Machine generated contents note: Introduction -- What is the Philosophy of Social Science? -- Democratic Peace -- Azande Witchcraft -- Freedom Riders and Free Riders -- Philosophy in the Social Sciences -- Tour of the Philosophical Neighborhood -- Normativity -- Naturalism -- Reductionism -- Excelsior! -- Objectivity, Values, and the Possibility of a Social Science -- Ideal of Value Freedom -- United States Census -- Dimensions of Value Freedom -- Moderate Thesis of Value Freedom -- Impartiality and Theory Choice -- Risk and Error -- What About Objectivity? -- Essentially Contested Ideas -- Value-Neutrality and Emancipatory Research -- Objection: Values and the Logic of Discovery -- Value Presuppositions and Implicatures -- Chapter Summary -- Discussion Questions -- Further Reading -- Theories, Interpretations, and Concepts -- Aggression, Violence, and Video Games -- Defining Theoretical Concepts -- Empiricist View of Concepts and Theory Structure -- Realism, Instrumentalism, and the Problem of Construct Validity -- Interpretivism -- Ideal Types and Verstehen -- Hermeneutics and Meaning -- Thick Description and its Challenges -- Realism and Social Concepts -- Social Constructions -- Realism about Social Kinds -- Looping Effects -- Chapter Summary -- Discussion Questions -- Further Reading -- Interpretive Methodology -- Evidence for Interpretation -- Qualitative Research Methods and Their Presuppositions -- Authority and Authenticity -- Reflexivity -- Rationality, Explanation, and Interpretive Charity -- Problem of Apparent Irrationality -- Relativism and Rationality -- Principle of Charity -- Cognition, Evolution, and Interpretation -- Bounded and Unbounded Rationality -- Cognitive Roots of Culture -- Interpretation and Cognitive Explanation -- New Questions of Naturalism -- Chapter Summary -- Discussion Questions -- Further Reading -- Action and Agency -- Explaining Action -- Admiral Tryon and Instrumental Rationality -- Function of General Laws in History -- Reasons and Causes -- Re-enactment: Verstehen Revisited -- Games People Play -- Rationality and Utility -- Games and Strategies -- Equilibria -- Nash Equilibria and the Battle of the Bismarck Sea -- Multiple Equilibria and Coordination Problems -- Agency -- Psychological Plausibility of Rational Choice Theory -- Rational Fools? -- Game Theory in the Laboratory -- Instrumentalism and Structuralism -- Chapter Summary -- Discussion Questions -- Further Reading -- Reductionism: Structures, Agents, and Evolution -- Explaining Revolutions -- Social Theory and Social Ontology -- Individualism-Holism Debate -- Definition and Theoretical Reduction -- Supervenience -- Methodological Localism -- Agents and Social Explanations -- Methodological Individualism -- Microfoundations and Moderate Explanatory Individualism -- Agency and Mechanistic Explanation -- Evolutionary Explanations -- Functions in Evolutionary Perspective -- Selectionist Explanations of Cooperation and the Evolution of Norms -- Consequences of Selectionism for the Social Sciences -- Chapter Summary -- Discussion Questions -- Further Reading -- Social Norms -- Disenchanting the Social World -- Is and Ought -- Normativism -- Good Bad Theories -- Norms and Rational Choices -- Convention -- Conventionality and Normativity -- Social Norms -- Normativity and Practice -- Norms and Practices -- Problems for Practice Theory -- Practices Without Regularities -- Reductionism and Naturalized Normativity -- Normativism and Holism -- Norms, Naturalism, and Supervenience -- Prospects for Naturalized Normativity -- Chapter Summary -- Discusson Questions -- Further Reading -- Intentions, Institutions, and Collective Action -- Agency and Collective Intentionality -- Team Reasoning -- Joint Commitment -- Group Agency -- Joint Intentionality -- Cooperation Again: Ontogeny and Development -- Plans and Joint Intentions -- We-intentions and the We-mode -- Acting as a Group Member -- Intentions and Institutions -- Strange Tale of the Druid Penny -- Function and Rules in Institutions -- Explaining Social Institutions -- Chapter Summary -- Discussion Questions -- Further Reading -- Causality and Law in the Social World -- Democratic Peace Hypothesis -- Are There Social Scientific Laws? -- Characteristics of Natural Laws -- Creativity and Complexity -- Conceptualizing Causation -- Constant Conjunction -- Linear Equation Modeling and Causal Regularities -- Interventionism -- Capacities and Nomological Engines -- Models and Mechanisms -- Secret Springs and Principles -- Correlations, Black Boxes, and Processes -- Middle Range Theory and Agent-Based Models -- Chapter Summary -- Discussion Questions -- Further Reading -- Methodologies of Causal Inference -- Bayesian Networks and Causal Modeling -- Confounds and Common Causes -- Bayesian Inference -- Challenges to Causal Modeling -- Case Studies and Causal Structure -- Apparent Value of Case Studies -- Epistemological Challenges of Case Studies -- Justification and Discovery -- Experimentation -- What Can We Learn From Social Scientific Experimentation? -- Quasi-Experiments and Randomized Controlled Trials -- Extrapolation and Social Engineering -- Evidence-Based Policy -- FCC Auction -- Breaking the Extrapolator's Circle -- Performativity and Social Engineering -- Chapter Summary -- Discussion Questions -- Further Reading.