ESPF Colloquium Francesco Guala: Social Kinds: Historical and Multi-functional

Colloquium talk for the department of ethics, social and political philosophy, faculty of philosophy. All welcome. 

Abstract

The notion of multi-functional kind is introduced to explain how social scientists may be able to draw inferences across historically unrelated societies or cultures. Multi-functional kinds are neither eternal nor purely historical, support non-trivial inductive generalisations, and allow to overcome scepticism about the inductive potential of multiply realised (functional) properties. Two examples, from monetary economics and anthropology, provide support for a pluralistic ontology of the social world.