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Mad Hazard is a memoir of the career and life of Stephen Turner, chronicling a life in social theory. Showcasing how Turner's later work on expertise, tacit knowledge, cognitive science, leadership, and liberal democracy developed out of his early interests, this volume describes the institutional and personal constraints and pressures, as well as the personal relationships, that facilitated and shaped an academic career. From Turner's childhood in the racially violent South Side of Chicago, the development of his interests in social theory, through to his education in the shadow of the war in Vietnam and a period of social and personal turmoil, this biographical work shows us not only the development of academic thinking, but the evolution of an academic career. The rebellion within sociology against the hegemonic Merton-Parsons conception of sociology and the methodological orthodoxies of the time leads through to a discussion of the philosophy of science and social science, and from there to a reassessment of the inherited view of the classics, to science studies, and to political and international relations theory - the comprehensive nature of Mad Hazard means the reader can truly understand how Turner's academic journey evolved. Revealing an academic career not dependent on prestige and academic power, but also not untouched by hierarchy and academic politics, Mad Hazard is appealing for readers interested in the field of social theory, and beyond that, those interested in the evolution of intellectual life in the present university.

Preface: cognitive science -- Perspectives on the brain and cognition : the problem domain -- Standard and non-standard approaches to cognitive science -- Folk psychology, the background, and the standard model -- Explaining and understanding action -- Incorporating the social into cognitive science : affordances, scaffolding, and computational complexity -- Selves, persons, and the social -- Social theory and cognitive science -- The two socials and the verstehen bubble

Pre-academic Reformism and the Conflict between Advocacy and Objectivity Until 1920 -- The Revolution of the Twenties and the Interwar Years -- The Postwar Boom -- The Crisis of the Seventies and Its Long-Term Consequences -- The Near Death Experience and Its Consequences -- Feminization, the New University Environment, and the Quest for a Sociology for People -- The Elite and its Power -- Activism, Professionalism, or Condominium?

Normativity is what gives reasons their force, makes words meaningful, and makes rules and laws binding. It is present whenever we use such terms as 'correct,' 'ought,' 'must,' and the language of obligation, responsibility, and logical compulsion. Yet normativists, the philosophers committed to this idea, admit that the idea of a non-causal normative realm and a body of normative objects is spooky. Explaining the Normative is the first systematic, historically grounded critique of normativism. It identifies the standard normativist pattern of argument, and shows how this pattern depends on circularities, assumptions about the unique correctness of preferred descriptions, problematic transcendental arguments, and regress arguments that end in mysteries.The book considers in detail a paradigm case: legal normativity as constructed by Hans Kelsen. This case exemplifies the problems with normativist arguments. But it also shows how normativism was constructed as an alternative to ordinary social science explanation. The normativist argument is that social science explanations themselves are forced to rely on normative conceptsÑminimally, on normative rationality and on a normative view of 'concepts' themselves.Empathic understanding of the reasoning and meanings of others, however, can solve the regress problems about meaning and rationality that are central to the appeal of normativism. This account has no need for a parallel normative world, and has a surprising and revealing lineage in the history of philosophy, as well as a basis in neuroscience.

This four-volume reference work covers the main issues, methods of analysis, and alternatives, of causality, including the classic texts applying these alternative concepts and methods to empirical cases. The volumes give a substantial historical and philosophical introduction relevant to the concerns of practitioners

"Explaining the Normative is the first systematic, historically grounded critique of normativism. It identifies the standard normativist pattern of argument, and shows how this pattern depends on circularities, preferred descriptions, problematic transcendental arguments, and regress arguments ending in mysteries."--Jacket

What are the political implications of 'expert' knowledge and especially scientific knowledge for liberal democracy? If knowledge is not evenly distributed upon what basis can the philosophy of equal rights be sustained?. This important book points to the crisis in knowledge in liberal democracies. This crisis, simply put, is that most citizens cannot understand, much less judge, the claims scientists make. One response is the appointment of public commissions to provide conclusions for policy-makers to act upon. There are also `commissions from below', such as grass roots associations that qu

I / The Earlier Conversation -- One / Two Generations -- Two / Beyond the Enlightenment: Comte and the New Problem of Social Science -- Three / Mill and the 'Ascent To Causes' -- Four / Quetelet: Rates and Their Explanation -- Five / The Interregnum -- II / Durkheim as a Methodolog'ist -- Six / Realism, Teleology, and Action -- Seven / Collective Forces, Causation, and Probability -- Eight / Durkheim's Individual -- III / Weber On Action -- Nine / Objective Possibility and Adequate Cause -- Ten / Rationality and Action -- Eleven / Large-Scale Explanations: Aggregation and Interpretation -- Epilog / The End of the Ascent -- Notes.