosophical foundations of this new field. Kant and Peirce provide an understanding of scientific objectivity as intersubjective validity. Modern...
| Published in: | Cosmos & History Vol. 12; no. 2; pp. 13 - 31 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Ashton & Rafferty
2016
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=119372899&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 119372899 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 18329101 78JL jtl: Cosmos & History issn: 18329101 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: 2016 vid: 12 iid: 2 pid: 47219 pub: Ashton & Rafferty artinfo: ui: 119372899 ppf: 13 ppct: 18 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 338KB tig: atl: PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE. aug: au: Benthall, Sebastian affil: UC Berkeley School of Information su: Social sciences Computational sociology Theory of knowledge sug: subj: Social sciences Computational sociology Theory of knowledge keyword: Computational social science Postmodern interpretivism Scientific algorithms ab: Computational social science is an emerging field at the intersection of statistics, computer science, and the social sciences. This paper addresses the philosophical foundations of this new field. Kant and Peirce provide an understanding of scientific objectivity as intersubjective validity. Modern mathematics, and especially the mathematics of algorithms and statistics, get their objectivity from the intersubjective validity of formal proof. Algorithms implementing statistical inference, or scientific algorithms, are what distinguishes computational social science epistemically from other social sciences. This gives computational social science an objective validity that other social sciences do not have. Objections to the scientific realism of this philosophy from the positions of anti-instrumentalism, postmodern interpretivism, and situated epistemology are considered and either incorporated into this philosophy of computational social science or refuted. Speculative predictions for the field of computational social science are offered in conclusion: computational social science will bring about an end of narrative in the social sciences, contract the field of social scientific knowledge into a narrower, more hierarchical field of expertise, and create a democratic crisis that will only be resolved through universal education in computational statistics. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Cosmos & History is the property of Ashton & Rafferty and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Cosmos & History holder: Ashton & Rafferty dt: @attributes: year: 2016 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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