Philosophy 130

What exactly is the ontology of social reality and how does it relate to physical and psychological reality? How do explanations in the social sciences resemble and differ from explanations in the physical sciences? What is the role of rationality in the constitution and understanding of social phenomena? What sorts of explanations, laws and theories can we reasonably expect from the social sciences? Why have the social sciences been unable to predict, understand and explain such phenomena as, for example, the collapse of the Soviet Empire?

In this course I expect to use and to extend the theories advanced in my books Intentionality, The Construction of Social Reality, and Rationality in Action.